Every term is defined twice: once the way a filing would put it, and once the way somebody would explain it to you across a table. The second one is usually the one that sticks.
Showing 4 terms
Money, time or effort already spent that no future choice can recover.
Years of reading and research are why people carry on long after measuring would tell them to scale back. What that effort bought — reading a balance sheet, recognising a scam — stays with you whatever you decide next.
Continuing to hold a losing position because of what has already been spent on it.
The question that dissolves it: if I held none of this, would I buy it today at this price. Your purchase price is known to you and to nobody else in the market.
Committing further resources to a failing course of action because withdrawing would require admitting the earlier commitment was wrong.
Each extra rupee is spent to avoid an admission, and enlarges the admission. It is distinct from sunk cost reasoning: the driver is not the money already spent but the social or personal cost of conceding.
The amount payable if a life insurance contract is ended before maturity, determined by the policy terms and the regulations in force.
Deliberately low in the early years, which makes correcting a poorly chosen policy expensive and lets sunk cost do the rest. Ask the insurer for the figure in writing rather than relying on what anyone remembers.