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Cost-Benefit

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A cost-benefit example - To bank or not to bank

In everyday life we have choices to make. The choices we make usually result from deciding which scenario will give us the most benefit. Benefit will mean different things to different people therefore what one person will consider a benefit, the next person may think as a cost (Frank, Jennings, Bernanke 2009).

An example of cost-benefit thinking was recently reported in The Mercury Newspaper (March 10 2010). The true story reported that a woman had her handbag snatched from her shopping trolley. Unfortunately for the woman, her life savings of approximately $100,000.00 was enclosed in the bag. It was also reported that she came from a war-torn country where the banking system had recently collapsed.

The question I pose while maintaining the cost-benefit principle is: Why would a woman decide to carry around her life savings and not deposit them in a bank or similar financial institution?

Firstly, if she had chosen to put her life savings into a bank, she would have to make a cost-benefit decision on which type of bank account to deposit them into. Would a savings account be of most benefit on the basis that she could access her money every day, or conversely would a term deposit account be more beneficial because of a higher interest rate?

Secondly she would need to consider the physical costs of maintaining each bank account such as; monthly account keeping fees, or early leaving fees if she needed access to her money early with the term deposit account. As these fees change, her increasing or decreasing marginal costs would have to be taken into account.

On the other hand, if she decided to keep her money out of the bank she would forgo any interest that her money would earn in that time. In other words, her opportunity costs would be the interest that she would be missing out on.

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