Let’s talk about something called the “sunk cost fallacy”.
Say that you’ve bought a concert ticket for $50 for a band that you don’t know that well. Half an hour into the show, you realize that you don’t actually enjoy the music and you aren’t having a good time - instead of leaving the concert to go do something else, however, you sit through the remaining hours of the concert because you don’t want to “waste” the cost of the ticket.
Congratulations, you’ve just fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
The “sunk cost fallacy” is something that all humans are prone to when we make decisions. Simply put, it’s the human tendency to consider past costs when we make choices, even when those costs are no longer relevant. When you’re deciding whether or not to stay at that concert you aren’t enjoying, you will likely consider the cost of the ticket when you’re making your decision - for instance, you’d probably be a lot more willing to leave a $5 concert that you aren’t enjoying than a $50 concert that you aren’t enjoying. But taking the cost of the ticket into account at all is a mistake.
When you’re making a rational decision, the only thing that matters is the future. Time, effort and money that you’re spent up until that point no longer matter - it doesn’t make sense to consider them, because no matter what you decide, you can’t actually get them back. They are “sunk” costs. If you decide to stay at that concert, you are out $50 and you’ll have a mediocre evening. If you decide to go leave and do something more fun, you are out $50 and you’ll have a better evening. No matter what you choose, you have lost $50 - but choosing to leave the concert means that you haven’t also spent an evening doing something you don’t like.
The sunk cost fallacy is sometimes also described as “throwing good money after bad” - people will waste additional time, resources and effort simply to justify the fact that they’ve already wasted time, resources and effort, even if it leaves them worse off overall.
Common examples of sunk cost fallacy in everyday life include:
- refusing to get rid of clothes that don’t fit or that you never wear because they were expensive
- going to an event that you no longer want to go to because you already bought the ticket
- spending more and more money on repairing a car or computer (or something else that depreciates in value over time) instead of buying a new one because you don’t want to waste the money you put into earlier repairs
- continuing to watch a movie or TV show you aren’t enjoying anymore because you’ve already watched part of it
- finishing a plate of food that you’re not enjoying or are too full to enjoy, because you don’t want to waste it
- refusing to get rid of unused, unwanted or broken items in your home because the items were expensive
Perhaps the most damaging example of sunk cost fallacy in everyday life, however, is relationships.
People often use the length of a relationship to justify staying in it. You’ve probably heard this logic - you may even have used it yourself: “I can’t break up with him or the two years we spent together will be for nothing.”
“If I leave her, it will mean I wasted the five years I spent with her.”
The reality, though, is that staying in a mediocre relationship doesn’t “give you back” the time you’ve already invested in that relationship. It just makes the relationship longer. If you stay in a bad relationship for five more years to avoid “wasting” the first two, you haven’t actually made those first two years worthwhile - you’ve simply spent seven years of your life in a bad relationship. There’s nothing we can do to recover time and effort (and in most cases, money) that we’ve already spent. But we can forgive ourselves, and we can stop letting our past mistakes continue to define our futures.