Let’s talk about pricing for a minute.

There are so many horror stories out there where people have bought the cheapest option and found themselves up sh** creek without a paddle. We’ve all experienced this to one degree or another. An item of clothing that looked 10 years old after 1 wash, or that split or fell apart at the worst moment possible, a cheap hair cut that left us looking like a goon, a cockroach ridden hotel that looks nothing like the photos…

Now, there are times when it pays to economize. For more on this, I recommend listening to Ramit Sethi’s book I Will Teach You To Be Rich and these two blog posts Stop Being A Loser And Pay Money to Save Money and Cheap vs Frugal.

But in general, scarcity choices = monkeys (or things that break), while abundance choices = results. One of the things Ramit recommends is being frugal not cheap. That means looking at the long term implications of your purchases, not just heading straight for the cheapest option today.

Let’s say you’re deciding between a $1000 laptop, or a $500 one. You’ve read the reviews and it looks like the $500 laptop is likely to need fixing or worse replacing after a year, but buyers report the $1000 laptop is still good after 3 years, AND it includes service coverage and delivers better performance, enabling you to deliver income producing work faster, it’s a no brainer. That’s before you’ve even factored in the value you place on your happiness!

There are many other situations where you can get more value and save more longer term by buying a higher priced option. Especially if a) it’s a product and you don’t need to replace it so soon, or b) it’s a service that enables you to actually get results faster, especially if those results are guaranteed, and better still if they have the potential to raise your earning potential.

Speaking of which, I offer a results guarantee on my work. Not something you get from amateurs or monkeys.

Peanuts and amateurs