How much is a smile worth?
How much is a smile worth?
I would say $10 to $20 a day.
I currently stay at a hotel for $30 a night. I started looking for apartments to rent and told the hostess and for the first time ever a frown cracked on her lip.
I went out in the day and found a 2-bedroom 3-bathroom apartment for $10 a day - A net savings of $20 a day from my current hotel. Would that $20 savings be worth it? I would be there all by myself in that big apartment. I didn’t need all that space. But with all that space I would be saving $20 a day. Put another way, I would be paying a third less for 3x the space!
Was it worth it when I really didn’t need all that space? I would be getting a better financial deal for sure. My goal was to save money after all. But was that a good goal? Or was there a better goal?
I thought about it. If my goal was to save money then I should move to this ginormous 2-bed, 3 bath place with 3 aircon units, 4 overhead ceiling fans and two balconies, one in the front and one in the back. But at what cost would this come? I would be lonely there. It was just too much space for me. Plus the buddha head portrait floating on the wall didn’t do it for me.
I enjoyed seeing Sarah everyday, being greeted by her smile every morning. If my goal was to save money, well then I can move to this other apartment and still walk down the street a mile to see her smile. The best of both worlds.
The owner sent me the contract and I took a night to sleep on it. When I woke up in the morning and went downstairs Sarah asked me how everything was going. I told her I was fine and from behind the counter she told me I smelt good.
“Oh. It’s the sunblock I use,” I said. “It’s zinc oxide.”
I told Sarah I found a place for $300 a month and was gonna go out to check it.
When I came back in the afternoon Sarah asked if I had found anything good and I told her about the place I found and showed her the video to get her opinion on it. She said it was a good value and then quickly pulled out the calculator from beneath the counter and punched in 2, 0, x 3, 0 = 600, and showed it to me.
“Brother if you stay here I give you discount.”
The apartment was $300 a month and now Sarah was offering $600 a month, a 30% discount from the current $900 a month. $10 a day at the apartment versus $20 a day at the hotel.
I would be getting many more rooms at the apartment but was that what I needed? One thing I knew I wouldn’t be getting at the apartment was her smile. Was Sarah’s smile worth $10 a day? Both places were in great locations and it was time for a change. But I would miss her smile. I would take a long, lonely walk under the hot sun and trudge up the stairs at my new place to be greeted by a cold, stone-faced buddha. Was that worth a $10 discount?
Later in the night the owner of the apartment sent over a revised contract and changed the terms, adding a dollar here and a dollar there for an average of $13 a day. Now the difference between the hotel and the apartment would be $7 a night. Was moving to another place to save $7 a night worth the prospect, nay, the forthcoming reality of losing her smile? This left me in a doozy. What should I do?