Rowan Spazzoli

Strategist. Lecturer. Consultant

I’ll sell that to you

I’ve been helping my mom move in to her new house over the past week or so. And it’s been a tiring but surprisingly enjoyable activity. We’ve managed to get rid of a lot of junk and reminisce through old photos and other memories.

One thing that I have noticed repeatedly is a strong endowment effect whenever we’re deciding whether to keep something or donate/throw it away. The endowment effect is a theory from behavioural economics that says that people value things much more highly when they own them.

The term was developed by nobel prize winning behavioural economists Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler. As per the wikipedia page:

[In the study] participants were given a mug and then offered the chance to sell it or trade it for an equally valued alternative (pens). They found that the amount participants required as compensation for the mug once their ownership of the mug had been established (“willingness to accept”) was approximately twice as high as the amount they were willing to pay to acquire the mug (“willingness to pay”).

And so, there is a lot of stuff we have come across while moving house that we way over value. These are mostly things that have either:

  1. Have a low replacement value
  2. Will never be used again
  3. Would not be purchased again.

The Endowment Salesman

To get around this bias, I’ve come up with a fairly simple system. And I use it when I find that we’re trying to keep something that fits into one of the three points above.

All I do is tell my mom that if she wants to keep it she has to buy it off me. And any money that is made will be donated. Additionally, I set the price slightly higher than it would be at the shops.

So for example, my mom was trying to decide whether to keep a branded set of glasses she was given at an event. She was very ready to put them back in the cupboard. So I grabbed them from her and said that I’d sell it to her for R80. Otherwise we must get rid of them.

And she said that it wasn’t worth it to buy them.

So we donated them and now have less clutter.

By doing this, I take away the ownership aspect which causes the endowment effect. It is no longer your item. It has been donated by default and you need to buy it back. Additionally, by setting a high replacement cost, it means that the item must be worth more than just it’s replacement value (e.g. if it has some unbelievably special memories attached to it).

And hence, we’re able to get around our biases and achieve a much more streamlined life.

Image is of the boxes we unpacked today. We managed to get the contents of the three boxes on the left there down to just one of the small boxes on the right

Blog: 180/365

Song of the day: Black Betty – Ram Jam

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Communication station

Humans have lots of thoughts every second (I’m sure there’s an estimated number of thoughts per second but I’m feeling too lazy to google it right now, but there are a lot of thoughts). And the only person that knows about these thoughts is the person thinking them.

Until they share these thoughts. Until they communicate.

So in theory, if a person can have hundreds of different thoughts in a short space of time, they might end up at an entirely different end point having started at the same place as you.

In just a few minutes.

Now compound this over days, months or years. Across different work environments, different people, different scenarios. All while having different backgrounds.

This makes it very easy to end up on a different page to someone. You could think things are perfectly okay about a situation while your friend is having an internal meltdown.

Ideally, we could transmit the entire thought process to one another so that we know what’s going on.

Until then, we need to make an active effort to communicate.

Image was taken at my old school in May last year. I have a picture from today from the same spot but I was too lazy to get it off my phone

Blog: 179/365

Song of the day: Clocks – Coldplay

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Admin Day

Today I was able to get a significant amount of admin done. I finally sorted out all my tax stuff at SARS (which took 4 hours), sorted out a new bank account and bank cards, helped move stuff into storage and some other odds and ends.

This has left me rather drained of inspiration, hence the interruption to the regularly scheduled Friday Shoutout.

Instead, here is a picture of a doggo wearing duck slippers (oddly enough, I searched “tax” in my google photos and this is what came up).

Enjoy 🙂

Image is of a doggo

Blog: 175/365

Song of the day: Journey – Don’t stop believing

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Old School Blogging

Today we spent some time sorting through boxes that are going into storage. In one box I found one of my greatest treasures: my first diary. It’s a little Zimbabwean pocket calendar with an image of a Flame Lily on the front. Each double page has 8 blocks, one for each day of the week plus one extra for notes. And each month is separated by a beautiful picture from Zim.

It’s hard to believe that I was only 10 years old when I started trying to do daily writings, more than 15 years ago. I remember finding it incredibly challenging, despite being so brief. And the journal does run out of entries by about mid April. But it’s a stunning effort all the same.

The page I’ve taken a photo of above was a very memorable week. There were protests in Zim on the Tuesday and Wednesday, and people stayed at home (technically it was called a “Stay Away”). I also made it in to the tug of war team, which was my only major athletics achievement at the time (and is probably still the peak of my athletic career).

