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I’m thinking specifically about those for whom “where should I get gas” or “what’s the least expensive bag of spinach” is genuinely less productive than spending that same amount of time at work. Even if you make 500k, two minutes of your time is $8. But it’s probably more than that, because decision-based willpower depletion etc
You've made a very common error that people make when discussing this: your time is only worth $x if you would've otherwise gotten paid that money for your time. If I make $1000/hr at my job, and I spend an hour of my free time to save $10 instead of watching TV, I haven't lost $990 because I wasn't going to make that $1000 to begin with. As @Walterodim points out, a whole lot of people earn no marginal income if they spend more time at their job. And you can only "lose" money by way of opportunity cost if you were going to make the extra money to begin with.
But the topic is the very rich, and approximately all of them “would've otherwise gotten paid that money for their time”, either through additional hours related to their position proper or through networking and continual learning. Heck, even just exercising or going on a walk in nature saves more money in the long run for the super rich than nickling and diming. But yeah, you and @Walterodim are right regarding not super rich, salaried engineers or whatever.
As I've written in another comment, I doubt that these thrifty billionaires are really actually anally obsessive about the price of their frozen broccoli. It's a combination of general ascetism and having a detailed mental model of what things cost. f3zinker has covered the latter, and I have a few things to say about the former.
I know people who went into business with the explicit goal of being able to raise their standard of living and maintain it with passive income alone. A thrifty billionaire would be their opposite: he really enjoys making his business grow but doesn't really care about his standard of living.
Like, I could be paying $5 for a haircut, but I pay $30 instead. Is the haircut itself really six times better? No, but neither place really puts a dent in my finances, and I enjoy the more premium experience enough to prefer it. However, I can imagine someone who simply doesn't care about shiatsu massage chairs at the hair washing station, terrycloth vs waffle towels or not having to listen to whatever radio station the barber prefers. Just like I can imagine someone whose life would be meaningfully improved by a brand new royal blue BMW Z4, while I don't really want a new car at all.
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I don't think that even the very rich would otherwise be getting paid for the time you are talking about here. For one thing, their position (let's say a CEO of a megacorp) is probably still salaried and they still get no marginal income from working more. But also, your other examples are all things which don't actually bring in money. Networking and learning are useful, but they are not income streams.
Hmm, I don’t follow. CEOs are paid in stock and packages, their future income is predicated on performance, and networking/learning is simply tomorrow’s income for those with delayed gratification. Do you really think that it’s worth it for someone who makes a million a year to care about where they get gas or the price of the pizza they order? I would still say “absolutely not” except for the psychological benefit of making money seem more valuable.
For some sectors though, I would imagine time spent knowing how much things cost for an ordinary consumer is valuable learning a CEO could do?
e.g. If you are supper out of touch $15 vs $8 a month for twitter blue is approximately 0 difference to you, but it could put you on opposite sides of the marginal elasticity curve.
This discussion reminds me of "Neutral hours: a tool for valuing time and energy" (pdf link) by Owen Cotton-Barratt
Like whether clipping out a coupon is worth it depends on
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Lots of labor doesn't really have the ability to gain additional marginal income with a couple minutes of work though. Plenty of people are salaried and don't have a straightforward way to earn a few bucks. Doing something like spending a couple hours to figure out how to move credit card points around to save a grand on flights can pretty easily be worth it.
Even in the case of really trivial amounts of money, I think people just gain a psychic benefit from feeling like they got a deal. Should you actually give a shit about a sale on potato chips? Probably not, just buy them if you like them, but it feels better to get the brand that's BOGO.
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