The Concept of Opportunity Cost in Economics

Opportunity Cost is a great first step in thinking like an economist. Money is finite. So you must be smart with it. Opportunity Cost is the thing that is staring you in the face everytime you make a decision. And its magnified every time you make the wrong one. Opportunity cost is the best alternative to the choice you just made. If you are making a choice between being a professional baseball player or a professional football player. You must look very closely at the benefits of both of them. A benefit of football is if you're good enough you can get more money than a baseball player through the way of endorsements and having your own shoe etc. Gaining more money is a benefit of football. A benefit of baseball is it's a much safer sport but Baseball player are not very marketable celebrities so don’t expect any huge endorsement deals. Now it's time to make a decision. Let's say you go with baseball. You like benefits of getting money faster and don’t want to get hurt.

Opportunity cost becomes football. You made your decision based on the benefits and the cost. Sure you could've possibly made more money with football. But the benefit of choosing a safer sport outweighs the cost of not getting paid as much. See you thought like an economist and chose the option that had the best benefit and the lowest cost... Or you could pull a Bo Jackson and do both. Another example would be if you get a craving for pizza. But lets say your a little weird and Homerun Inn Pizza is your favorite kind of pizza. Let's say that you're also incredibly lazy and don’t feel like making pizza. So you order Pizza for delivery. Even though pizza through delivery is more expensive and you don’t enjoy is as much it was still worth it. The cost of spending more money for less good pizza outweighs the horror of actually doing something and making your own pizza.