I walked over a dime the other day..
Saw it, shiny and silver, and strode with my dog on a leash, right over the dime on a sidewalk. I barely thought about it until I started thinking about it.
I used to pick up pennies. I think now I would bend down to pick up a quarter. This is terrible, I began thinking. It’s money for goodness sake. I can certainly see passing over a penny, maybe even a nickel but a DIME. I’m now walking past one-tenth of a dollar. I could buy …. um, ….what can I buy with a dime? Used to be a dime to call someone from a telephone booth.
What’s a telephone booth? You ask.
Aye yi yi.
Is it inflation or aging? Or both. I sometimes let my shoes go untied rather than bending over with my aching back and tired knees and ankles.
But I say a part of it is the erosion of American values. My grandparents were Depression-era folks who knew how to save money and make things last. My now deceased father-in-law was a child of the Depression in way small town Epes (In Alabama near LIvingston).Bill Willis would take one tissue, tear it half and put it in his pocket for later use — all before blowing his nose in the one-half tissue that was left. That can save a lot of tissue over time. Toilet paper too, I suppose, but I’d rather not go there.
So what is your coin cut-off. Pictured at the top of the story are a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a Liberty dollar coin and just for fun, a $2 bill and some sort of Asian coin like thing that I was given for good luck in California. Don’t know what it is exactly but I would definitely stop and pick it up.
Which one, If you saw them lying on a sidewalk, would you stop, bend over and pick up?
I guess I learned that my threshold is not a dime.
From here on, I vow to stop and pick up dimes. I’ll assess nickels on a case-by-case basis.
Sorry pennies but for me a penny saved hurts my back more then the meager return on my investment.
But I’ll keep my eyes on the PPI. (Penny Pinching Index).