Price Per Use Is a Better Metric Than Price Per Item

A hundred-dollar jacket you wear two hundred times costs fifty cents per use. A thirty-dollar jacket you wear three times costs ten dollars per use. The sticker price tells you what you pay at the register; the price per use tells you what you actually pay for the experience of owning something. This shift in thinking helps you spend more on things you use daily and less on things that collect dust.

Apply this lens to everything: kitchen tools, electronics, clothing, furniture. Items you interact with every day — your mattress, your shoes, your desk chair — deserve higher investment because the cost per use approaches zero over time. Cheap things you rarely use are often the most expensive purchases you make. The goal is not to spend less overall but to allocate your money where it generates the most value.