Getting my money's worth

Yea, so this isn't a blog post about our trip. Sabrina has said I can't blog about that until we blog about the rest of the year. Otherwise, we'll never blog about the first half of 2012.

Anyway, on to a discussion of my psyche. I'm the sort of person who is easily suckered in by the concept of "value". Meaning that if I can buy a little bag of M&Ms for $0.85, and a big bag for $3.00 which has more than 5 times as much as the little bag, of course I should buy the big bag. And of course, I don't waste any of the M&Ms. However, I don't know that I should be doing that all the time...

I signed up for Audible a couple of months ago in an effort to continue to expand my consumption of books. I've not been reading as much as I would like, so I thought audio books would be a good way to go. Because I'm buying a digital copy (or more accurately, I'm buying a license to a digital copy), I really have nothing to resell if I decide I don't like what I've bought. That makes me quite picky about what I get.

Then, of course, there's the consideration of cost. I certainly don't want to buy any book that I can potentially get somewhere else cheaper. Audible has a fixed fee structure that you sign up for (1 credit per month). Because of the fixed fee, I can get books that would normally cost more than my monthly fee. That incentivises me to try to get the most expensive book I can. Then there's also the concern about being able to listen to it multiple times. I'd like a book that I don't just listen to once and never again. However, there's always borrowing from the library. However, most of the books I'd like to listen to are on CD. That works while I'm in my car, it doesn't work elsewhere I'd like to listen to it.

In some ways, attempting to get the best deal makes me unhappy with the service I willingly signed up for. I want to get the most possible for my fee. Because it's a fixed fee, I feel I need to get everything I can for it. It's like going to an all-you-can-eat meat place. I'm usually there for a couple hours because I feel the need to "get my money's worth". I've done endless shrimp the past few years at Red Lobster, and out ate everyone in our group. I paid for it, and so I'm going to get everything I can. In the past, I have left restaurants not satisfied, but overly full. I left Disney World sore and hungry because we were on the go the entire day to "get our money's worth". I drove a rental car nearly 2000 miles on vacation because we could with the flat fee. It's all about making the relative cost as small as possible.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to change. I still hate finding out a month after I buy something that it went down in price. I still buy candy in bulk when possible. I really want to make sure I stretch the dollar whenever I can. However, I am open to suggestions for good audiobooks.