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Originally published in
the Grand Rapids Business Journal, March 15, 2004.
I'm no spendthrift. At least, I don't think
I am. We seem to have more than our fair share of stuff, but
that's kind of what being an American is all about.
No, the reason I don't think I waste money is that I still
walk around with my college sense of what money is worth. For
example, when I see a $20 bill, I think, "Cool! That's
enough to keep me eating for the next couple of weeks." And
when I hear $100, I think, "That'll cover rent, utilities,
and get me a case of Hamm's beer." Of course this is no
longer true. Our monthly electric bill alone is well north
of that figure and Hamm's is probably sold as an expensive
foreign beer these days ("imported for the land of the
sky-blue waters").
Maybe this is just me getting old, but before I buy nearly
anything I mentally compare the cost to a five pound bag of
generic rice bits (because, of course, a bag of *whole* kernel
white rice is ludicrously expensive and kind of uppity).
It's not as if I never splurged, though. If I had an extra
buck or two, I'd pop for a box of name-brand cereal. Ahhh,
it was a special morning indeed when I had a box of OJs on
the breakfast table. Remember OJs? It was a Kellogg's product.
I might have mentioned them before. They were orange-flavored
cereal, which sounds really disgusting until you think "Creamsicle." They
went off the market in the mid-1980s -- the same time I graduated
from college. Coincidence? I thought it might be, so I looked
in up on the Web. Turns out there's a petition you can sign
to bring 'em back. Check it out: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?bjchsdcb
The reason I mention all this is to establish that I may not
be an industrious ant who saves all his gain, but neither am
I a frivolous grasshopper who spends it all. I am a hard-working,
40 year-old, middle-class fella who saves all he can. But when
I start thinking about retirement, my pancreas hurts. How am
I supposed to save enough for that? Ow.
It's probably a good thing that I think of rice bits often,
because I just may be eating a lot of them in the future. And
no OJs to splurge on....
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