Buying things for your home in 2018 is among one of the most difficult decisions of your adult life. Forget the mortgage, that fake prince guitar is what times your living room together! Can you put a price on that ($549)? Yet it is harder when those center pieces now have to serve a function in the kitchen.
That four piece kitchen appliances package with french door refrigerator and dishwasher in stainless steel set sure looks great, but do you really have $6,501.40 to drop? (if you're reading this probably not). To really show you how to shop for a kitchen appliance lets start with something small - a toaster.
Yeah. The most underrated champion of the kitchen.
First lets look at how much you value toast. Its a very simple equation. let B stand for the price you would buy a piece of bread and let T stand for the price you would buy a piece of toast.
T-B= the price you gain from toasting bread (X).
For this example we will be ignoring the cost of electricity to toast bread but if you're interested click here.
After getting X we now know how much monetary value you gain every time you toast your bread at home. This says a lot about your sandwich preferences. If the number is higher you are more likely to buy a BLT than a PB&J.
Now we can start to look at how much money you should pay for your toaster. The higher your X is, the faster you will be able to essentially pay for your toaster. Use this formula to see if you toaster is acceptable:
P/X=N If N<R than buy the toaster.
Lets use this in an example. The price (P) of the toaster you are looking at is $10 and X is $0.10. this means you will have to toast 100 pieces of bread (N) before you begin to earn monetary value back on your toaster. Now if N is less than the reasonable number of toasts you think that the toaster can handle (R), Then that is an acceptable toaster for you.
Lastly you must look into your own being and look at how much toast you will eat within the next year (S). I've found that people break, or lose their toasters within one year. You must take your S number and subtract that from your N to see if you will actually be able to make your money back within the year. Use this formula to find your perfect toaster:
P/X=N-S
At the end of the day, Walmart sells an $8 toaster so I'd go with that one.
After you have selected your fine toaster, it is time to look at the rest of your appliances! How many pizzas do you eat in a year? Do you really need that second microwave? Should you get rid of your third child? All these questions can be answered using this formula. Just change out variable for what you believe to be relevant.
