How many times did you walk in the hypermarket and found incredible discounts?
Get three for the price of two. Buy four and get a 30% discount. Grab the larger bottle and you will get a mini whatever bottle for free when in reality all you needed was the small bottle. You only needed one, not two and definitely not three.
You stop for a moment, and you think “the money I would be saving.” That’s not true though. You fall for the trap and you get the three for the price of two offer when you only needed one. Actually, only one small bottle of whatever is it that is discounted.
I also fall for this trap. Many, many countless times. I won’t be able to track even if I wanted to.
A few months ago I embarked into a keto diet challenge for one month. I thought it would help me lose weight as carbs make their way well into my belly. At that time, I discovered a hypermarket close to my place, and where I was absolutely amazed by how much cheaper it was than the mini market down my building. I was excited. I found a lot of those get three for the price of two. I was on a keto diet, so when I found that offer on cheese, I went bananas, buying all those cheddar cheese that stayed in my fridge for a very long time.
Last week, I was feeling a little creative and thought well, let me cook. I made a very simple dish, which was basically composed of artichokes and spinach. This was part of my homemade guilt-free iftar so I can eat chocolate as much as I want later on. For some reason, I felt a little more creative, so I added cheddar cheese on top and put it in the oven. I know, apologies, cooks out there, that stuff for me, is pretty darn out of the box for my cooking.
Waiting impatiently for my new cooking innovation to be ready, I was curious to look at the expiry date of the cheddar cheese in my fridge. It turned out that it expired since February, and yet I had a lot of cheese in my fridge in May and I had just put it on my food. I was thinking for a moment, whether or not I should throw it away, as right now, the cheese had melted all over my spinach and there was no way for me to remove it.
I took the chance and ate it anyway. No stomach pains so that was a relief.
I had to throw the rest of the cheese in my fridge now that I know it had expired three months ago. You see, I had bought so much cheese, thinking it was a good deal, while if I had bought only the cheese I needed for the week, I would have spent way less than what I spent in my “incredible” discounted deal.
But, ehh… What to do? Lesson learned.
This phenomenon is linked to one behavioral bias, called hyperbolic discounting, in which basically we put more value on a smaller sooner return than a delayed larger return.
I guess if I had eaten all my cheese, then it would have resulted in a delayed larger return, but the illusion that I am saving so much now blind-sided me. I bought food that I didn’t need, and so yeah, I lost money.