We make decisions every day about how we spend our time, money, brainpower, and energy, and for every decision we make, there is an alternative that we didn’t choose. And it is the choice not taken that represents our opportunity cost. All rejected alternatives are paths to possible futures in which things could be better or worse than the path we chose. Every decision commits us to some course of action that, by definition, eliminates acting on other alternatives. We always have an opportunity cost when we make choices.
