Throwing good money after bad has a name: the sunk cost fallacy

In a classic 1985 study, people who'd already paid for a ski trip were more likely to go even after a better trip became available for the same weekend, because they didn't want to 'waste' the money already spent. Rationally, money you can never recover should have zero bearing on what you do next. It reliably doesn't.

— Hal R. Arkes and Catherine Blumer, The Psychology of Sunk Cost — Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1985