dollars+sense

Sunday dollars+sense: Why do prices end in nines?

Peter Martin - June 29, 2008 - 2:00pm

When you go out looking for petrol today what do you expect to pay? Will it be 169.9 cents per litre, or perhaps 164.9?

Whatever the price, it is certain to end in a nine.

But why, when we all know that for practical purposes 169.9 is 170?

Surely it can’t be because we’re all fooled into believing that we are paying a lower price?

The reassuring news just published in the journal

Sunday dollars + sense: Where did all those bottles come from?

Peter Martin - June 22, 2008 - 5:23pm

"The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -

Sunday dollars+sense: Money can make you happy...

Peter Martin - June 9, 2008 - 8:23pm

If you give it to someone else.

The results are in, and they look pretty conclusive.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Harvard Business School have just confirmed it in three ways.

First they surveyed 600 Americans and asked how much they spent on themselves and how much they gave away or spent on other people.

Asking how happy each was they found that personal

Sunday dollars+sense: Brendan's big idea

Peter Martin - May 24, 2008 - 10:01pm

“An idea so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.”

Not long ago Australia's Liberal Party stood for prudent economic management and the freedom of the individual.

Today it stands for cheaper petrol.

Its leader Brendan Nelson has been saying so continuously.

“We stand for lower petrol prices”, “five cents a litre off petrol is what we

Sunday dollars + sense: Where did all these bottles come from?

Peter Martin - June 22, 2008 - 5:59pm

"The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -

Sunday dollars+Sense: When selling hurts

Peter Martin - June 15, 2008 - 5:19pm

Are you finding it hard to buy a house in Canberra?

Does it seem to you as if the people who own houses want far more for them than they are actually worth?

They almost certainly do, and a cutting-edge experiment using brain scans has just told us why.

The team led by Brian Knutson from Stanford University couldn’t actually scan the brains of people who were buying and selling houses. It would

Sunday dollars+sense: Don't always buy big

Peter Martin - June 1, 2008 - 10:57pm

At least don't make it your rule of thumb.

Until now you have probably thought that you were good at maths. You probably thought you got value for money when you shopped.

You might be about to discover that you were wrong on both counts.

The Competition and Consumer Commission is likely to recommend a compulsory national system of “unit pricing” as a result of its grocery inquiry. Family First

Sunday dollars+sense: Dumb rich shoppers

Peter Martin - May 12, 2008 - 12:46pm

Wondering where to shop?

The Treasurer has taken time out from preparing the Budget to offer advice.

ALDI has better prices than just about anywhere else (just as Coles has worse petrol prices, according to his Petrol Prices Commissioner).

Here’s Wayne Swan at a pre-Budget press conferences:

“I’ll tell you what, how many people here shop at Aldi?”

“I can tell you this, out there in my