Spending Other People's Money

[marcusmarcusrc]

or, "thoughts I had after finding out that oversized color posters are $*&! expensive"

As a chemist (both undergrad and masters), older grad students and profs slowly convinced me that you _always_ spend the extra money to buy a reagent even if you think you can make it. This is a combination of "Your time is valuable" and "making stuff on an industrial scale usually means that they can get it more pure than you usually will on the benchtop" (with one or two exceptions where we knew we would have to repurify the chemical).

As a PhD student, my administrator has been working on me to spend more money when I go on trips. Taking taxis rather than public transit*, getting reimbursed for _everything_, etc. etc. Still, I prefer a per diem, because then I feel like I'm spending my money, not other people's money. As an economist, per diems seem more rational, too (well, people other than me might choose to go to more expensive restaurants just because their work is paying for it).

Anyway, I spent much of this morning walking around trying to save MIT money because I didn't want to spend $100 on a poster. Usually I just slap 9 pieces of paper on 9 pieces of posterboard, but since I'm doing a poster for MIT bigwigs, I thought it should look nicer than that. But see above: oversized color posters are expensive! But even after getting the cost down to $50 by making it smaller, using CopyTech rather than Kinko's, and doing the foam core mounting myself, I still feel bad about spending other people's money.

Do other people feel this way? I feel like much of the world _prefers_ spending other people's money...

*Note that I often take public transit anyway because I prefer getting a feel for the city I'm in. Certainly, when I go on vacation for myself I do that.

Comments

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

It should also be noted that there's also a matter of scale to consider. Yes, I try not to be flagrant with my expense accounts, but to some extent, money has been budgeted for me to use, so I might as well use it. When I'm being wined and dined, that's what the money is for, so it's ok to go out for sushi instead of burgers. And when faced with breakfast choices, getting the $12 buffet rather than the $2 bowl of cereal is fine, because $10 is not an amount worth thinking about for most budgets.