This came up in an odd way today. Yesterday was free comic day. Basically, you could go to your local comic book store (and some book stores) and get couple of comic books for free. The big comic publishers seem to be producing special editions for this day. So we went.
The nice thing about comics are the visual aspect of the books. I also like the ability to do longer stories and “hear” the internal comments of the characters. On the other hand, the first book I got today took me about slightly less than 10 minutes to read.
That’s fine, but at nearly $4.00 for the book, that’s a pretty poor value. Here’s why I think so.
I general, I consider value to a rough standard that I created during my first job. I was making a little less than $20 an hour, so I based everything around that. Any disposable income, in my opinion, should give me roughly the same entertainment value (or better) as the money I was having to earn. So, if I went to a movie that cost me $10 for 2 hours of entertainment, then I felt I was well ahead. That was $5 an hour for entertainment. There were times when the movie sucked, but I’ve always been pretty careful about movies.
I didn’t generally worry about books. Four or five dollars (now nearly ten) would get me 6-10 hours of entertainment. If one book sucked, then I didn’t feel so bad. Considering all the books I’ve bought*, I was well ahead of the game.
I would consider this carefully with video games. Between the console ($300 and change), a couple of games ($50 per), and my on-line access**, then I need a lot of entertainment value from those games. I think I’ve gotten it.
Comic books though… I’m not real keen on. That book was $4 and it took me 10 minutes to read. So, the hourly rate for comics is $24 an hour. That’s a pretty crummy rate compared to many other entertainment values. Even a 3-D movie and popcorn is much cheaper than that. Two hours at $20 for movie and $8 for popcorn comes to $14 per hour.
This isn’t a fool proof method and it’s not intended to be. It’s a way for me to objectively evaluate things that I might spend my money on. There are some exceptions in my life. Still, it’s a decent method for judging value of things, especially entertainment. If I buy a movie for $20, then it had better be one of my favorite movies. Something like the Avengers (which I’ve seen dozens of times)… which also explains my interest in comics.
So there you go. If you’re really bored or trying to justify something, take a few minutes and figure out the expected value per hour. You’ll need to pick your own limits and your hourly wage is a decent starting place.
____________________________
* After I moved them for the fourth time, I decided “enough!” and took just under 700 book to half-price books.
** Internet cost is for business and pleasure and it’s pretty much a utility, so I don’t count it.
