When I think about bills, I annualize them. $30 a month? That’s $360 a year. $5/mo? $60 a year.
I use this to help me grasp the long term cost of all my decisions, but nobody else I know does this.
For instance, my brother and I are moving soon into 2 separate apartments (we currently share a 2 bedroom) and the new complex doesn’t have Google Fiber Internet. I complained to my brother that on top of everything else I’ll have to pay $5/mo extra for Google extended storage I was getting for free.
He said it’s only $5/mo, just get and don’t worry about it. I was like, that’s $60 a year which is basically a Costco membership. He said “oh hmm, good point yeah”
So I’ll work on reducing my storage usage on Google to be able to stay on the free tier, but am I alone in thinking this way about everything I buy?
I don’t do it, no.
I think tricks of this sort highly depend on your individual brain and what things make it go, “Oh.” And that tends to be slightly different for everyone, as different people are more or less sensitive to certain things or ways of framing an idea.