Introduction To Corporate Finance. Sunk Costs: An invisible, pervasive peril. Many of my mistakes can be traced back to a failure to recognize and appreciate “sunk cost.”
The term comes from economics: “Sunk Cost” is money you’ve already spent and cannot get back no matter what. A “rational actor,” as economists say, will completely ignore sunk costs when making decisions because the money is gone no matter what action is taken next. Of course we carbon-based life forms can rarely be described as “rational,” especially when it comes to ignoring sunk costs. It’s hard to abandon projects in which you’ve poured time and money, especially when you’ve also attached your ego and reputation.
Knowing Your True Marginal Cost. From big businesses to home based businesses there is an uncontrollable desire to allocate a share of the total cost to every unit of product sold.
It is actually surprising that some of the small businesses do elaborate calculations just so they can allocate a share of the mortgage, insurance, delivery vehicle etc. This is from the NYTimes story on the new entrepreneurial craze – Cupcake stores: For each cupcake she sells, Ms. Lovely figures she spends 60 cents on ingredients, 57 cents on mortgage payments and utilities, 48 cents on labor, 18 cents on packaging and merchant fees, 16 cents on loan repayment, 24 cents for marketing, 18 cents for miscellaneous expenses and 4 cents for insurance. That totals $2.45, leaving a potential profit of 55 cents on each $3 cupcake.