Stick with me here.
There’s a term in economics.
‘Discount hurdle’
It where you can get a discount (financial or otherwise)……..
If you’re prepared to overcome some ‘hurdle’.
You can get your holiday / flight / train / lots of stuff cheaper, if you can go in ‘off peak’ times.
People can get their food shopping cheaper by collecting points, tokens, etc.
You can make savings on things by phoning in at inconvenient times.
Or by filling something in.
And so on.
It’s some way for the ‘seller’ to get the business of extra people who, perhaps, wouldn’t be able to justify the higher cost, without annoying those who pay full whack.
After all – the same discount is available to them.
But they are unable or unwilling to overcome that hurdle.
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There are discount hurdles in all sorts of things in life.
And we often take them without really realising the amount of ‘discount’.
Or the size of the hurdle.
We often encourage people to imagine they’d always done the thing they were struggling with.
Let’s say you’d always eaten well and exercised regularly and effectively.
Always had a body you liked the look and feel of.
Slept well and had manageable stress levels.
Body felt good.
Were, hopefully, looking at long, healthy life.
And then, in this case, were given the option of a ‘discount hurdle’.
You could save time, money and effort on what you were doing.
Meals that were quicker and cheaper.
More time to do other things.
But the ‘hurdle’ was;
You’re body would over time, become one you didn’t like the look and feel of.
Your sleep and stress levels would be affected.
And you would, statistically speaking, be more likely to develop most ailments and illnesses and die younger (not automatic, I know, but more likely).
Is the discount worth the hurdle?
Food for thought, no?
Jon ‘Freakonomist’ Hall and Matt ‘When to rob a bank’ Nicholson
P.S. 10 points for the middle names with no googling 😉
P.P.S. As always – got the find out more meeting info at myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting