The value of money

While my old house is still on the market, I have to keep mowing the lawn. It's growing quite fast so I have to mow it every 2 weeks. The problem is I only have one lawn mower and I also need to mow my primary residence. So far, I've had to pack the mower into the RX300 (and it's quite heavy to lift by myself), unpack it, repack it, and repeat. I looked into hiring a mower, but unless I hire some neighborhood kid, it costs roughly $45 per mowing (times twice a month). That's way too much. So I thought about buying a second lawn mower and stopped by Home Depot today. They had bare bones gas mowers from about $169 to basic self propelled for about $270. The horsepower and torque was also quite difference within the price range. I decided on a Toro and put one on a flatbed cart and was going to the cashier. But something just kept telling me it was a waste of money since eventually I'd have two lawn mowers which was worthless and the one I have now is great.

After much back and forth, I put the mower back, went home, packed my Honda mower into the car and went to mow my lawn. As I was driving, I thought it was somewhat interesting that I had a hard time spending $270 on another mower, yet I don't think twice when spending $200 on a new harddrive or $250 to play poker. I've had an easier time justifying $1500 to play a WSOP circuit event while I couldn't get myself to spend $270 on a mower. So I was thinking why this was the case. Well, with poker, there is a possibility of making money. And my historical results indicate I'm more than 50% (over the long term) to make money, so I see the money I spend as an investment. The harddrive was a long term purchase since I was running out of diskspace for my backed up movies. The lawn mower I knew would eventually be worthless to me. Anyways, I thought it was rather interesting.