Here\u2019s the word of the day: money.<\/p>\n
OK, that\u2019s a big topic. So we\u2019ll take a little slice from the small end of it. And here, when it comes to personal finance, there seem to be two competing schools of thought over small expenditures. Me, I don\u2019t have any answers, but I\u2019m always good for some beach chair commiseration as we ponder the questions.<\/p>\n
Anyway, one school of thought, which is the laidback outlook, says that you shouldn\u2019t worry about expenditures under $10. If you want it, buy it.<\/p>\n
The arguments in favor of this approach probably overlap each other a bit, but with that in mind, I\u2019ll mention a few.<\/p>\n
One advantage of the laidback technique is that it\u2019s easy. It therefore frees up your attention for bigger issues.<\/p>\n
Another element is that life is more pleasant when you indulge the little pleasures as they cross your path. After all, life is short, and, worse yet, it\u2019s uncertain, so we should gather our rosebuds while we may.<\/p>\n
And yet another point here, one that has some scientific juice in behavioral economics, is that if you over-exert your willpower by denying yourself the little things that you want, you\u2019ll eventually fatigue that willpower. In this vulnerable state, you run the risk of getting snared by a big thing. So, if you refuse yourself the pleasure of the little things, so the theory goes, you might wind up buying a shiny red sports car on impulse.<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019ll entertain the opposite school of thought. We can call this the penny-pinching viewpoint. And, indeed, pennies do add up to dollars, and dollars do add up to thousands of dollars, and so on.<\/p>\n
Frugality is a virtue of long standing in both eastern and western cultures. Ben Franklin, for example, is credited with the observation, \u201cA penny saved is a penny earned.\u201d If that Yankee practicality doesn\u2019t float your boat, then we can go way back, as in 2,500 years back, to the famous Chinese \u201cDao De Jing,\u201d which lists \u201cfrugality\u201d as one of the three treasures of the sage.<\/p>\n
Even the simplest bean counting sure speaks for itself on this note. If your wallet seeps just $10 a day, that\u2019s $300 a month, and, well, now we\u2019re talking real money. It sure adds up fast; that\u2019s the scary thing.<\/p>\n
Anyway, such is my summary of these two concepts. The $10 threshold I mentioned is an old one. If you want to account for inflation you could easily justify $20 to provide contemporary equivalence. But what matters more than the dollar amount is the whole idea of either worrying about or not worrying about small expenditures, however you choose to define them.<\/p>\n
Me, I\u2019m in the laidback camp, probably owing to innate laziness. I just don\u2019t want to invest my scant brainpower in agonizing over small expenditures.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, many of my jobs have involved utterly uncertain travel schedules, which is a stressful enough way to live, so I was never tempted to compound the stress by fretting over expenditures. If there\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve learned when traveling, it\u2019s to make things easy on myself. That way, I can conserve my patience and my energy for my actual work duties.<\/p>\n
If my wallet is a bit leaky on the road, I\u2019ll admit it\u2019s not much tighter in an office. For example, during the times I\u2019ve been pinned down to a desk job, I\u2019ve never been able to resist going out with the pals for lunch instead of brown-bagging it. Saipan, in particular, is a high-noon paradise, since many restaurants make a workday lunch too enjoyable to pass up.<\/p>\n
Before I get a stern finger-wagging aimed at me, I\u2019ll gently offer a reminder that I\u2019m merely talking about personal walking-around cash, not heavy budgeting issues, and not corporate financial management.<\/p>\n
So the fact remains that we all have a threshold at which we\u2019ll invest emotional energy in a contemplated expenditure, and it\u2019s something we deal with, consciously or not, every single day. And so the distinction between petty cash, and being petty about cash, is one we have to decide for ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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