Opportunity Cost: A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else.
To stay at your same job or look for a new one? To buy a car or lease a car? To go to USC or UCLA? We all have choices that we make daily that give us benefits but we also lose out on the benefit of the other option. What I aim to do is to highlight the instance in my life where I have been faced with evaluating the opportunity cost of decisions.
Opportunity cost is not always something you can put a number on, but you can definitely feel it. For me, the opportunity cost that I have felt the most was not choosing a lower salary to get my foot in the door of the job I want to do over the higher salary of a job that I did not want to do, or optimizing for gaining experiences vs looking for stability. It was choosing to further my career vs just sticking close to my family. I feel like this is the opportunity cost that most of the people face who choose to be ambitious about their careers. The first time opportunity cost that I felt was back in the holiday season of 2016. I gave up the benefit of spending Thanksgiving & Christmas with my family due to work-related obligations. Over the years this is a benefit I have given up at different times due to the tunnel vision I have had on building a life where I am vs focusing on where I am from.
Everyone runs into opportunity costs both big and small and when you look at decisions through the lens of the benefit you are giving up to pursue another benefit I feel like that helps people assess an opportunity a lot better.
The next time you are making a decision, think about the opportunity cost.
