Is it worth it? Grapes, diamonds and trade-ins.

Autumn smells sweet at my house. The grape arbor in the backyard swells with ripe purple and green fruit begging to be picked and converted to juice or jam. Unfortunately, these grapes live in a yard that belongs to me, a "non-canner", who guiltily ignores their pleasant scent, watching them shrivel up at the end of the season and die.


Well this past Saturday, my mom and sisters decided to take advantage of the bounty, using the grapes to their fullest potential, and came to my home to juice and can. It was a horribly messy task, but the end proved successful and worth it. A few minutes after my parents left, I got a call from my mom. She said she had lost her diamond from her ring. Somewhere in the mess of used up grape guts in the garbage or down the disposal or out in the grape arbor lay her $2,000 diamond. I was so sad for her! Even though this wasn't her original wedding ring (that was lost years ago) it was still one dad gave her.

I went to the garbage can and pulled out the boxes that held the grape waste and put it in the garage. My dad was planning to come back on Monday and search through it. In the next two days, my garage started to smell rotten and fermented and the bottom of the boxes were soaked through with grape juice. On Monday, my dad and I opened the smelly mess and holding our breath, picked through the vomit textured sludge. I made the comment that "this stuff would be perfect to use in a dare for someone to eat dog poo- cause it looked just like it." It was gross. We chuckled and grimaced. We searched a bit, but after awhile it just wasn't worth it. Dad went home empty handed but also resolved that digging through disgusting garbage for hours was not worth $2,000.




At the dealership, Sonny often has customer's weigh out whether trading in their car or selling it themself is "worth it". A couple months ago, a customer came in wanting to buy a car. He still had a vehicle that he needed to sell before he could buy the one he was looking at. He had always been told that dealerships never give you what your car is worth when trading it in, so he chose to sell his car on his own. He left the dealership in his old car, planning to return soon to buy the new one he really wanted.


Two months later the customer walked back through the door. Frustrated, he handed over the keys to his vehicle and said, "this isn't worth it. I'm trading it in." Their customer did not anticipate the cost of trying to sell his car himself. Paying for ads, taking customer calls, detailing, reconditioning, and washing the car, meeting people for appointments, negotiating, and worrying about buyer's financing were all costing him. Sonny paid him for his trade, got him a car he wanted and saved him several hundred dollars in sales tax because of his trade. The customer walked away happy, learning that his time was more important to him than the hassle and worries that come with selling a car on his own.

Since we all have different personalities, deciding whether something is "worth it" is always a personal choice. For me, the time and mess of juicing my grapes is not worth it. For my mom and sisters, the proud feeling they get from producing juice and jam that they can keep in their pantry's and save for food storage is worth it. For my dad, sifting through grape goo for a diamond is not worth it, but for another that has a sentimental attachment to the diamond or a need for $2,000 it is. Similarly, for some, the time, money and energy it takes to sell a car on your own is worth the effort. For our customer, saving valuable time and energy by trading in his car proved to be worth it.

So the next time you make a decision, from cleaning your house to selling a car, you can ask yourself, "is this worth it?"