It was late in the day at Waterloo. Wellington had chosen the high ground. For hours, the British withstood wave after wave of attacks. Their orderly and well-disciplined lines did not break. Finally, as the sun was lowering in the sky, Napolean unleashed his vaunted Imperial Guard, but soon thereafter, they would break and run. Wellington then rode up with his sword in the air and said in a cool and nonchalant manner “in for a penny, in for a pound” and lowered his sword; the entire British army gave chase, thus ending the Battle of Waterloo and the Corsican tyrant’s despotic grip on Europe.
Ah, pennies and pounds! The Brits have lots of aphorisms dealing with money. My favorite and the one most applicable to me is “penny wise and pound foolish.” My ancestry is mostly English with a smattering of Scots in the woodpile. However, when it comes to money, my dominant genes come from the Land of Cakes. I’m all Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Scots of course are famous for their scrimping frugality.
I’m here to publicly disclose that I have an addiction to penny-wise-pound-foolishness (PWPF), a disease now recognized by the Centers of Disease Control and the National Institute of Health. Along with my good friend Terrell Bowers, we’ve started a nationwide self-help group.
How many times have I tried to save a nickel and it ends up costing me 10 bucks? Yet, I can’t help it! I know I shouldn’t be this way. I can afford not to be this way. My parsimonious Scots DNA takes control of all voluntary senses. Like the alcoholic who knows he shouldn’t have a drink, I know I shouldn’t always default to buying the “cheap.” I know it will have consequences. I know it will end up costing me, yet I need that “save money” dopamine hit. I know before I do it that I will feel guilty that I did it!
I’ve noticed that the women in my life ( daughters and multiple ex-wives) will throw most anything in the shopping cart without looking at the price. When I see this, I about have a Fred Sanford heart attack! I’ve never, not once in my entire life, bought anything without looking at the price tag. In fact, in a supercomputer nano-second, I break down the costs on a per unit measurement basis, the cost per ounce, per pound, per foot, per hour, per minute, etc. Yesterday, I was at Lowe’s looking to buy simple Christmas lights for the plant holding urns on my front porch. I spent a half an hour comparing the costs of battery-operated lights to electric lights. I had to consider the cost of the batteries and amortize them over their likely life, compared to the costs of the lights plus extension cord and calculate the net present value of the electrical usage over a similar lifespan. All of this for an $11 purchase. I have an addiction! Thank God for PWPF Anonymous!
Last week, I flew out to California. I spent 2-3 hours beforehand trying to get the best deal on airfare, hotel costs and car rentals. I had choices. I could fly at a reasonable time and have a large seat in the front of the plane, or I could fly the discount airline with all the slovenly dressed, disgusting fat people that required me to leave for the airport at 3:30 in the morning. I also reserved the discount off site car rental. I won’t bore you with my travel misfortunes, but all these bad choices ended up costing me way more than I saved. I knew at the outset they would, but I did it anyway.
I used to own a sporty Jaguar. It needed new tires. Knowing that I was going to trade it in a few months, I went to the really sketchy part of town to the Mexican tire shop and bought 4 retreads, installed for $90. Two of them blew out before I got home. I once had a guy working at my house, paying him $50/hour. We needed a bunch of lumber. In order to save $50 and keep him working, I said I would go fetch it. Well, that cost me $1,800 as the extra weight blew out the struts in Gunther, my expensive to repair German car. I literally had a stack of 12 foot 2 x 4s protruding out of my luxury car’s sun roof. I had no headroom. I had to scrunch down mid-steering wheel to drive off. I looked like one of those 13-year-old kids you see on the news who just stole a car. What the hell is wrong with me (this is the kind of stuff we talk about at our PWPFA meetings)?
Terrell lives in the South Carolina Low Country. We’ve done lots of business together and have lived through all the economic downturns from 1990 on. About every two weeks one of us calls the other to laugh at ourselves and tell our “latest penny wise, pound foolish” story. Recently, Terrell was having a fancy charitable function at his house and needed an extra cooler for the bartenders.
He went online and found that the cooler he wanted could be bought for $9.89 cheaper an hour away in Charleston. What did Terrell do? You guessed it. This disease is not about being a Scrooge, or even about money. Terrell is one of the most charitable guys I know who has a long history of good works as long as my arm. I’m not as nice a guy as Terrell, but I actually enjoy spending money on friends and family. PWPF is like Tourette’s, it just comes on out of nowhere and you can’t help it. The probability of having this disease is greatly enhanced for those of us who have seen the black swan.
Admittedly, there are good and bad elements to my psychosis. If one runs his own company and is in the habit of looking at a long list of variable expenses, one knows how much savings a reduction of a percent of sales here or there adds up, especially over a long period of time. As the Scots say, “mony a mickle maks a muckle!” I once had a company with over 300 employees. There were days when I just didn’t feel like spending any money. On more than one occasion, my senior management watched me pull up to a gas station on empty and only put a 3-4 dollars of gas in my car. The company was doing tens of millions in sales. Under any system of financial analysis, this made no sense. Yet, having my senior staff repeatedly witness my abstentious ways may have made an impression on them to be more money conscious. Then again, it may have also illustrated that they were working for a neurotic nut.
I know what things should cost because my mind has always calculated the sum of all labor, goods and expenses in every item or service I contemplate buying. I calculate the cost to manufacture, distribute and sell and then I reverse engineer it all in my head. This analysis works well on purchases of a certain dollar amount, but can be a debilitating, mentally insane neurosis when buying $10 Christmas lights at Lowe’s!
In my line of work, I see a lot of personal financial statements, and am always amazed at how people who make a ton of money have very little money. I don’t regret my Scots DNA, in many ways it has served me well. Yet, at other times, I need help! Recognizing one has a problem is the first step in recovery, and the best medicine is always laughter.
Therefore, if you would like to join Terrell and me in our bi-weekly PWPF therapy sessions, swapping stories and laughing at ourselves, please join in! I will send you a Zoom invite!
“Tho’ his little heart did grieve… He feign’d to snirtle in his sleeve” (Robert Burns, Jolly Beggars, 1786)
