When I first began looking at how we could live well on less money, one of the first things that I noticed is that a lot of “modern conveniences” instead of truly being conveniences actually cost you more in both time and money than simply doing them an “old-fashioned” manual way. I cataloged quite a few of these, and will be writing about them individually in the future. For now, I want to explain how I began to think about these supposed necessities of modern life.
TCO is a popular business term, used frequently when evaluating new machinery or systems . It takes into account not just the purchase price of the machine and the time savings that machine is thought to provide, but also looks at the cost in man hours and dollars of training, maintainance, service, upgrades, supplies and a whole host of other things to come to a more accurate idea of the cost of owning and operating a piece of machinery.
I took the idea of TCO and started applying it to things in my life that were meant to be conveniences. Interestingly, I discovered that very few of these conveniences were conveniences, to me at least. If someone else were to do these calculations, they would get different numbers, depending on service costs in their area, their salary, etc…
To determine whether an item is actually a convenience or is costing you to own it, ad up the:
- Purchase Price - What you paid for it (plus finance charges if you bought it on credit)
- Training Cost - Take the time necessary to figure out the thing and multiply it by your net hourly wage)
- Space Cost - This one is a little more complicated. This is the marginal cost of owning/renting a dwelling that is larger in order to house the thing. To figure this one out, divide your rent/mortgage payment by the total number of square feet you have, to determine a square foot cost. Then measure the footprint of the item in question, and multiply the footprint by the square foot cost.
- Maintainance Cost - How much time and/or money will you spend cleaning, oiling, buying batteries, etc. for it?
- Operational Cost - How much time does using it take, and how much power does it pull, both while in use and “on standby”?
Also, write down how much time the item should save you in a month.
Once you have a good idea of the total dollar cost of the thing, convert that to a man-hour cost by dividing the total cost by your real monthly wage (after taxes, and including unpaid overtime for you “exempt salaried” folks). Now, subtract this number from the number you wrote down of hours saved. If the resulting number is positive, that is how many hours per month of your life using the device is saving you. However, if the number is negative, that is how many hours of your life you are giving up every month just to have that whatzit.
Tags: costs, unnecessary, Unnecessary Things
These are the ramblings of 
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen on your blog. Other things one might want to factor in:
1) Factor in infrastructure space– dishwashers need to be accessed, so you want to add sq footage needed to use the appliance or whatnot.
2) Fun, cool gee-whiz factor. In some cases (though not dishwashers, at least for me), there’s a net benefit to ownership since the learning of the appliance and playing with the appliance is fun. I can’t think of a household appliance, per se, that falls into this category, to follow your example, but, say, a computer might to some people (including, I know, you and me). The learning process can be fun (and, hence, not a disutility and, hence, not a net cost).
Anyway, there are some others. I won’t even touch assumptions of consumer rationality here, though :-).
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.