Lowering Total Costs in Our House

As the weather is cooling down, my housemates and I are having a harder and harder time staying comfortable and warm on our balcony. As our balcony is quite literally the only nice thing about our house, I was determined to prolong the amount of time we could spend on it. When I came across this ad on Facebook, I thought I found the answer. 

With 15 guys in our house, I knew unanimous support for a purchase like this was unlikely. I used the lessons I learned about decision costs and external costs to make sure the costs of this purchase were at a minimum, or at least close to it. Instead of making the decision myself, lowering the decision cost to its minimum but resulting in a maximum of external costs, and instead of asking everyone in the house, maximizing the decision costs but minimizing the external costs, I reached out to a handful of guys and asked for their opinion, or “vote”. 

Having a group of guys in the house vote yes for the purchase, we reached a low average total cost for the purchase of the space heater by lowering both the decision costs and the external costs. After setting up the space heater and sending out Venmo charges to the whole house, people are excited about our balcony again. Because of the lessons of decision costs and external costs, we are able to use our balcony through the winter at a low total average cost.