Picking up Pennies: What Makes Something "Worthwhile?"

As I was hauling my stuff back to the car from having been in the grocery store yesterday, I saw a penny on the ground in the parking lot.

So I stopped and picked it up.

Nothing particularly monumental about that, but as I drove home, I kept thinking about how and when we make the determination of whether something is "worthwhile" doing.

Our Psyches... and Reality

Now, a US penny will buy pretty much nothing, just like a Euro cent will buy pretty much nothing. If you go to India, it's about the equivalent of a 50 p coin.

Yet, most people will stop to pick up a coin... although younger generations seem less likely to do so, perhaps because the idea of "cash" is becoming less and less common.

So — functionally speaking — picking up a penny is an act that has no particular "value," and yet we do it.

Of course, we might want to consider some folklore, as well: Maybe we pick up the penny because we see it as a "lucky penny." 

In my case, the penny came home and found its way into my jar of "Found Money," where I am saving all the coins (and a few bills!) I have found over the years. so for me the penny also has "value" as part of personal experiment.

What do we VALUE?

On the whole, we humans seem to have a slightly skewed relationship with money, perhaps because it's one of the few things in the world we almost invariably have to "work" for. And even if we claim to be "hard workers" and have a supposedly good work ethic,  most of us secretly (or subconsciously) loathe working.

We'll cross the parking lot to pick up that penny (which will get us nothing) but we won't cross the parking lot to get a $1.00 coupon off some product we buy repeatedly every single week. Because the coupon isn't actually "money," it's just a coupon. And we will have to DO something to get the reward, even though the functional benefit (remember, we buy that product anyway, every week!) is 100x greater. 

And then there's the strange world of the financial Internet, where logic often falls apart.

People will buy "Product X" for $15.00 because it has "free shipping," rather than the same "Product X" for $10.00 + $5.00 shipping. 

We do strange stuff.

I'm not trying to take some moral high ground here, either — I do it, too. I remember going to a great deal of trouble to "monetize" a couple of my old blogs with Google Adsense, so I could "earn money" from blogging. I probably spent a good 10-12 hours creating a "fully integrated" blog so I could earn... a staggering $3-$4 a month for my efforts.

I rationalized — to myself — that $3-$4 a month was better than nothing, and since I was going to blog, anyway... this was basically like "found money."

But talk about working for nothing...!

Free Stuff: How Invested Are We?

"Free" does something funny to the way we think about value.

As it turns out, we value most things about as much as we are "invested" in them. 

Fairly poignant examples of this have been demonstrated both by my own experiences as a retail store owner, and through Mrs. Denmarkguy's counseling practice.

At our small gallery, we sell gift certificates. When someone comes in and buys a gift certificate, they pretty much always get used. Sometimes, however, we give away (the very same) gift certificates for charitable fundraisers. Guess what? Fewer than 25%(!) of those gift certificates are ever used!

In the counseling practice, Mrs. Denmarkguy used to do quite a few pro-bono (free) sessions every month, which she has now almost completely stopped doing. Why? The people who had free sessions almost never took her advice! 

I have heard quite a few other accounts suggesting similar outcomes... clearly, our sense of whether or not something is "worthwhile" is also related to whether or not we have "skin in the game." 

"Worthwhile" and Rewards

Maybe "worthwhile" is just a very nebulous and intangible thing, perhaps because how we experience and perceive our "rewards" is nebulous and intangible.

Let's take something super simple like Steemit, where we so often have debates over "value" and whether being here is "worthwhile." 

If I simply ask you to interact with this post by adding a relevant comment, will you? 

Now, if I instead say that I will give "at LEAST a 5c upvote to each relevant comment," do you feel differently about leaving a comment?

What is "worthwhile?" The 5c reward? Does it need to be a 10c reward? 25 cents? Or is your "worthwhile" not financially based? Are you instead thinking "I'd leave a comment if I felt certain it would be replied to?"

On a greater scale, what makes it "worthwhile" for you to blog on Steemit? Is it a dollar amount? Or something intangible? If so, what?

Back to life OFF Steemit, what makes something "worthwhile?" Do you pick up pennies? Do you use coupons? Do you measure "worthwhile" financially, emotionally, or by some other metric? 

Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

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Created at 180531 09:46 PDT