essay on no lunch free
Answers
Answer:
Actually, the real quote is, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". The adage refers to the idea that it is impossible for a person to get something for nothing. Every choice you make has a next-best alternative that you could have chosen but didn't. That foregone opportunity is known as opportunity cost. That is, the price you paid for doing whatever it is you did was the opportunity you can no longer enjoy.
Whether or not you are successful in life depends almost entirely on how well you manage your own, personal opportunity cost. What if Julia Child hadn't begun cooking at age 37? What if Sam Walton hadn't started Wal-Mart stores at 44 years old? What if Warren Buffett had listened to his father, Howard Graham, and his mentor, Benjamin Graham, and not gone to work in the investment industry? The opportunity cost of each of those decisions would have been staggering, in retrospect. That is the nature of life.
As the CEO of your time here on Earth, you have to decide how to manage your own opportunity costs. Do you go to art school or become a doctor? Do you invest in the hi-tech start-up your friends are putting together or strike out on your own?
Opportunity cost is all around you. Do you go to the gym or eat a cookie? Apply for that job in an industry you love or stick with a field in which you are comfortable? But it is especially present in your finances. It can go unnoticed because the average person doesn't know the power of compound interest and the effect small decisions can have on where you ultimately end up on your journey to wealth. A single $4 coffee from Starbucks invested at 10% for 50 years is really $470. A $9 lunch is really $1,057 in future wealth gone.