At
what point are costs moving backwards?
And
I’m not trying to be funny about that. I’m really wondering, because
lately I’ve been hitting some tremendously stunning numbers that
just don’t seem right.
Have
you ever tried to print your own photographs?
Let’s
say you bought some photograph paper. Picked out three images
to print, each as a 4”x6”.
Right
now, you could go to Walmart, and they have an ongoing offer where
their one-hour service will print each of those 4”x6” images for
nine cents each. That’s $0.09 a print, and $0.27 for the three.
You
could by 4”x6” photo paper right now, and in many places 100 sheets
will cost you between $12 and $14. That comes out to somewhere
around $0.12 and $0.14 a picture, and you haven’t added in the
ink you’re going to use.
How
about placing them on 8½”x11” pages? Must be some savings
there. Well, those costs are all over the place. Even the lowest
quality of paper that size runs about $10 for fifty sheets. You
can position three 4”x6” images onto a sheet, so that $10 would
get you one-hundred-fifty pictures. Not bad at under $0.07 a picture,
but… the price for this paper varies wildly, once again we haven’t
considered the costs associated with ink, and you are going to
need to cut the pictures on your own. At its best hit to your
wallet, is ink and labor worth more or less than two-cents a picture?
Of
course, we could shift this debate to the printer itself. A few
days ago, my printer stopped working again. For no reason at all.
The initial investigations said that I was having an issue with
the driver for the unit. It ended up being resolved by repeatedly
uninstalling and reinstalling the unit until it finally worked
again. But the trickier part… the frustrating part… was that it
worked barely eight hours earlier without issue, and then, suddenly,
nope. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed, and it just
didn’t want to work. And this was not the first time it happened…
not the first time I tried to do my homework and truly find something
wrong… not the first time it eventually worked by a reinstallation
process of trial and fail.
Nieces
and nephew came to visit a few years ago. Looking for some different
and fun outdoor activities, we purchased some games. Badminton.
Bocce. You get the idea. We also pulled out a croquet set that
has been with us for more than twenty-years. We never had any
issues using any of them. At no point did we have to stop playing
croquet to download a critical update, or troubleshoot the badminton
net to sort out an error of some type.
But
here’s the printer. And quite honestly, right now I could go online
and purchase a new unit for less than the cost of a set of ink
cartridges. Is it really any wonder I’m tempted to pack up a flash
drive and head to Walmart to print the shots at $0.09 each? Of
course not. In fact, the only crazy part is that I want the shots
as quickly as possible, so I drive over to do it instead of taking
care of it online and having them shipped to my house in less
than a week.
People
will tell you how great it is to cook in your own home. Take making
bread. If you break down the ingredients and add up the cost,
it’s far less expensive to bake a loaf of bread in your own home.
Plus, you get the house filled with the amazing scent of warm
bread. You also get an incredibly fresh loaf of bread. One that
is more nutritious, and you can customize the recipes a bit to
form it to your personal tastes.
And
we could go on. If you learn how to do things for yourself, there
are all sorts of ways to save money by doing something on your
own in your home.
That
is, often with the exception of technology. And it can bring you
to a grinding halt. During recent power outages, I kept reading
posts from friends on social media about the challenges of keeping
kids entertained when the devices doing the entertaining needed
to be charged with no electricity available.
Maybe
the world just hasn’t had the time to balance out the costs yet.
Maybe. Home computer and cell phones, along with other items many
of us consider necessary today, weren’t a part of everyday life
three decades ago. No sooner did everyone have a printer in their
own home than the world was beginning a massive shift to paperless
options. That will toss a cost analysis into a spiral. (Never
mind how many people and businesses still rely on fax communications.)
New
and improved often comes with a cost. The real questions begin
when the costs don’t add up.