If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires.

The line wryly observes that hard-won life lessons are acquired at a steep “price”—in time, pain, mistakes, or sacrifice—yet their true value is difficult to monetize or transfer. If experience could be sold at its real cost, everyone who has endured setbacks would be “rich,” because nearly everyone pays heavily for wisdom. The quip also hints at the paradox that experience is simultaneously priceless and nonmarketable: it can be shared as advice, but it cannot be fully conveyed without living through it. In an advice-column context, it functions as consolation and perspective, reframing regret as an investment in understanding.