Oops!

It is Mother's Day tomorrow and - I thought it was next weekend. Oops!

Normally I am on top of these things, but with so much going on and having Smallsteps at home with me all week on top of that, I wasn't paying attention. It was probably mentioned in the news somewhere, but I don't read the news, especially not the local news. If I had been in the office, someone probably would have mentioned it.

I can't even make up for it now - as my wife already knows I forgot when she mentioned that Sunday was a public Holiday, I asked why, she said "Mother's Day" and I just looked at her blankly.

I really hope Smallsteps has made an awesome card for tomorrow....

I am not very good at anniversaries, birthdays, or silly events like Mother's Day or Christmas - but I am pretty good at random surprise things. How I see it is that it is far more valuable to have someone think about you all the time, than have to be reminded by society to think about you.

It also tends to have more impact, as people expect to get things on these special occasions, but they do not expect to get things on a random day in the middle of the week when nothing special is gong on at all. Again, I think the yield is higher on surprises. Not that these things are about getting a return, but as they say, no act is unselfish.

I am also one of those people that when I am obligated to buy a present, I generally make it something that they need - but when I get to do it randomly, I am far more impulsive and will buy something that they might want, ,but want buy themselves or, something that they might not know they want, but I reckon they will love.

It doesn't have to be something expensive or grand, just something that is thoughtful - thought has a lot of value, but so much of what we consume these days is a thoughtless act, driven by advertising and social proofing. We buy because we have been directed to buy, not because we have thought about the product and really contemplated if we either need or even want it. Yes, the "want" is there because of the marketing, but so often we end up buying things that once we hold them, we realize we didn't really want it much after all.

Buyer's remorse.

One thing that has changed my consumer habits a lot s being in crypto as it has helped me think more keenly about risk and reward, where much of the consumer goods only have the reward of the feeling of purchase, but very little post-reward after that. Buying a new car loses its luster very quickly.

On top of this, there is the value of the item itself. Buying something for a 100 dollars isn't that expensive, unless the alternative is to spend 100 dollars on a token that is going to go 20x 6 months down the track. would you buy the same pair of jeans for 2000 dollars? Highly unlikely. What this means is that I have become far more selective with what I buy, thinking whether I really want it.

Then there is the risk side of the equation, as a lot of people think there is no risk in buying consumer goods because once you spend, you have the item. However, there is a 100% loss on the money spent as for the most part, once bought, that same item can never really be sold on, as most consumer items are valueless. What is a TV worth sold second-hand?

So, over the years I have become more sensitive to the way I use money as there is a very high opportunity-cost component in resource allocation. DeFi and farming has further cemented this into my thinking, as I am now not only looking at the expenditure on token price and potential to go up, but also what that capital is able to earn me over time.

Last mother's day I bought my wife a SMEG kettle that she would never have bought herself. It cost around 200 dollars. That in Bitcoin today would be worth 1200 dollars. split half of that into BNB at the start of the year at 40 dollars and that is 15 BNB - which is worth 9300 dollars. Put that BNB into a Defi pool today could be 27000 dollars by the end of the year. Push this out to all of the other random "present days" across the last year and rather than a kettle, I could have bought my wife an entire kitchen - which we need - and landscaped the entire garden.

That is one bloody expensive kettle!

Of course, we can't always look at it in this way, but I want to hold in mind that even the small economic decisions we make can lead to large changes in outcomes. The trouble is that when we are making the decisions to buy consumer items that make us feel good, we fail to see the results of the other opportunities. We see how some people have done very well over the last year and wish we had the same result - but fail to recognize that they didn't buy the kettle.

So, while I can say "oops!" at the same time, all of the work over the years that I have been doing will hopefully lead to the potential for a lifetime of random surprises, without having to worry too much about what it costs or, how much it is going to bite into our future.

In my opinion, thinking about the way we consume and the way we evaluate risk, reward and our feelings of purchase, is one of the most valuable things we can do.

I can give my wife a card for a massage and a breakfast in bed for Mother's Day and say, the kitchen is in the mail pool.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]