Budget line principle and Opportunity costs.

This is a topic I will revisit often enough so I remind myself how amazingly I can spend my own life If I was just aware of everything it has to offer in a given instant of time. The way we are going to look at it today is through the eyes of an economist at a budget line principle. I will give you a simple example.

What is budget line principle?

Imagine you have 1000 dollars which you can spend on anything you like. And you only have this amount for a whole month. Although there are thousands of products available, you will only use this on food and clothing and some medicine. As hunger and health are fundamental needs of a man. Now imagine you have 2000-dollar income. Then you might spend more on shelter. And little more on food. Increase your imaginary budget by 1000 dollars and see what happens. As the budget increases so does your needs. And at 5000 dollars per month income, I am sure you will become seriously overweight, unless you have mastered self-control. But unfortunately, we are animals, who have built in systems, that, naturally and automatically we will consume more when there is abundance. Hence, majority of the effluent society will race towards obesity.

Piggy bank

What is the solution to tackle unlimited abundance?

A simple solution would be to reintroduce budget restraints on our spending. The important thing this does to our system of consumption is make us aware of our own spending and use it only on essential items. Because each and every choice we make would make us more restraining on our next choice. This has been used successfully in some of the modern weight reduction apps. Where you are allowed to "spend" imaginary cash on any item of food but within your budget constrain. As an example, if you have a budget of 20 dollars for your day, if you spent 10 on McDonald's you will be left with only 10 for two more meals. This has shown to be more successful than trying to diet on a regular basis (according to the Yale lecturer)

This made me to think where else I can use budget constrain principle? What else is limiting in our day to day lives?

How about time? You only have 24 hours per day. If you chose to watch films 6 hours straight, you must really value and enjoy doing that. Otherwise, you're going to suffer of the opportunity cost of 4 extra hours wasted of your life.

How about viewing your life as 72 days. One day for each year. If you spent one more year doing those stupid Mundane tasks of achieving nothing, that is 71 more days (one less) to spend on other things which are important. Is it really worth to continue what you're doing?

How about words you speak? Can we put a budget constrain on our words? Can you survive with speaking 100 words per day? How about 5 words. Just to notice how many unnecessary chits chat you do throughout the day which doesn't improve your or someone else's life?

How about number of words, and examples I chose to give you in this article? How about I can use only 1000 words in each of my article, with a 3-minute reading time. So, I am aware of valuable human time spent on these words. Maybe it's just enough to pass my message and I would choose words wisely.

Choose your words Wisely

So, how else are you going to spend your rest of the day? Provided that you're aware of that the day would end at 12 midnight, maybe you should stop crying over whatever is gone and spend it on your pursuit.