The forgone alternative

Have you ever hard of the term "forgone alternative". On economics, forgone alternative or opportunity cost is the value of what you give up for as alternative to buy another thing which seems more better than the forgone alternative. Opportunity cost is economics may relate to the price of goods and services, but looking at it from a comprehensive life angle, it goes much more beyond goods and services. It's what people do everyday of their life...forgoing alternatives.

In a much clearer way, opportunity cost can be illustrated in the following way. If you probably have $50 to go to cinema and also to have a book worth of such amount. You may decide to discard the book and go to cinema. In this instance, you already sacrificed buying a book worth $50 to pay for cinema which cost the same $50. Here opportunity cost is the cost of book forgone to go and watch cinema. Opportunity cost arrived out of the fact that we have many needs and there is few or little resources to meet those needs.

Looking at opportunity cost or forgone alternative in a much broader sense, it means many things. People forgone many alternatives in order to achieve something much better. We do that everyday consciously or not intentionally. I could remember my younger brother was my opportunity cost for me to acquire university education first. Then my parents said they don't have the capacity to send us to college at the same time, that the senior brother has to go first and the younger brother of mine have to stay home for a while till I'm almost done. That's how it is for some people too. We all have some things we have to sacrifice for greater goal.

Opportunity cost is not limited to economist alone. Almost everybody practice the concept of opportunity cost at some point in their life. In early stage of adulthood, one may get into a crossroad especially young adults that have already reached the age of marriage. Some are often in the web of confusion as to what or things that should be their utmost priority and things that should be their alternatives. For some, they may be confused whether to spend on marriage costs and preparation first or to spend on acquiring house first. Of course one has to be sacrificed for the other to be achieved.

The main issue is that is your opportunity cost not important or better than your money cost or your most priority you spent on? Many times people are entangled in their own acts. Some sacrifice something great to achieve little worth. As a student, aren't you sacrificing your opportunity cost for something insignificant?. There are many students who will rather sacrifice their time to study to go to parties and clubs. Their opportunity cost is the time they sacrificed to study.

Don't sacrifice much for something little or insignificant. It always have a bad consequence. You can imagine a student who decides to forgo the alternative of studying to partying.

Everyday you have to make a lot of choices and decisions, make sure you make the right ones and choose your alternatives well too.