Dear You,
It's mid-April, so that means the IRS quietly removed from my savings account the money I owed in taxes for 2007. That same day, with just as little fuss, the bank took money I owed on the house "up North": principal, interest, and escrow on the mortgage. The process, called ACH I think, is used by a variety of creditors throughout the month to pay my bills. Even the church gets its share.
I think of "money" these days in the same way I think of the multi-colored scrip I use when playing Monopoly with grandchildren. Oh, it stings when I land on Brandon's or Joshua's property and have to shell out $1800 in rent . . . but only for a moment. I know that all I have to do is pass GO and I'll have more.
And at my age, it's just as easy to get the money replaced in my bank account. The trip around the board of Life involves waking up each morning until the day the calendar page flips to a new month. When I check my accounts on the computer, I've passed GO -- all that money the ACH process removed the previous month is back, and a little more. So it's not a "zero sum game" -- not quite, anyway!
The other day I stooped to retrieve someone's lost quarter. It felt good in my hand, and it was enough to insert into the nearby newspaper box to buy that day's copy of the St. Petersburg Times. Even as I heard the coin clunk in its little box I knew it had no intrinsic worth -- how many years has it been since a U. S. quarter-dollar held even a smidgen of silver?
Yes, it's all just a game.
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
My Life, in shreds
Dear You,
Shakespeare wrote: Who steals my purse steals trash; / ’t is something, nothing;’ Twas mine, ’tis his, /and has been slave to thousands; /But he that filches from me my good name /Robs me of that which not enriches him /And makes me poor indeed. Wasn't he farsighted, though, in anticipating "identity theft"?
Today in fact it is far better that someone steals the moneybag from your car (oops! Did I just let on that I have one in mine?) than some documents from your mailbox. I bought a shredder recently -- and although it's generally too troublesome to carry the junk mail to the basement and the little diamond-shaped remains back up, I know I SHOULD be doing it. When I'm cleaning out the files of old records, the grinding noise in the background at least gives me the illusion that I'm protecting myself against an increasingly dangerous world.
As I am doing all this, however, it does not escape my thoughts that here is just another bit of evidence that there really were "good old days." I still remember leaving campsites all day with possessions in plain sight on the picnic table. I recall that if there were locks on the doors to the houses I grew up in, they most certainly were not locked. (What if the neighbors need something and we're not home? my mother would have asked.)
Simply put, honesty and trust were in greater coinage then; today too many are busily stealing them. Too much has already been shredded.
Shakespeare wrote: Who steals my purse steals trash; / ’t is something, nothing;’ Twas mine, ’tis his, /and has been slave to thousands; /But he that filches from me my good name /Robs me of that which not enriches him /And makes me poor indeed. Wasn't he farsighted, though, in anticipating "identity theft"?
Today in fact it is far better that someone steals the moneybag from your car (oops! Did I just let on that I have one in mine?) than some documents from your mailbox. I bought a shredder recently -- and although it's generally too troublesome to carry the junk mail to the basement and the little diamond-shaped remains back up, I know I SHOULD be doing it. When I'm cleaning out the files of old records, the grinding noise in the background at least gives me the illusion that I'm protecting myself against an increasingly dangerous world.
As I am doing all this, however, it does not escape my thoughts that here is just another bit of evidence that there really were "good old days." I still remember leaving campsites all day with possessions in plain sight on the picnic table. I recall that if there were locks on the doors to the houses I grew up in, they most certainly were not locked. (What if the neighbors need something and we're not home? my mother would have asked.)
Simply put, honesty and trust were in greater coinage then; today too many are busily stealing them. Too much has already been shredded.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Budgeting
Dear You,
Over the years I've come to understand that we have only two things to spend: Time and Money. It is also clear to me that no one spends these things in the same way.
My mind goes back to a moment when I was standing in an electronics store with my then-wife (I'll call her M. here . . . and whenever she pops up in my musings). I was looking at a turntable, and when M. said, "But you don't need it" I answered, "I want it." The comeback was quick: "Well, that's it then." She understood the difference before I did. (I add, with a pang, that I was neither so wise nor generous, when some weeks later M. wanted to purchase some things for the house that we might both have enjoyed. Ahhh, hindsight.)
Time is the same way. Thoreau remarked, "As if you can kill Time without injuring Eternity." Smart guy, Henry D. If I spend time writing my thoughts in this blog instead of, say, re-reading "Walden," who is to say yes or no to that?
Whatever the commodity, the key is budgeting. One of these days the Money may run out. For certain, Time will.
Over the years I've come to understand that we have only two things to spend: Time and Money. It is also clear to me that no one spends these things in the same way.
My mind goes back to a moment when I was standing in an electronics store with my then-wife (I'll call her M. here . . . and whenever she pops up in my musings). I was looking at a turntable, and when M. said, "But you don't need it" I answered, "I want it." The comeback was quick: "Well, that's it then." She understood the difference before I did. (I add, with a pang, that I was neither so wise nor generous, when some weeks later M. wanted to purchase some things for the house that we might both have enjoyed. Ahhh, hindsight.)
Time is the same way. Thoreau remarked, "As if you can kill Time without injuring Eternity." Smart guy, Henry D. If I spend time writing my thoughts in this blog instead of, say, re-reading "Walden," who is to say yes or no to that?
Whatever the commodity, the key is budgeting. One of these days the Money may run out. For certain, Time will.
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