A few days ago, I bought a USB adapter for -$2. I started out planning on spending $5 for it, and took a path that would allow me to purchase it for around $10. Total externalities? 1h of time and a little bit of hunting around amidst a lot of information. Oh, and a better power inverter.

How did this come about, and what is worth learning about this?

Let's start at the beginning. My usual computer is at the office, 20 miles away. My laptop doesn't import RAW files well, and since I needed to shoot a wedding later that day, I desperately needed to clear my memory cards to make room.

First idea? Borrow a card reader or drive to the office and use my own computer. 40 miles round trip is 1h of time and $5 in gas. Borrowing a card reader proved futile pretty early on, since everybody's away for the holidays.

Second idea? Take a stab at purchasing it at Frys. A cursory amount of internet research tells me I can expect to pay no less than $8 in American prices (grr...in HK it would have been $3!). Frys is close enough that gas price is negligible. I go in, and find that indeed, one of their card readers is on sale for $8. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually suit my purposes (doesn't support CF), and I'm looking at paying $10 for the one that does work.

Interestingly, I also find that an inverter that originally costs $40 is on sale for $15. I'd just bought one a week ago for $30, and this one actually has twice the wattage. It's hidden in the car section (most inverters are in the adapters section), so I find it and figure out whether it's what I need.

I find that it is, and therefore make a quick drive home, get the original packaging, and return my $30 inverter for a superior $15 one. And I therefore pick up the $10 card reader without worrying about it.

My final cost for this purchase is therefore negative.

* * *

Now let's think about this experience for a while. I will apply three different depictions of it and allow you, reader, to decide which to adopt.

First, is that I am horribly cheap, to the point where I waste my time thinking about such things and masochistically subject myself to a lot of unnecessary thought work. The net gain of $5 is negligible, and I should be concerning myself with more important financial decisions. I will likely waste most of my time on little things like this as I get older, busying myself with saving nickels and dimes when I could focus my attention on business deals worth millions.

Second, is that I'm somehow very sharp and able to tolerate large amounts of information, that allows me to spot out opportunities like this in circumstances where normal people would give up and not put themselves through the anguish. This allowed me to spot a great value and employ an unconventional method to profit from it. I will carry this skill forward to bigger and better stages as I get older, and use it to create unconventional businesses or products worth millions.

Third, is that the cheapness and the sharpness are one and the same, and my success will depend mostly on the kinds of opportunities that fate brings me. If I am destined to only get little decisions to mull over, then I'll be a pauper. If I am destined to run into a lot of big decisions worth a lot of money, then I'll be a millionaire. Both outcomes are possible, and the only control I have over what happens is my dedication towards honing this ability to the point where I can do it *well*.

Who knows? Some people see me through the first lens. Some see me through the second. I'm terribly insecure about my ability to control my own destiny this month, so I believe the third.

In the end, perhaps the best way of looking at this is to say that there is some pareto-optimum balance between valuing time, money, happiness and comfort...along with some other dimensions that I can't think of right now.

My current life makes money and happiness take precedence over time and comfort. I think that can and will change in a few years, and I want to end up in a place where I am at the pareto optimum that maximizes the dimension of being able to create wealth for others.

By this, I mean the ability to teach, inspire, encourage, and create better human beings. Because I'm a Christian zealot of sorts, it also means being able to help them see the beauty of Christianity and all the value it holds.

Alas, I'm not in a position to know if I'm ever going to be on that pareto-optimum curve at all. Perhaps that is where Warren Buffett, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus, or Winston Churchill dwell, and perhaps it isn't a place for silly little children like me.

But there's something inside of me that demands that I try.