On the surface, "all-in cost" represents a rather straightforward concept: the total cost of a transaction. The purchase price. The commission. The closing costs. The whole freakin' shark. But it begs the question: Why does it need the "all-in" part at all?
"All-in" becomes a necessary distinction because the process of discovering the total cost of a transaction can sometimes get extremely murky. Often times, transactions will have a stated cost, but then the full amount you have to pay starts snowballing with a series of fees, taxes and add-ons.
Think about your cell phone bill. It might be advertised as $79 a month, but by the time the bill comes, they want you to pay $118.73. Meanwhile, your bill outlines a litany of confusing charges that the clueless customer service rep is unable or unwilling to explain, and the call center manager seems much more concerned about YOUR attitude and tone of voice and significantly less interested in his company's duplicitous charge-mongering. (This may or may not be based on real events.)
Anyway, the all-in figure eliminates this problem by providing a complete accounting of the cash outlay necessary for a particular transaction. Like how gasoline prices include taxes in the advertised price. The amount you pay is the stated amount times the number of gallons - no additional charges are added on later.
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Finance: Why Do Taxes Exist?137 Views
Why do taxes exist and notice we're saying that with a kind of a whiny tone
alright well someone has to pay for this and this and this and this yep there are [Hand pointing to a road, a school, a plane and a park]
a bunch of different types of taxes in each of them carries a different purpose
yeah Road taxes get paid in large part out of
the gasoline you buy you got to pay for the building and maintaining of potholes [Car drives into a pothole]
right and that makes sense if you drive a car you use the roads more so you
should pay more for its use that's like a use tax get it cleverly named if for [Price for federal tax per gallon and state tax per gallon]
when you own a home you'll pay real estate tax and for the most part that
tax is designated to pay schools all right well but like everything [Hand holding money from real estate tax to pay for schools]
government related nothing is simple in America the federal government has kind
of a matching program for schools where they pay for a portion of the education
cost based on various factors and you don't want us to get into that in the [complicated equation on chalkboard]
video all right well the largest taxes most people pay are income taxes and
those generally pay for the government to you know govern us if a couple made a
hundred grand jointly in California last year they'd pay around thirty [A couple stood together in their home]
thirty-five grand in taxes that money covers things like shiny new airplanes
to force the mean countries to play nice in the schoolyard it covers repairs to
crumbling bridges and tunnels across the country it covers public protective [Bridges crumbling]
services like police and fire department people
it covers libraries and public parks, well don't feel like you're getting your
money's worth these days if you're ever not feeling that you can always move to [Woman chased from a park by a tiger]
the Ukraine discounts on citizenship they're everywhere
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