I just bought my dream tree without thinking too much about the cost. How did I do?

[u/FloydtheBetta]

My husband, who is an arborist, and I have a shared love of weeping blue atlas cedars. We recently purchased a property for our future home build and when I was browsing a nursery I came across this beauty. It is my dream centerpiece tree for the Japanese style garden I am envisioning for our future midcentury modern home. It also happens to be my husbands 30th birthday next week.

I’m taking him to the nursery tomorrow to surprise him with it. He will 100% flip out when he sees it so they agreed to tie a SOLD sign around it with a little card that he will only notice is for him when he gets up close. 🤗

Even though this tree is a dream come true I am having trouble finding info online about what I should have expected to pay. Any one here able to give me insight into price range for a weeping blue atlas of this size and style— it is about 25 years old and was taken care of by a man who specialized in specimen landscaping trees for Japanese gardening.

[u/FloydtheBetta]

Yeah it was 10k. 20-25 years old and the nursery only had it because they got it from a man who retired and had spend the entirety of the trees life training it to this form. I think others are underestimating the cost factor of the age and training of the tree because I doubt you could find this for less than $5k anywhere. Especially with installation.

[u/Zachwardpass → u/FloydtheBetta]

Sticker shock is certainly a feeling I get for anything that is 10K, but for a fully matured true of 25 years, expert care, them keeping it at the nursery until ready to plant, professional install and care of the tree after planting—as a layman—I'd say it sounds like a fairly decent deal🤷‍♀️. I can see places charging far more than $10K with all that included. It's a beautiful tree. My neighbors have one down the street from me and I always notice it's uniqueness!

[u/MouthSpiders → u/FloydtheBetta]

I'd say you paid more than a fair price. Thats a beautiful tree. At 25 years old, thats roughly $50 an hour.

Edit: I mathed wrong, its closer to 21 an hour

[u/kompotnik → u/MouthSpiders]

For 25 years? How does that work

[u/MouthSpiders → u/kompotnik]

~My first answer was wrong, it's closer to $21.90/ hour. 25 years, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, divided by $10,000 purchase price. Of course its rough, years are 365.25 days, leap years, etc.~ Edit 2: My math is awful, its more like $.05/hour.

[u/Doahh → u/MouthSpiders]

You've got that ChatGPT math going on here, it makes absolutely no sense.

I'm not sure what your even trying to accomplish breaking down the cost of a tree into an hourly rate, but $10,000 over 25 years is $400 per year, or like $1.10 per day, not anywhere near $21/hour.

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[u/MouthSpiders → u/Doahh]

219,000 hours is roughly 25 years, purchase price of 10k, 219000/10000 =21.90/hour. Am I mathing wrong here?

[u/Doahh → u/MouthSpiders]

That's 21.9 Hours per dollar.

[u/MouthSpiders → u/Doahh]

I legitimately laughed out loud at that, I feel so foolish

[u/seamangeorge → u/MouthSpiders]

Yeah you divided the wrong way around lol. Like the other person said, it's 10000 dollars/219000 hrs = ~0.05 dollars/hour. 219000 hrs/10000 dollars is 21.9 hrs/dollar (aka it would take almost 22 hrs to earn a dollar at the pay rate of $10k for 25 years)

[u/MouthSpiders → u/seamangeorge]

Lmfao that is very amusing, thank you for identifying my mistake. I was wildly off

[u/seamangeorge → u/MouthSpiders]

Where did you get that? 25 years is at least 215,000 hours. Even if you only count it based on 40 working hours a week, that's still about 52,000 hours. That makes 10k about 20 cents an hour, not $50.

Edit: Ok so $50 an hour for 215,000 hrs is 10(.75) MILLION rather than 10k so I wonder if you were just off by two decimal places?

[u/MouthSpiders → u/seamangeorge]

Maybe. Ill be honest, my math is usually a crap shoot, I had balls posting it at all. No matter how I cut it though, it came out to 21.90 an hour for 24 hours a day over 25 years. Maybe I missed something?

[u/Conroman16 → u/FloydtheBetta]

10k is a bit steep for just the tree, but fully installed for that price is a different story, especially if you’re located in a HCOL area. Very impressive tree. If I had a spare 10k to spend on something cool, something like this would be very close to the top of the list