What's your Dollar Rule "Account Balance"? Another way to look at the Dollar Rule
I recently heard Merlin Mann say on a podcast about a particular piece of productivity software, that even though the product was not free, "it owed him not a nickel". Because he was able to get so much use out of the software, he deemed it an especially worthwhile purchase, i.e., his Dollar Rule Ratio (DRR) for that software was probably well below 1.0.
The software was around $20 and he'd gotten years of use out of it, so as a back-of-the-envelope calculation, let's say he only used it an hour a week for 2 years. That's 52 x 2 = 104 hours. So his DRR could have easily been less than 0.2 (from $20 / 104).
The idea that your things owe you time/money is a good alternate way to view the Dollar Rule. If you buy a $200 camera and you've only used it for 3 hours, that camera "owes" you at least 197 hours (at $1 per hour).
Using this bank account method you could go through your last month's purchases and see what you're currently owed by your newest belongings. If you've got a huge balance (your things owe you lots of time), then you need to use up your balance before you spend anymore.
Maybe we'll make a handy spreadsheet form for this later on.
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