When you are hungry, you tend to feel like you want to buy everything the store has to offer, don’t you agree?
Tip of the day:
Do you want to know how to save money while grocery shopping?
Economind says “shop with a full stomach”. This will keep you away from unnecessary expense on food.
This is a simple economic thinking that might help you being more economical. I myself practice this during the time I live alone.
This simple concept can also be applied in managing your diet. This is why you are advised to have a regular breakfast, so that you are not too hungry during lunch time, which might cause you to have the urge to chow down greasy high-calorie food.
It has to do with something called “Hyperbolic Discounting”, the idea that utility maximizing individuals can behave irrationally and opt for an option that gives smaller short-term utility even knowing that the long-run alternative gives much higher utility. In other words, the hungrier you are, the highly likely you are to spend on too much food (unnecessarily and end up being too full or buying too much grocery than needed) to satisfy your immediate urge than holding off later to eat much healthier food and have a smaller and more efficient bag of grocery.
Isn’t micro-economics great? This is what it means to study behavioral economics (also much related to psychology).
I hope you have learnt something from this short post!