The Bottled Water
Buying bottled water on the go. The structural tariff paid on convenience.
Grabbing a bottled water at a convenience store or airport is a simple modern reflex. It is cheap, cold, and healthy. We do not think of it as a financial choice because a three-dollar bottle is too small to impact our security.
But a fifteen-dollar weekly bottled water habit, repeated over thirty-five years, compounds to $115,000.
The cost is not the water. The cost is the tariff on packaging and convenience. We pay a massive premium to buy a commodity that is virtually free from the tap.
The purchase is easy to justify because the transaction is fragmented. We pay three dollars at a time, never seeing the lifetime contract we are signing.
Filtered tap water, not bottled. $115,000 stays compounding in the account.
The bottle was convenient. The tariff paid for that water was structural.