A blond woman with a great deal of hair product was sitting on a shiny polished desk in front of what was probably suppose to be a soothing blue background. On the desk were five diet cokes and a medium McDonald's fry. She sat and explained that "many dieters would never dream of eating the medium fry while on a diet but that they will happily drink a diet coke a day and still think they are following their diet. Mathematically they add up to the same thing..."
I remember being really puzzled. Why is this news?
***
Now its my sophomore year of college. I'm standing in a Bank of America branch trying to untangle my accounts cross-state when an advertisement catches my eye. Why do banks advertise for themselves inside their branches? Aren't I already here because I use them? Its not like I could even walk into a random bank to deposit my checks or get an account fixed even if I wanted to.
"Bank of America introduces new 'keep the change' program to help YOU save!"
Eternally a sucker for free money, I ask the teller to explain the system to me. He says that for the first few months of this system every time you make a debit card purchase the charge is rounded up to the nearest dollar and moved to your savings account from your checking. For a brief time (a month or so) Bank of America will match these deposits doubling your money. That much sounded quite nice. After that, the teller explained, Bank of America will continue to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and move the remaining money from your checking to your savings account.
"Why?" I asked.
"To help you save money!"
How MORONIC is that? You will incrementally hide my own money from me so I don't know it exists and I'll save it?
Magpie is looking to buy a house. Sometimes when we are going someplace in the car he shows me neighborhoods he is considering. We, with gleeful political incorrectness, call the number of satellite televisions to visibly broken things on the exterior of a house the "ghettoness ratio." It is what we consider the fundamental measure of how likely the average poor person in that areas is to stay poor. That 100+ dollar bill a month is slowly killing that family's budget because they have not realized that it is not the cost of the bill presented to you that matters so much as the cost of the bill over the time span it covers.
You could make your exhaust work right on your car if you could just cut that 100+ dollar satellite bill for six months. Once that is fixed your car will get better milage per gallon, put that money you don't spend on gas into energy efficient light bulbs. Most states are beginning to heavily subsidize them anyway and now you're saving money on your power bills. Now you're saving money in three places, and savings will continue to pay off so long as you mantain that lifestyle.
But what is more important? 200 channels of television. I bet you don't even watch half of them. The road to actual financial independance, and not just the laywers on the radio who want to erase your debt so you can dig yourself back in again, isn't that far away if you could just suck it up, turn off the TV, and do it.
There is something apparently fundamentally missing here, and that is the ability of the American population in general to budget, to understand that conservation of mass exists outside of a textbook. You can make all the congressional and bank bail-out jokes you want but I'd like to see you put down that daily latte while you do it. Your latte at $3.99 5 days a week for 50 working weeks a year costs you $997.50 a year or, if you insist on blowing it, easily a hawaiian vacation. Is a $70 dollar a month cell phone plan with data instead of the $40 dollar voice and text one really worth it? That's another 360 dollars you could have. Do you buy a $5 dollar lunch every day at work? Materials to pack a lunch cost about $1. That's another approximately 1000 dollars you could have every year, want to go to Hawaii a second time with that? Unless you are fabulously rich I can't see how this is something to just shrug off, and even if you are, fucking blow your money with a little bit of style at least. 10 minutes a day you don't have to spend making yourself a sandwich? What sort of vacation is that. You probably blow about 10 minutes a day on commercials if you watch a single half hour of television.
"Bank of America introduces new 'keep the change' program to help YOU save!"
Eternally a sucker for free money, I ask the teller to explain the system to me. He says that for the first few months of this system every time you make a debit card purchase the charge is rounded up to the nearest dollar and moved to your savings account from your checking. For a brief time (a month or so) Bank of America will match these deposits doubling your money. That much sounded quite nice. After that, the teller explained, Bank of America will continue to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and move the remaining money from your checking to your savings account.
"Why?" I asked.
"To help you save money!"
How MORONIC is that? You will incrementally hide my own money from me so I don't know it exists and I'll save it?
***
Magpie is looking to buy a house. Sometimes when we are going someplace in the car he shows me neighborhoods he is considering. We, with gleeful political incorrectness, call the number of satellite televisions to visibly broken things on the exterior of a house the "ghettoness ratio." It is what we consider the fundamental measure of how likely the average poor person in that areas is to stay poor. That 100+ dollar bill a month is slowly killing that family's budget because they have not realized that it is not the cost of the bill presented to you that matters so much as the cost of the bill over the time span it covers.
You could make your exhaust work right on your car if you could just cut that 100+ dollar satellite bill for six months. Once that is fixed your car will get better milage per gallon, put that money you don't spend on gas into energy efficient light bulbs. Most states are beginning to heavily subsidize them anyway and now you're saving money on your power bills. Now you're saving money in three places, and savings will continue to pay off so long as you mantain that lifestyle.
But what is more important? 200 channels of television. I bet you don't even watch half of them. The road to actual financial independance, and not just the laywers on the radio who want to erase your debt so you can dig yourself back in again, isn't that far away if you could just suck it up, turn off the TV, and do it.
***
There is something apparently fundamentally missing here, and that is the ability of the American population in general to budget, to understand that conservation of mass exists outside of a textbook. You can make all the congressional and bank bail-out jokes you want but I'd like to see you put down that daily latte while you do it. Your latte at $3.99 5 days a week for 50 working weeks a year costs you $997.50 a year or, if you insist on blowing it, easily a hawaiian vacation. Is a $70 dollar a month cell phone plan with data instead of the $40 dollar voice and text one really worth it? That's another 360 dollars you could have. Do you buy a $5 dollar lunch every day at work? Materials to pack a lunch cost about $1. That's another approximately 1000 dollars you could have every year, want to go to Hawaii a second time with that? Unless you are fabulously rich I can't see how this is something to just shrug off, and even if you are, fucking blow your money with a little bit of style at least. 10 minutes a day you don't have to spend making yourself a sandwich? What sort of vacation is that. You probably blow about 10 minutes a day on commercials if you watch a single half hour of television.
***
"She's on the Atkins diet," he said.
My mentor, Rokelbee, rolled his eyes.
"No you have heard of that one haven't you? It really works. It was proven..."
"They have been saying that on every new diet fad that has ever come out in my entire life. It will be gone in two years, you wait and see. There are no subsitutes for eating right, for getting exercize, and for common sense. That is just how the world works."
My mentor, Rokelbee, rolled his eyes.
"No you have heard of that one haven't you? It really works. It was proven..."
"They have been saying that on every new diet fad that has ever come out in my entire life. It will be gone in two years, you wait and see. There are no subsitutes for eating right, for getting exercize, and for common sense. That is just how the world works."
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