A thing looks expensive or inexpensive, healthy or unhealthy, good or bad – depends on the lens through which you look. Just change the lens from short term to long term lens, clarity comes on its own.

Take a sweet for example. For the short term (30 seconds on the lips/tongue) it looks great, but sugar causes a lot of harm (enough websites say this, will not repeat) and stays for 40 years on your hips. Again a ‘short term attractive’ BUT a ‘long term destructive product’. This is true not only of food items but also of many other items in which we deal.

Of course it is true for your investments as much as for your other items of purchase.

Let us say you plan to buy a running shoe. You look at an Asics priced at Rs. 8000 or an ordinary shoe at Rs. 2000.

Now if you find that the Asics shoe lasts you 5 years, but the other shoe just lasts you 10-11 months, in the long run which shoe was cheaper?

There would be many such examples . You need to know how much you will use it for (truthfully).

Right from shirts, foot wear, per passenger per km cost….all these quick off the cuff calculations can lead to a completely different answer. Why even for the time spent you could be asking this question. Will spending time on a particular project or with a bunch of people – all of these could be answered differently if asked differently, right?

‘Expensive or Inexpensive’ is a question which if you ask sensibly, the answer will be very different.