Learn about imputed costs, often known as opportunity or implicit costs, which represent the forgone benefits when choosing one action over another with your assets.

Learn how outlay costs impact business decisions, differentiate between outlay and opportunity costs, and understand cash vs.

Opportunity cost is a concept in economics that refers to the value of the next best alternative that is forgone when making a choice — i.e., the cost of the best alternative that is not chosen.

When we choose to spend $10 more than usual for a bottle of wine, we'll have $10 less to spend on an appetizer, a dessert, or ten songs on iTunes. That's known as the "opportunity cost" of that choice ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Tim Maurer covers how personal finance is more personal than finance. May 05, 2024, 07:00am EDT Sunk cost, opportunity cost, and ...

The worst outcome of a startup project isn’t failure. If failure is quick and cheap, the value of the gained insight might outweigh the cost of the failure. The worst outcome is to join the so-called ...

Everything we do and every choice we make has an opportunity cost. In a world of scarce time and resources each choice necessarily means rejecting many other possible opportunities. One of the best ...

The cost of tariffs gets a lot of popular media attention, but it's a shallow treatment of a complex disease. Yesterday Bloomberg ran a piece titled, “The Age of Global Supply Chains Is in Trouble,” ...

You may not recognize it, but opportunity cost affects your business every single day. Opportunity cost is essentially what you give up (the benefits of the next best alternative) when you make a ...

Question: My brother stole money from my parents 30 years ago. He said he was borrowing it, but he never paid it back. After they died, the stolen money was never brought up and the inheritance I got ...

Many of us pride ourselves on being resourceful and self-sufficient. Tackling tasks ourselves—whether preparing a home-cooked meal or taking on a complex work project—often feels rewarding. However, ...

You’ve probably heard that it’s best to take Social Security benefits later rather than sooner. After all, delaying ...