Is everything worth the price you pay?

Everything is worth exactly what it costs, including your time, work and results. Early in your career, when it comes time to price your services, expertise, or products, you shouldn't be shy about including quality information in the price.

So why are many young people (especially women) nervous about defining the prices they will ask for their offer?

So many years after my first days at work, I see things differently.

Joy of consumer economy - multiplied

Maybe I wasn't the best example of a responsible consumer, especially in my young years when, after the war years of deprivation, poverty and unfulfilled desires, I started receiving the money I earned. The indescribable feeling of pleasure was intoxicating and dangerous for me. I let my emotions guide my buying and spending decisions; I indulged in the pleasure of the short-term effects of happiness and satisfaction after buying many necessary and even more unnecessary things.

Everything costs exactly as much as its price

So that it would not be wasted, I used that large sample to draw a lifelong conclusion, later confirmed many times: everything costs exactly as much as its price.

Numerous discounts convinced me to buy clothes that, after one or no exit from the closet, occupied the scarce tenant space. Years later, piles of cheap t-shirts, dresses, jackets confirmed that the so-called savings by buying discounted and unnecessary things are worth exactly as much as I paid for them: only as much as that moment of satisfaction, since I could afford from my earnings what I could not have imagined years before.

I realised the second kind of satisfaction much later, tying together the story of the economy in my head, through the awareness that my spending contributed to someone's salary. The third wave of satisfaction that pile of unnecessary rags, which witnessed long ago moments of my thoughtless spending, gave me when I decided to donate: carefully cleaning and rearranging everything that awaited better opportunities, a narrower waist or more courage, I remembered how happy someone would be with such a gift. And it was like that. Bags and purses brought new joy to girls, young mothers, students, teachers or someone's helpers. Their joy made me smile once again.

Finally, another glimmer of satisfaction arrived when I realised how much new space I had freed up on shelves, drawers and closets – in my own head.

Money is there to be spent

The lesson of this story, which I included in my first book, is that - money should be spent, because that's how you create pleasure for yourself and others.

My advice to younger self: Be dignified and always pay what something is worth to you. Likewise, you unashamedly include in the price of what you sell the value that this exchange brings to the customer.

This information helps someone to make a decision, and the exchange of benefits will expand and multiply the joy.