Procrastination cost me $250 yesterday

That’s right, I had to spend a lot more money than I had intended, and it was directly due to procrastination. Damn it! I know better!

Here’s the story: our 18 year old dishwasher finally bit the bullet and needed to take the trip to the appliance heaven. We shopped the outlet stores, but the scratch and dent special was not what we needed. I didn’t feel like wandering around the big box stores at 5 pm, so we headed home.

We found a screaming deal online from Lowes. $500 Frigidaire dishwasher for $369 with free delivery. Caveat: Only available in the store in the ‘burbs that is 22 miles from me. Boooooo fail, thumbs down.

“Fantastic, we’ll pick it up tomorrow” I said to the Fuhrer wife. Ooh honey look though, the webpage says only good through January 14th.

I assumed that was some web marketer’s attempt at creating urgency to make a quick sale. Creating a sense that one could miss out on the special: it’s Marketing 101 (well, actually MKT 300 in the Arizona State University course catalog).

In stereotypical dumbass fashion, I missed out.
The sale really did end on the 14th. Not only that, but that particular model wasn’t even on the sales floor yesterday. I’m sure owners of mid-tier single family rental properties (and middle class families needing a new dishwasher) swooped in all over that one. Not only was the dishwasher gone, but we had to go to three separate Lowes stores just to get all the accessories. One store was sold out of drain hoses; how the hell do you sell out of that item unless you just sold a shit-ton of dishwashers?

We ended up getting a comparable GE dishwasher ($499 MSRP, and damn right we paid full price on this bitch) and then buying all the install paraphernalia to go with. Out the door: almost $600 goddamn dollars. I played "Plumber who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express" for 4 hours and installed it. No leaks, but I have to redo the adhesive strips that seal it to the bottom of our granite countertops.

All of that is irrelevant. My story is not the main point. The $250 is the main point. In under 24 hours, my delays created a cost overrun of nearly 70%. For the MBA/engineers out there: 100% doubles the cost of the project. That sucks.

Here is the lesson: Procrastination can turn a variable controllable cost into a sunk cost overnight, and at that point, you are married to your decision. This is a real world example of how the classical Economics example of opportunity cost causes actual money to flow from my pockets and become real, lost dollars.

Are you putting off a project or initiative? Is there some area of improvement you could be making? If it’s a cost-saving or productivity endeavor, you’ve already identified that you are in some way bleeding money and you at one point had the balls to want to fix it. Don’t compound the problem like I did by procrastinating until it costs twice as much just to get back to where you’re at today.

Don’t be a dumbass like I was. Go Nike: just do it.