opportunity cost

Noun

opportunity cost (plural opportunity costs)

1. The cost of an opportunity forgone (and the loss of the benefits that could be received from that opportunity); the most valuable forgone alternative.
   • Thanks to business school, I can understand how I've actually paid for this time at home with my family—the opportunity cost of my time, my forgone income, etc.2004 June 7, “Jeff Pillet-Shore: Second Year Winds Down”, in BusinessWeek, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2005, retrieved 30 Oct 2008
   • Implicit in this fixation with time is the thesis that the opportunity cost of regular shopping is too high – that the hours spent driving to the better bookstore in the next town can be spent doing something more valuable. […] But as our urban lives have grown more pressed for time, we have diced...2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 06 Apr 2020