Banana tenure matching

I justified the purchase of bananas earlier this week using some financial concepts

On Wednesday I wanted to buy bananas. My wife pointed to the two ripe bananas that we already had, and the bunch she had bought that morning from Murugan, who pushes a cart in front of our house, selling fruits and vegetables three times a week.

Later in the evening, on the way home from my gym, I went to a nearby shop and bought five perfectly ripe bananas. I needed the additional purchase for the purpose of “tenure matching”.

You can think of the availability and consumption of bananas in terms of asset and liability tenure matching in banking. Bananas are best consumed at a particular stage of ripeness. And for heavy banana eaters like us (all four of us have at least one banana a day), it is important to maintain an appropriate supply chain of bananas.

On Wednesday, for example, we had sufficient bananas at home (of different tenures), but having made the decision to take banana pancakes for a “nature walk” the kids’ school had organised yesterday morning, there was a sudden tenure mismatch.

I needed at least one banana for my post-gym smoothie on Wednesday. I needed two or three for pancakes for yesterday. Saying “we have sufficient bananas at home” would have ignored this need for immediate consumption of bananas - either I would have to make fewer pancakes (not viable) or sacrifice my post-gym banana (more tractable, but not in my best interest). Hence the purchase was warranted.

Korean supermarkets appreciate this banana “ALM” problem well. They sell what I can only describe as a “banana bond”.

My wife grew up eating far less fruit than me, and so her definition of “fruit” is very different from mine. In my opinion, apples, bananas, oranges and mangoes all have their own specific functions. They are not mutually fungible. And so I need to maintain sufficient stock of all (when they are in season, for the seasonal fruits, of course). As far as she is concerned, though, that we have “fruit” at home means we don’t need more fruits! It’s taken more than a dozen years to break this attitude.