That Expensive Bed Sure Was Cheap
I moved into my first big-boy apartment when I was a sophomore in college. It was an exciting and scary time. After all, I was entering a life where I would have to cook for myself. Yikes! One of my favorite memories during that process was going bed shopping at Sam's Club with my parents. I needed a bed, and Sam's Club had affordable options for a young college kid. It was a match made in heaven! I think we paid $200 for it, box spring included!
Little did I know, but that bed would journey with me for quite some time. I would eventually lug it with me to eight apartments/houses covering three different states. Besides my $236,000 of debt, it was the second-worst thing Sarah married into. It was garbage when we got married, and it hung around for another six years. After an illustrious 17-year run, I finally retired the bed when Sarah and I moved into our first house. In all reality, I was going to move into that house with Sarah or the bed, but not both.
After some research, we decided to buy a fancy SleepNumber bed. Coming off a $200 bed that lasted for nearly two decades, the idea of spending thousands on a bed seemed absurd. Was it a waste of money? Were we overdoing it? Was there a more practical option? Should we have kept the old bed? Well, Sarah made sure the last option was off the table.
In hindsight, it was one of the biggest bargains in our life. Sure, at $3,000, it was expensive.....very expensive. But when I think about cost vs. value, it was the world's biggest no-brainer. I've spent approximately 1/3 of my life in that bed in the last eight years. If my numbers are accurate, I've spent 15,000-20,000 hours in that bed so far.....which equates to 625-833 full days. Wow! It's been a glorious 625-833 days, I might add. If I threw our bed into the trash today, I would have paid $0.15-$0.20 per hour of use. Again, it was the bargain of a lifetime!
I'm not sure spending the first three minutes of your day watching me obsess about a bed is your best use of time, but this isn't really about a bed. This is about looking at our lives through a different lens. This is about turning things on their head and finding a better way to perceive money. There's always a different angle to explore. There's always a unique consideration to factor in when making decisions. When we do, we make different decisions......better decisions. Taking it a step further, we can do so with more clarity, conviction, and confidence. That's when we stop dwelling on the money, and start focusing on the meaning.