One of the more boring parts of adulthood is getting to make decision about what will suffice. For example, I was looking at TV’s right around the Superbowl. There’s a Sony Bravia flat panel with 20,000:1 contrast ratio that looks incredible, but the sad truth is: am I willing to cough up a huge pile of cash for a TV with less than 100 square inches more viewing area?

Sadly, no.

I got a offer for a new thermostat with a rebate from the gas company. Is it worth it to upgrade so I can now program every day as opposed to 2 modes (weekday/weekend). No.

The XBox has the dreaded Red Ring of Death, should I take this opportunity to upgrade the hard drive? It’s not worth the work to transfer the data to a new drive.

Our 2nd car has over 175,000 miles on it and has a repair every 6 months, but with my wife taking the train to work the car gets less than 2,000 miles put on it in those 6 months. It’s not worth taking on a new car payment to upgrade.

Remember this sorry message when marketing. It’s not enough to be (a little bit) better than your competition, you’ve got to overcome the switching cost too.