Good analogy but as usual I don’t whole heartedly agree. When I make a budget I allocate money into spending categories and then spend until it is gone. It is a stream of resources that are finite but abundant enough for my needs and most of what I want.

With regard to the scarcity of water, desalinification and better reuse may be required in the future to support our water “habit” but there is plenty of H2O to go around. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. If supplies decrease we’ll all pay more. I have no problem with that. We have the technology to make the oceans drinkable, problem solved. Oil would be a better substitution.

With money, I also don’t have any expectation of the tap running dry (my ability to do meaningful work for money is established and insured). Thus all I ask for with regard to spending is memories of the good times I had parting with the money. I’ll “grow” more!

I budget money toward getting out of the rat race (401k and Roth IRA savings) but then the rest is for the sole purpose of maximizing quality of life. I want depth and breadth of experience and that does not come for free.

You want to minimize your life and I want to maximize mine.

I think what we normally do is get insurance so that if the employment water tap is turned off, we can access the unemployment tap or the disability insurance tap, not to mention the health insurance tap, death and dismemberment tap, and even the paid sick leave tap.

It seems easier to pay for this insurance (or to hope we won’t need it!) than to prepare for it to turn off.

Similarly, just walking away from a tap gushing with clean, cool, delicious water just seems dumb.

Ha! I find that I don’t really need to respond any comments here anymore. In fact, I was in the process of writing a response and then “pling” (you have email).. another comment covered part of my response .. delete delete … write some more .. “pling” … argh .. delete again.

So I think we can agree that we are all utility maximizers but that we have different values. For me the marginal utility of money is small. I’m slightly amused at quiz shows where people can win $100,000. It is amusing because $100k has very little marginal utility to me, so I’m wondering what these people get so excited about. Obviously their marginal utility is big enough to be exciting. My marginal utility of time is high. (By time I mean quality time i.e. for me sitting in a wheelchair with alzheimers would not be quality time, so I am not interested in maximizing longevity per se). Now, it’s impossible to buy time. However, by consuming less, I can work less and thus indirectly buy time. As a side note I also remark that my marginal utility of stuff is fairly low. Even beyond a certain point, new stuff is nice … but only for a week or two. The effort that needs to be put into it is not worth it to me though. Creativity has a very high marginal utility for me. I would work for free if the creative component/learning curve was high/steep enough.

😀 This post made me smile all over. And now you’ve got me thinking… thanks for provoking my brain!

I just want to know if Steve Austin is the Six Million Dollar Man.
thanks.

At first I was perturbed by Hannah’s comment “I understand that this approach is considered foreign in America, where one hardly mentions the value of time but rather quantifies everyone in terms of dollars and cents.” But then I realized the truth hurts. I need my feathers ruffled ever once in a while, it makes me think! Thanks Jacob and all the commenters for giving me other perspectives on life.

I have been taking my bath/shower water and using it to wash clothes in, right in the tub. I leave the stopper in the tub when showering or taking a bath (ok, obviously on the bath part). Then when done, Just add some detergent and whatever few items of clothes, swish around with a broom handle, then pull the clothes out into a basket to drain them and put them in the washer on the rinse and spin cycle only.

I have done two loads in the same water. (Not extremely dirty clothes!) and got good results. keep in mind that detergent keeps dirt in suspension so not much remains on the clothes.

I am planning on rigging a hose and pump from the tub to the washer in the future. But for now this seems to work and I use water that would otherwise go to waste.

To get really efficient, one would have to divert the rinse water and reuse it. I’m not there yet. I know some people do this but it requires plumbing adaptations and rinsewater storage as well. For now I’m sticking with just saving the use of part of the water load of the clothes.

does it matter financiall? not much. it’s just less wasteful so it appeals to me.

Very furgile advise for Americans in general – The Hays days are gone…

It is surprising how easy it is to live with less water when you have no choice. I am specifically thing of having enough for needs but not wants. I think everyone could do with that kind of wake up call once in a while even if they do revert to old and wasteful habits afterwards.

I live in the desert. Water is limited and piped into the city from desalination plants hundreds of kilometers away. You might thhink that would make water expensive and people consume less. You would be wrong – the government subsidises the water and millions of liters are wasted. Water consumption here is among the highest in the world. Ridiculous sums of money are spent on keeping artificial gardens alive as water is literally poured away into the sand.

Excellent analogy. I think people get bored and tired that they stop caring about how the money is coming and at what cost so long as the money is coming to keep up with their social peers. I myself was like this however I’m changing my ways and now keeping a tight grip on the faucet. Thanks for sharing this thought provoking piece.

I dont drink tap because of the chemicals, chlorine and fluoride. Without using tap what do you think cost the least for water

The scarcity of water, cost to purify for consumption and cost to treat is vastly different depending where you live.

I live on an island where rainfall results in plentiful high quality water and minimal water treatment costs.

I don’t waste water…for example I never water my lawn and just let it go brown for the 3 month dry season…OTOH if I want to have a longer shower on a particularly chilly day I don’t act like I am pouring gold down the drain because I am not. Our local water is a plentiful low cost infinitely renewable resource.

I agree it’s a shame to use potable water for irrigation. If I was going to water a lot of plants I’d collect rain water for that purpose by setting out barrels at the end of my down-spouts off my roof.

— Vik