I have heard movie tickets used as an example – if you have purchased a non-refundable movie ticket, it shouldnt influence your decision on whether to go to the movie or not. However, you would have to weigh up, if you plan to see it at some point and dont go today you would have to repurchase, thus incurring additional future costs…

Why don’t you progress with races rather than trying to go from couch to marathon. I think couch to 5K is a better approach. As your endurance builds your can run longer races; 10k and halfs.

In your situation, I probably would have gone ahead and walked it. Walking for 6 or 7 hours in the rain is good exercise. Dude, you missed getting your finisher shirt out of the deal!

Luckily though, my sunk cost back then (May 2007) was only $14 for an 8K race! I have since ran a 10K successfully and have had ample time to prepare for my half. (That’s coming up this weekend!)

Anyway, I admire your tenacity! And thanks for this site.

Once they’ve invested a substantial amount into something, be it $, time, emotions, etc. a person feels that they must continue on because if not they’ve wasted all their investments, and therefore they still look at the invested as investments and not as they really are, sunk costs.

On a positive note, my sister taught me that if you buy a steak, you could eat the whole thing, eat half of it, or throw it at someone’s head. Everyone thinks you are paying for the first option but it’s only wasted money if you feel forced to do something you don’t want to do with it – like stuff it into your overflowing stomach. You pay for the option of running the marathon but what you do with that option is up to you. Whateve ryou choose, it won’t help you get your money back (unless you win the marathon). Just another way to look at sunk-cost.

They take up my limited storage space and are no value to me because I don’t wear them, I just keep thinking what I paid for them and have a hard time getting rid of them.

If I keep them they are a constant reminder of how I wasted my money, so why don’t I just donate them to someone who can use them and wear them. What makes us think that we can not part with something because of what we paid for it or it is brand new?

By finally donating these items I find joy in giving them to someone else who actually needs them and will use them. I also let go of the fact I spent good money on them, but it wasn’t a complete waste if someone else can use them.

I will be wiser next time to think through my purchases a little bit more by asking myself do I really need this?

http://downwithdebt.today.com/

Smart decision on your part– I wish other people would take a step back to reevaluate and adjust their goals as you have. Good luck with your training!

At some point it simply makes more sense to walk away and move ahead.

Best to you, J.D.

Let’s say you are a widget company. You’ve just built a brand new widget factory, at a cost of $100,000.

Now you start building widgets with your factory. But wait! You made a serious miscalculation! Between paying your workers and running the machines, building a single widget costs $2. And now you discover that people don’t really want them–you can only sell them at $1.50 apiece.

Well dang it, you already spent $100,000, right? That’s a lot of money compared to the cost of building a single widget. You might as well keep the factory running, since you already spent so much.

No! You are losing money on every single additional widget you build! The more you build, the more money you will lose, onward into infinity.

The only course of action you can reasonably take is to shut down the factory and stop losing money. You cut your losses. Trying to justify the amount you spent on the factory by continuing to lose money would be crazy. And it’d probably get you fired by your stockholders.

It’s not always so straightforward in real life (i.e. your computer game example, where you were losing time rather than money). But the principle is the same: if continuing on the same course of action will cause you to continually lose [time, money, health, whatever], stop doing it.

It’s that simple.

Another example would be a cell phone plan. I had a friend who wouldn’t cancel his plan even though he couldn’t get a signal at home because he would have had to pay $200 to cancel the plan early. Instead he was paying $60 a month for a plan that didn’t meet his needs for the 20 months left on his contract. Perhaps it’s not exactly a sunk cost (as he didn’t pay it yet), but his anticipation of that penalty was what kept him paying money for a cell phone that didn’t work.

it’s expensive to not be in good health, both financially and emotionally.

Now, I’m thinking that we need to revisit the subject. It’s making sense to cut our losses now, instead of struggling through the next few years paying for a mistake that we’ve already made.

In a world where we “want it all and we want it now,” it can be so tempting to take the path that seems the most expedient. The funny thing is, when you put health first you end up meeting your other goals more quickly anyway. When you give yourself time to adapt gradually to new stress, when you consciously engage in compensatory exercise to ensure that your physical development remains balanced, when you view recovery as an active and important part of your training, you end up on the straight path to your goals.

You may be able to drive faster on the other path, but it is riddled with twists, turns and pit-stops while you battle over-reaching, injury and less than ideal physical adaptation. Going balls to the walls and playing the “no pain, no gain” game may seem like it takes us more quickly towards our goals, but it plays right into the sunk cost fallacy. Even when we know deep down that we need a day of lighter recovery and compensatory training, we have the tendency to want to not “lose out” on the momentum we’ve built in previous training.

This inner dialogue may sound familiar: “I’ve built my benchpress up to 200 pounds by training it three days a week, I’m not going to miss a session now!” However, our hypothetical fitness enthusiast has been stuck on 200 pounds for 6 months and has an achy shoulder every time he comes home from the gym. But, he perceives that he has SUNK COST in the bench press and is therefore unwilling to revise his training plan.

I see this all the time at the gym. And clients are often amazed at how much progress they make when I take them off of their sacred cow exercises. In fact, when they go back to them, after having not done them for a while, they usual improve their numbers!

Sorry for the long-winded comment. I think your decision to put your health before your performance goal was very wise indeed. And it is a great idea to adapt the idea of sunk cost to exercise J.D. I think I might steal the idea for a post of my own.

Cheers,
Adam

How this related to sunk costs metaphorically is that you can have a sunk cost related to a dream also. Maybe a better dream would be to be a power walker – it’s very low impact and probably healthier for you anyway. Running has a dream factor associated with it. That’s why politicians (esp. Presidents) are always jogging for photo-ops. The truth is its a dream that most people can’t achieve b/c our bodies simply aren’t designed for running. Walking on the other hand – well, you don’t even have to consult your doctor is you want to start a distance walking program – enough said.

Running is over-rated and bad for your joints. If you run and your body hurts, esp. your knees, then it isn’t for you and there’s no shame in that. You’re just like 75% of the population.

Our financial woes are frequently based on unrealistic dreams of grandeur.

I’ve just completed a 10K today in fact (first one in 10 years) and now I am happy with that, I can start to plan first for another 10K in the spring, then a half marathon in mid to late summer and finally if everything goes well, the full marathon in the autumn.

Good luck!