A study was conducted where the same piece of furniture was given to different people. It was separated this way, same furniture but comes in different ways, one is, it’s an already made furniture, while the other way was the IKEA style where it comes in dissembled pieces so you have to assemble the furniture yourself. The people that got the already assembled furniture were asked to value the furniture, while the people that assembled the furniture theirselves were asked to value their own furniture. Turns out that people that assembled their furniture theirselves valued their furniture 60% more than people who got theirs already assembled. This is because, when you put in effort and time into achieving something you tend to value it more than things you didn’t put effort into. This is how most of us value our assets and it has to do with the human mind.
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Humans most times place value on things based on how much money and time they have spent on the thing. That gives them a sense of attachment towards that thing and attachment results to value. When you get attached to something or someone it becomes valuable to you. I am sure that most of us can agree to this. If I spent days and months saving $1,000, I wouldn’t spend it any how, I am going to make sure I spend it on something very useful and valuable. Something worth spending on, could be a course or a new laptop or some groceries( I value food a lot), the moment I spend it on something worthless like party, or buying crap, I feel really bad. No matter how small the money might be, as long as there was an effort towards saving it, you will value it. This is why people emphasise on “my hard earned money” when describing how valuable their money worth is.
But if you got the money for free without working hard for it, you won’t have a problem spending it anyhow without caution. You won’t have any sense of attachment towards that money, by the way you didn’t sweat for it, you got it for free. Even if you lose the money, you won’t fee as bad as you would feel if it were free. I remember spending $2,000 easily because I got it for free through airdrop, but if I had worked really hard for it, I would have spent half on important things instead of squandering it.