Price of Convenience

Price of Convenience 

I learned at a very early age that you have to pay a premium for convenience, but I just learned about something tonight that blew my mind. As I was sitting on the couch getting ready to find a topic to write about my wife asked me if I would do her a favor. She has an important standardized test tomorrow morning and one of the requirements was plenty of sharpened #2 pencils. Since she was busy studying for the test I didn’t have a problem helping her out, but I did have a problem with what she asked me to purchase.

No, I’m not so frugal that I wanted to find a work around for purchasing a $1.20 package of pencils, but she wanted pre-sharpened pencils. “What?”, I asked, “pre-sharpened pencils.” Sure enough after visiting the neighborhood grocery store I found pre-sharpened pencils in isle #12. They were priced at $1.49 for a package of four. Right next to them was a package of 10 unsharpened pencils for $1.19. A few items to the right was a $0.99 pencil sharpener. It might have not been the best financial choice but I purchased the 10 unsharpened pencils and the sharpener.

I guess if we end up using the 10 pencils it would have been the best deal, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to pay for the over-priced pencils. By the way it took me less than 3 minutes to sharpen the 1o pencils so I’m not even sure it was too convienient…..

What’s your thoughts?