Graduation Party

Yesterday I was incredibly busy the whole day running around getting ready for my college graduation party. By the time the party started, I was sick and tired of it already. I really felt that the costs of this party were no where near being beneficial to anyone. The stress and frustration were costs that I did not imagine I would have to come across in the extremity I did for my party.

As the party progresses, the benefits of the party arise more and more. Tons of my friends and their family showed up for at least part of the night for the party. The turnout really made me feel like the party was worth it all along. I benefited the most from knowing that everyone who came had a great time. My family benefited from getting to know a lot of my friends and their families too. Furthermore, they realized that I DO have more friends than they thought I did. When the party was coming to an end, I thought to myself that this party was worth it. My benefit outweighed my costs entirely.

Do the economic benefits of providing the party outweigh the economic costs? As I said before, over time the party becomes less costly and more beneficial. I wish I could measure everyone's happiness level of the party and all the rest of the benefits received from it. The ability to measure the benefits would help me evalute the outcome of the party by using a benefit-to-costs ratio, which is the total monetary cost of the benefits or outcomes divided by the total monetary costs of obtaining them. Furthermore, the net rate of return, which is total costs minus the total value of benefits, is another method that would support my observations with data anaylsis. By using these tools, we can ask ourselves, was it still worth doing at all? I feel that without a doubt, it would be worth it everytime. Since, all the inputs and outcomes of a proposed alternative need to be reduced to a value, so that the alternatives are aggregated and compared to the actual party. Most people would have been willing to pay something and it would have decreased my mother and grandmother's monetary costs and allows them to benefit more. By having people RSVP, it helped avoid increased costs and the benefits were increased because we knew about how many people would show up. Just a note: assigning monetary values to inputs and outcomes is most of the time too hard to do and also it is not always appropriate to do.