From a young age, companies try to sell us on “big”.
Big candy bars and big soft drinks, big trucks and sedans, big houses and condos – big, big, big! Anyone with financial common sense knows that “big” isn’t everything when it comes to having the best for your situation.
Still, we sometimes fall for the “size matters” trope, and find ourselves buying too much for what we need. Such a lapse in judgement happened with me the other day, when I was shopping around for a room air conditioner to install in my garage. As I browsed the floor models, a salesman approached me, asking if I needed help. To humor me, I said sure, and explained what I needed. The salesman was good at his job, since he convinced me to go with a room air conditioner intended to cool a small warehouse! It sounded so enticing when I was at the store, but now that I have it installed, I realize it was a mistake. The unit I purchased cools the room so fast, it has incredibly short cycles. Not only does that mean the room heats up faster again, but it also means the unit eats up power at an alarming rate. My energy bill for the month after installing it was astronomical, in a word! I felt so foolish for buying into size instead of doing research and getting what I really needed. Thankfully, a friend was willing to go with me to the store and find a smaller model. I was also fortunate to sell my oversized unit back to the store. Let that be a lesson: size isn’t everything, especially when it comes to appliances for the house!