When people have limited money to spend, their choices can be greatly affected by their budgets. This often leads them to choose more items that are not as good in quality instead of fewer, higher-quality items. Let's look at some everyday situations to understand this better.

The Choice We Make

Imagine a person who needs to buy groceries but doesn’t have much money. If they can afford either a fancy organic meal kit or several inexpensive frozen meals, they might go for the frozen meals. In this case, they are choosing to get more meals rather than one good meal.

A Real-Life Example

Think about a student who has $20 to buy food for the entire week. They have two choices:

• Option A: One organic meal kit for $20 (good quality, but only one meal).
• Option B: Five frozen dinners at $4 each (not as good quality, but five meals).

If the student wants enough food for the week, they will likely pick Option B.

Looking at the Numbers

We can also think about this situation with simple math. Let’s say:

• $Q$ stands for the quality of a meal.
• $N$ stands for the number of meals.
• $B$ is the budget, or how much money they have to spend.

The way they decide can look something like this:

$U = f(Q, N)$

The budget can be broken down like this:

$P_Q \cdot Q + P_N \cdot N \leq B$

Here, $P_Q$ is the price of the good-quality meal and $P_N$ is the price of the cheaper meals. When money is tight, people usually focus on getting more meals ($N$) rather than just one high-quality meal ($Q$).

In the end, while picking cheaper meals might be needed when money is limited, people often come up with smart ways to meet their needs and feel satisfied.