Considering Long-Term Costs

As a consumer, I have a habit of looking to the long-term cost of things.  I'd like to say that the meditation that follows was some sort of epiphany, but it's been with me all my life and I have the sense it serves me well, and frustrates the salesmen who try to get me to ignore certain things when considering a purchase.  I also have the sense that thinking in this way has led me to be a better advocate for consumer experience, but more on that later.

What's got this on my mind is a rash of door-to-door sales of pest control services.   Various companies, national brands and local operations, are sending people door-to-door to offer ongoing maintenance services that include quarterly visits to "treat" the interior and exterior of the house to discourage bugs from moving in, along with as-needed service at no additional cost in case the maintenance treatments don't work.   It's only $49.95 per month to never have to worry about pests.

The first thing that comes to mind is: I don't have a bug problem that's worth $49.95 to deal with.  Every so often, maybe once in six weeks, a spider will find its way in, and we once had a few wasps in a vent, but that's it.  I've likely spent less than $50 over the past five years to deal with the issue, and am not fearful that it will suddenly become a problem, as the salesmen insist could happen at any time.

The second thing that comes to mind is, how much would I have spent on their service to deal with this non-problem if I had been paying them all along?   Five years is 60 months, at $49.95 per month, is nearly $3,000 - applying the same math to the degree of the problem (one bug every six weeks), that's 43 bugs, or about $70 per bug.   I pay about that much for a pair of sneakers - which means that every time I saw a bug, I could have crushed it with a brand-new sneaker, and then thrown the shoe away, and still paid half as much (given that sneakers come in pairs) as to pay exterminators for this service.

Admittedly, I'm beginning to revel in the absurdity of this comparison - made all the more silly by the fact that it's entirely accurate.

The point being that "only" $49.95 per month adds up to quite a lot of money over the long term.    Right now, I have an extra $2,900 in my bank account because I chose not to purchase this service, and if I stay here for another twenty years, it will come to $14,500.   That's quite a lot of cash.

Moreover, this isn't an isolated incident: there are many products or product options I have declined in spite of a modest, or sometimes insignificant, monthly cost.    I don't think it's an exaggeration to assess that there are at least three things I've decided to do without that cost about $50 per month, and at least half a dozen or so service features that would have cost $10 or less per month - which comes to $210 per month, or $2,520 per year, or $12,600 over the past five years.    As a consequence of this meditation, I'm likely to root out a few other needless things whose modest monthly cost is nibbling away at my income.

I'm also likely to be a bit more difficult at work, advocating for the customer.  When sales or product management proposes to offer the customer an additional feature for ten dollars a month, to raise the question of lifetime value to the customer.   If we expect to retain their business for 20 years, it's thousands of dollars.  Are we really giving them good value for their money when we offer add-ons like this?   And would they buy it if they really knew the long-term cost?

Sadly, I think the answer to the latter question is "yes."    I don't have the sense that many people work out the math, or would be motivated to reconsider even if they did.  I've had the same discussion with colleagues who seem like reasonably intelligent an sophisticated people in general, but who insist on paying for a personal cellphone even though the company has indicated that employees are allowed "limited personal use" of their company-issued ones.   Work out the math for them, tell them they will be wasting over six thousand dollars over the next five years, and their response, quick as a reflex, is "yeah, but it's only like a hundred bucks a month."

There really isn't a cure for this sort of stupidity, and if one company doesn't take advantage, likely another one will.   But at that, I'm likely going into a cynical state of mind and should find something else to think about before I become completely sour.