If you walk into a posh restaurant and pay $90 for a meal, you may be forgiven if you feel a little bit of pain from departing of some of your hard earned dollars but you might console yourself by commenting on the good service, great wine and lovely meal.  You walk into McDonald's the next day and and splurge yourself with $15 (yikes, more pain).  The funny thing about it is that the $15 Mac meal might hurt more than the $90 one.  Eveything is relative and based on your perception of what is value for money.    

For many of us who had to sell something, such as a car, will have probably reduced the price by as much as $2,500 to make a sale and I bet that wouldn't have caused us any concern.  Try gambling $2,500 away and see how that feels.

When it was announced the infamous Rickson Gracie was coming to Sydney for one seminar only, 200 people pre-paid $440 each for the weekend but he is taken for granted back home!   In Australia, we have our own legends whom can taken for granted because they live on our turf and we know we can get hold of them anytime if we really want to.  Imagine Richard Norton and John Will popping up for one seminar only within the next 5 years!  Every hotel in Sydney will be booked out with interstate travellers.  Those who take it for granted are no different to people living near the Sydney Opera House and have never visited it.    

Perception takes on many forms such as walking into Gloria Jeans and having to think about buying a Friand but you couldn't care less how many doughnuts you gulped down at Krispy Kreme's the night before.  What about the days of the $1 per minute calls to the USA; I was spending almost a $1,000 per month.  Now, it costs next to nothing and I hardly make any international calls.  

I participate as much as 30 seminars a year; maybe this has something to do with the particle accelerator but I better leave that for another blog.
GA