Nobody costs out a firework.
You don't stand in the shop working out the return per minute. It's Diwali, or it's November, or it's Chinese New Year, and someone wanted the sky lit up, so you buy them. The money's gone by the end of the night and you've forgotten you spent it.
Other spending doesn't go so quietly.
A lot of what I hear, when people talk to me about money, is a kind of low apology for the things they enjoyed. A meal that cost too much. A garden they kept pouring money into. A trip that didn't make sense on any budget but they went anyway and they're glad they did, mostly, except they still bring it up like they need me to say it was alright.
And it usually was the money that mattered most. Nobody's going to lie there at the end of their life thinking about a pension contribution. They'll think about the table full of people who stayed too late, the light on the water somewhere, the fireworks going up while the kids lost their minds in the garden.
I'm not saying spend without thinking. The people I sit with are the careful ones. Careful to a fault, some of them, so used to justifying every pound that they've stopped being able to tell which pounds don't need it.
A garden nobody costed. A festival. Fifteen minutes of noise and colour and then nothing left but smoke.
None of that shows up as a return.
I usually just tell them what I think, which is that the thing they're apologising for was probably the best money they spent all year.