Right. You have heard the phrase spend a dollar to save a nickel right? If not, it goes on the premise of people actually spending more to save something that is technically worth less than what they are spending to save it.
My favorite example….washing out ziploc bags. Now…I’m a bit of a “greenie” and like to save money and I do reuse ziploc bags…but I have my limits. For instance, if I have a baggie that had crackers in it. I probably will use it the next day to put crackers in for my lunch. If I put left over bacon in it…I’m NOT using potable water and dishsoap to clean it and reuse it. I mean…come on. (but I know people who do this)
I hear a lot of things, you know, and most of the time I am not surprised at the nutty things people do. But one I heard tonight had me simply cracking up.
Imagine this. We have a n owner of a tavern. She has no driver’s license (I did not ask why she didn’t have one…I am just assuming…you know what I mean). Alright. So…she had the bar open on Sundays for football games but it was getting slow…so, she decided to close on Sundays. For several months she has been closed on Sundays.
Now…she has decided to open again on Sunday. No advertisements about it anywhere. Wants the bartender to open at 1pm. The game starts at Noon.
This is the same woman who wants employees to dump the garbage into the dumpster and then SAVE THE BAG.
Has it hit you yet? She is going to pay someone $7.00 per hour for 8 hours to sit in a bar on a Sunday when she has been closed on Sundays for over a month. She is not advertising a reopening on Sunday. This means she is going to shell out $56.00 (before taxes), plus lights & heating and whatever else her running expenses are. And she’s worried about saving a trash bag?
Is it only hilarious to me?
This reminds me of something I heard on National Public Radio this morning. At least I think it was this morning…it was around 5am and coffee wasn’t done yet. It could have been yesterday.
I don’t remember the whole story but there was a woman they were interviewing in California. She was distressed and teary while talking. She said her bank would not work with her to lower her mortgage payment. Her mortgage payment was $4500.00. She said that if they could lower it to $3000.00 for a while, they could make it. But as it was, she was losing her home.
I understand what it is to lose a home. I understand what it is to be so close to making ends meet but no one willing to give a little and help you out. But…it really seems to me, if you could not arrange or see it coming (that you would not make your bills) to do something about it before it got bad.
I arranged a smaller interest rate with my bank this past May. By September they were refusing to lower anyone else’s. Good thing I thought ahead I guess. When you have lost one home that you worked hard to provide for you and your daughter, you just aren’t going to let it happen again. Not going to happen again. Course my second house is not nearly as nice as the first…but the payment was lower than most people’s rent…and now it’s really low.