I’m incredibly proud of myself for keeping this journal. It provides a beautiful glimpse into the past, allowing for reminiscing and reflecting.

And in 15 years time, when I’m 40, I’ll look back at these #25of365 blog posts with the same admiration.

Image result for flame lily

A sneaky picture of a Flame Lily

Image is of my first ever diary, taken in our old garden this afternoon.

Song of the day: DJ Kent ft Dominic Neill – Love you still

Blog: 172/365

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Being Home

There’s nothing quite like being at home with mom. As much as I’m a 25 year old (mostly) functional adult, there is still something really special about being in the comfort of the home space.

It’s refuge from the intensity of the world. A small oasis where you can be safe. A place where the fridge is actually full.

After a week like I’ve had, this is exactly where I need to be.

Home.

Image was taken overlooking Wilderness on the drive to the airport this afternoon 🙂

Note: apologies, the previous version of this post was titled “home” which sent people to the home page. Hence the update!

Blog: 170/365

Song of the day: Gareth Emery & Ashley Wallbridge – Crypto

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The Friday Shoutout: Abalone House

After the robbery on Monday we were feeling really distraught and helpless. We popped in to a hotel down the road from where we had been staying, Abalone House.

Despite the kitchen being closed, Lee (the general manager) organized breakfast and coffee for us. We were looked after by a Gale, who made sure we were okay.

When further disaster struck, and our friend rolled her car on the way to pick us up, the people at Abalone House came to our rescue again. Lee lent us her car without hesitation to go and pick our friend up. And one of the staff coincidentally stopped to make sure the friend was alright.

And again, we ended up back at Abalone House where they got us tea and soup. They also made a fire for us and looked after us until our second recovery vehicle arrived. And they didn’t even let us pay for any of this.

So the Friday Shoutout goes to Abalone House and the wonderful people there. Thank you for looking after us at our time of need!

Image is from the Abalone House Facebook page 🙂

Blog: 168/365

Song of the day: I think we’re alone now – Tiffany

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The Luckiest

I’ve had a little bit of time to reflect on what happened on Monday. In the space of a few hours my life and some of the lives of people close to me were shaken up. We lost a huge amount of stuff, including laptops, phones, wallets and cars (one written off in an accident and the other rendered useless when the keys were stolen).

In spite of all this, we were incredibly lucky.

My friend heard the thieves in the house but thought it was me getting a glass of water. If he had gone outside there is no telling what they would have done to him. He was lucky.

The thieves came into my room armed with a massive knife from the kitchen, which they dropped just outside the door to the room when they left. I slept through all of this. I have no idea how they would have reacted if I had woken up. I was lucky.

The friend that came to rescue us from this situation slipped off the road and rolled her car, destroying it completely. Yet she was able to walk away almost completely unharmed, with only a bruise on one side of her body. She was lucky.

The Luckiest

The upside of this whole situation was how lucky we were. Things were bad but they could have been drastically worse. And the items can all be replaced, we can’t.

To top this all off, there was a strange cosmic moment that happened at the car accident. Once the car came to a stop, my friend’s phone, which had had no music playing before, suddenly started sounding out a few chords. And as the dust settled and she realised she was okay, she begun hearing the music playing next to her. She recognised it immediately.

The song was “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds.

We were the luckiest.

Image was taken from my residence at UCT in 2011 🙂

Blog number: 166/365

Song of the day: The Luckiest (About Time Version) – Ben Folds 

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Piece by piece

With all that’s gone on in the last two days, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with what needs to be done. There’s a massive list of admin to sort out including:

  • Applying for a new drivers license
  • Getting a new phone and computer
  • Getting new prescriptions for my meds
  • Ordering new keys for my apartment and for my car (which includes getting certified copies of various documents)
  • Getting the insurance sorted out on every single one of these items
  • Fetching my car from Malmesbury, where it was towed to
  • Catching up on work I missed
  • Organizing a new SIM card
  • Getting back in to my accounts
  • Getting a new credit card

To be honest, it makes me feel rather anxious, especially considering I’m supposed to be going to Joburg and Sedgefield next week. Also, the financial impact of this all is massive.

But I’m going to take it one at a time. There’s no rush, and if I let people down it’s entirely understandable. I’ll rebuild, piece by piece.

Image was taken on our 2016 trip to sedgefield

Blog 165/365

Song of the day: O fortuna – Carl Orff

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