Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Donut math

There is a little donut shop down the street from me, called Ken's Donuts. The donuts are good (better than any chain I've ever eaten at, at least), cheap, and best of all, they're open 24 hours a day. They have maple-glazed donuts, which are kind of seriously amazing. And to top it all off, they have samosas!

So, because I am trying to save money, I've started quantifying impulse buys in terms of Ken's donuts. As in, the money I want to spend on this could buy me X donuts. Will it make me happier than X donuts? (Yes, there's the obvious fallacy with diminishing returns. Obviously I don't apply this logic to stuff like groceries, jeez.) Mediocre fast-food value meals don't look quite so good next to a dozen donuts. Or, on the flip side, a slice of cheese at that Death Metal Pizza place on 6th Street will cost me about five donuts, but it's worth it because I can say I've eaten at a Death Metal pizza place.

But then, I was thinking as I was trying to fall asleep. My rent is $1300 per month, split with my sister, so $650 per month. Over the course of the academic year, this comes out to about $6000 that I'm spending on rent. A bit of quick mental arithmetic reveals that instead of living here, I could buy about ten thousand donuts.

Ten.

Thousand.

Donuts.

I would be the world's happiest hobo.

1 comment:

Kiriska said...

Holy crap that is an expensive flat. :| I hope it is a nice place.

I quantify everything in terms of Copic markers, which are like six bucks a pop. My thinking for pretty much all expenditures goes... "HMM. ART SUPPLIES OR FOOD. HMMM. ART SUPPLIES."

Artists obviously starve because art supplies are so damn expensive. ;_;