Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Is a Dollar Always a Dollar?

Mental Accounting: Is A Dollar Always A Dollar? » My Money Blog

I thought this was a pretty good post. (I don't know the author, if you're wondering.)

It kind of reminds me of a concept I first heard about from Brian Tracy: Zero-Basing. The problem is that we often feel tied to a situation because of what we've already put into it. Zero-basing involves asking yourself two questions. First:

Is there anything in your life/business/portfolio/house which, if you had known then what you know now, you never would have gotten involved with?


If the answer to that question is yes, then you ask yourself a second question:

How fast can you get out?

2 comments:

The Peterson's said...

Does those quaetions work with marriage? I would never want to get out. But there are other things I can think of that fits well!

Colter said...

I would say that it applies to marriage, yes. Realize, of course, that marriage entails a certain amount of commitment, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad. It's something not to be discarded lightly. Zero-basing isn't about whimsically walking away from commitments. What it addresses is the notion that we often feel we can't exit a situation that we really should extract ourselves from, because of the time and effort we've already put into it.