A money habit I've used for years: compare the gap between two prices, not the prices themselves. It changes your decisions more than you'd expect.
How do you get better at making decisions?
Let me show you through a money habit I’ve been using for several years.
At some point it dawned on me that paying for the more expensive product or service is often the better deal, not the cheaper one.
Take cinema tickets as an example, though the same logic applies to everything. In Kyiv you can get regular tickets for 150-200 hryvnias (roughly $4-5) for a big hall where hundreds of other people will be sitting around you. Someone might talk loudly, someone might shout drunken commentary at the screen, someone else will be rustling a bag of chips.
Premium tickets cost 300-500 hryvnias each. That hall will hold 20-30 people, no more. Very comfortable seats, waiters serving you at your seat. In halls like that I have never once run into rude or loud neighbours.
If you’re going as a couple, it feels like the regular tickets are the much better deal — spending 400 hryvnias for two seems far better than 600-700 for the premium ones. But in reality, that 400 is simply the minimum cost of getting into the cinema at all. We pay it either way if we want to see the film.
So if we’ve already decided that we’re definitely going to this film, the real choice is whether we’ll pay an extra 200 hryvnias to spend that time at a higher level of comfort.
It’s a non-obvious way to make financial decisions.
When there are two specialists, two products, two services in front of me, I simply calculate the difference rather than judging each price on its own, detached from the other.
This approach lets me choose better things and better specialists far more often, understanding that I’m paying the gap, not just grabbing the most expensive option.
Sometimes an extra 200-300 hryvnias makes a very noticeable difference in service, quality, and experience.
That’s why I try to take the best of what’s available within my budget.
How do you act in situations like that?
It is rarely a lack of knowledge
Income runs into thinking and habits, not information. In a session we work out what is actually holding you back and what to do about it in the coming weeks.
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