The cost of getting dressed up

I did something dangerous recently and tried to calculate how much it costs me to leave the house. I did not count fuel or coffee, only the cost of being presentable enough to be seen in public.

It is a silly exercise, but it changed how I think about buying almost anything, so stick with me.

The math of looking decent

Here is a rough "going out" outfit with ballpark prices, how many times each thing realistically lasts, and what that works out to per outing:

• Shirt: $30, about 20 wears, so $1.50
• Jeans: $50, about 100 wears, so $0.50
• Belt: $40, about 200 wears, so $0.20
• Socks: $3, about 20 wears, so $0.15
• Shoes: $100, about 200 wears, so $0.50
• Handkerchief: $5, about 100 uses, so $0.05
• Apple Watch: $500, about 1,000 days, so $0.50
• Perfume: $50, about 100 sprays, so $0.50
• Deodorant: $5, about 50 uses, so $0.10
• Laundry (detergent, water, electricity, time): about $0.50

If you add up the sticker prices you get $783, which sounds like a normal wardrobe. But that is not how the cost actually shows up. If you add up the per-use column instead, every time I step out looking reasonably put together, I am spending about $4.50.

That is $4.50 just to not look like I crawled out of a cave, with moderately priced stuff and generous estimates on how long it lasts.

Then I couldn't stop

Once you start doing this, it is hard to stop.

That MacBook Pro I'm typing on? $3,000, and maybe 1,500 days of use if I am lucky, which is $2 a day just to own a computer. My car? Between the purchase, insurance, maintenance and fuel, it is probably $20 a day whether I drive it or not. My home? Let's not.

Tyler Durden had a line about the things you own ending up owning you. While he meant it spiritually, I am over here doing it with a calculator.

The flip side is where it gets useful, because per-use math makes some expensive things look brilliant. A $300 jacket you wear 300 times costs $1 a wear. A $500 espresso machine pays for itself in about 100 cups if the café charges you $5 a cup (I am a coffee nerd, so I am conveniently leaving out the cost of beans).

It also makes some cheap things look terrible. We tend to buy based on how much we imagine using something, which is usually a lot more than we actually use it. Think of the gym membership you go to twice a month, the streaming service you open once, or the guitar in the corner, which has an infinite cost per note not played.

The variety trap

Clothes have an extra twist, which is a social one. Since you can't wear the same outfit three days in a row without someone noticing, you buy variety. But more variety means each item gets worn less, which pushes up the per-wear cost of everything. It is a neat little trap, and most of us walk right into it.

The people who have opted out just wear the same thing every day, and Steve Jobs with his turtlenecks is the famous example. It looks like not caring about clothes, but if you run the numbers it is actually pretty optimised.

I am not there yet. But I would like to stop pretending that a shirt I will wear four times was a good deal because it was on sale.

What I'm actually changing

Honestly, not much, and that is sort of the point. I am not going full minimalist, even if the math is on that side. I just want one question in my head before buying something: how many times will I really use this? I mean the real number, and not the one I would like to believe.

Expensive things I use every day turn out to be cheap, and cheap things I barely use turn out to be expensive. Looking good has a price, which is fine, as long as I know what it is.

Of course, I could also just work from home in a T-shirt at roughly $0 per wear. But then the cost of never leaving the house probably shows up somewhere else, and I don't have a column for that.

So the next time someone compliments your outfit, feel free to thank them for noticing your $4.50.

P.S. The things you own end up owning you. Turns out they also charge rent.