ITO,
Is is apparent that you are into more bid work than service work. These are two different fields and I don't think your method (get as much as you can) would necessarily work with service. I am by no means against charging what you want to for any particular job, but my point is that in service, it should be consistant. Does Starbucks charge you a different price by the type of vehicle you drive? Does the fanciest of restaurants charge by the type of clothing you wear? No. Charge what what you will, but first figure out your costs, and your desired profit, then apply those to your jobs consistently. Because you can "afford" to pay a higher price does not mean that you should have to.
And on another topic, the real trick is to not have any losing projects (easier said than done) because at a 10% profit margin, which is probably more than the typical new construction contractor, revenue would have to increase 10x of the lost profits to break even. So if a job jost $100,000, a contractor would have to bring in $1,000,000 worth of new work with the same crew to make up the loss. That is a pretty daunting task.
