But they just happened recently, about $120 worth. Is it irrational for me to skip going out for lunch, return unnecessary things that I bought, NOT go to the movies when I was going to, etc. to recoup losses? It won’t amount to the cost, but it makes me feel like I’m doing SOMETHING about it.

I’m socked with a $4.50 per ticket “convenience charge” and an additional $2.50 charge to use my own printer to print out the tickets. So, I’m out an additional $11.50 just for the conveeeeeeenience of using that Internet thing.

Well, forget that. My wife and I walk up to the window on the day of the game (not before finding out if the game is sold out, but with the Astros they never are anymore), and buy the same kind of seat.

I find it shameful that I’m charged seven bucks for a burger, four bucks for fries, and eight bucks for a beer, so we stopped buying food at the ballpark (we eat before we go), but this surcharge is an outrageous ripoff.

Then again, the whole “Astros experience” is getting to be a ripoff. When Drayton McLayne forced taxpayers to build his team a new stadium that seated 10,000 fewer people but had more luxury boxes, no parking lots were built. You pay between five (a mile away) and thirty bucks (next to the stadium) to park. The cheapest tickets are now 7 bucks (up from five last year). There’s the food, the program (can’t tell the game without a program), the gas to get there.

Two people in the cheap seats without food can see a game for about $25 including gas. That’s us, maybe three times a year. Most families pay over a hundred.

Sorry, rant over. I’m just steamed that all professional sports are no longer ABOUT sports.

I struggled with the psychology of the choice, but as I’ve learned from many of your posts, the numbers helped to guide my judgment.

I heard something very wise on this issue once:

“The only good reasons to eat food are because it’s nutritious, it’s tasty, or you’re hungry. If you eat something just to avoid throwing it away, you’re still throwing it away, you’re just using your body as the garbage can.”

And kudos to your Rangers for letting the starters go past the 6th inning!

I get the large, and I’m getting positively ILL by the end, but feel a need to finish it. Because I’ve paid for it.

As you rightly point out, some people get blinded and don’t think things through . . .

It is not entirely dissimilar to the way that the stock market works. Buying things ahead of time gives you a better return on your investment (ie. it is cheaper to buy), but involves more risk (maybe you won’t even use it). On the other hand, buying at the door involves minimal risk (you are already there), but gives poorer return (costs more). At any rate, it seems like this is a general rule in the financial world — the more the risk, the better the possible financial outcome.

With that in mind, it seems like most purchasing decisions, if we only consider the financial implications, could be reduced to a risk analysis. Thus, one would really just ask (i) would you be ok ‘losing’ this money and (ii) what are the odds of that happening. Then, if you go ahead and ’sink the cost’ you will hopefully be ok with losing out on the payoff, since you have thought about it ahead of time.

Upon reflection this seems somewhat similar to the approach suggested in “the paradox of choice.”

Say you had $5000 of GM stock a couple of weeks ago – that stock had probably taken a pounding since you bought it. Many people would try to ride it out for the reasons listed in the article but a good way to avoid that is to ask: “What would I do if I had $5000 in cash? Would I buy GM stock?” Almost certainly the answer would be a resounding “NO!”.

Your investments are (very likely) fungible and so you should think about them like their cash equivalent and ask yourself how you would invest that cash amount.

On the flip side it should be more obvious. The fact that so many vendors want us to pay in advance, or to sign up for a discount plan of some sort should scream “You’ll Pay More!”. After all, the entire reason anyone wants us to pay upfront is so that they can lock in (higher) revenue. Why else would they bother with the additional paper work and record keeping?

One of the greatest examples of this is the dollar auction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction).

Pretend that I am auctioning off an ordinary dollar bill. The dollar will go to the highest bidder, but the second-highest bidder must also pay his or her bid. After only a short time, one bidder reaches 99 cents, and the other 98. At this point, both realize that one of them will lose at least 98 cents, or both will pay more than a dollar for the dollar. The sunk-cost fallacy (and humans’ competitive desire to win) drive the price up above $1.