Sunk cost.

What is it?
Where it can be applied?

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This is a business term that I have also seen used in psychology. A sunk cost is money (or in psychology, things like time and effort as well) that has already been spent on something - you can’t get it back. This can lead to bad decision-making resulting from the sunk cost fallacy (the belief that just because you have spent it, it must influence your decisions).

For example, you buy tickets to see a movie, but then you start feeling sick. You’ve spent the money, so you drag yourself along to the movie, don’t enjoy it at all, and make yourself sicker because you should have been resting. You also spent more money on the train to get there and back, plus you spent two hours watching a bad movie while feeling sick. Since the money has still been spent whether you went or not, the sensible decision would have been to stay home.