Typical procurement processes rarely result in intelligent, human-centered technologies. All too often, we see instances of the Penny Foolish Principle of complex cognitive systems: "A focus on short-term cost considerations, as a main driving force in procuring new information technology, always comes with a hefty price down the road, a price that always weighs most heavily on users' shoulders." Countless program managers, system designers, and cognitive systems engineers have participated in projects culminating in technologies that were highly constrained by short-term cost factors. Any procurement process for intelligent systems that is sensitive to human-centering issues should estimate the human total cost of ownership in one way or another, using empirical data, historical data, various parameters of component acquisition, and any other pertinent data that might be brought to bear. Allocating costs specifically to human-centering and cognitive systems engineering aspects of technology R&D will mitigate human-machine interaction issues, decrease training costs, and decrease maintenance costs, thus benefiting the service or system owner over the technology's lifetime.