After a 21-year Air Force career, my father spent nearly forty years in the money business. Officially, he was/is a Certified Financial Planner, helping people understand their money and learn how to make it work for them. It’s an interesting field, one where clients routinely trust him with large amounts of money.
Financial planning is all about the big picture. It’s not about the $5 you dropped at Starbucks yesterday, but about the $5k you put in your retirement fund this year.
Of course, we all know that enough visits to Starbucks and you can literally drink your future away, one caramel mocha latte at a time; which is perhaps why my father chose, at home, to focus not on the big picture of money, but on the minutiae.
Like most of us, there were things on which he focused and things which could be ignored, or justified. I doubt my dad has ever spent $5 on a cup of coffee, and he’d likely consider that a frivolous expense, but a big, thick steak on the grill, every Sunday without fail, well, that was a different matter altogether. When it came to food, my dad, being a child of the Great Depression, placed a high value on having plenty on the table. Big heaping bowls were passed of whatever was on the menu for that meal, and all the kids were encouraged to “eat up.”
But I digress. The minutiae. Long before the term ‘environmentalist’ was a part of the American lexicon, and back when being “green” meant your lunch didn’t agree with you, my dad set out to save the rain forests, one roll of toilet paper at a time. (He didn’t really have the rain forests on his mind, I’m sure, but it sounds more noble.)
My father and mother had four children together, three of them female, and as any reasonable person with a basic understanding of human anatomy knows, girls need more toilet paper than boys. It’s that simple. It is not, as my father suspected, a sinister plot of little girls everywhere to run up the family expenses and clog up the family plumbing.
But, ulterior motives notwithstanding, on more than one occasion, he tried to teach his daughters economy in the toilet tissue realm. We were all gathered from the far-flung corners of our home, herded into the nearest bathroom, and given the toilet tissue lesson. (And don’t roll your eyes at me, child, because ….)
The lesson went something like this: It began with a lecture on the high price of household goods, followed by an assurance that money does not, in fact, grow on trees. Then a roll of toilet paper was secured and my father would carefully tear off two (count them, 2) squares of tissue. He then proceeded to fold them just so, as though he was creating some sort of origami we would proudly display in the living room later. “This,” he said, “is all the toilet paper any reasonable person needs. Carefully folded thusly, we can all get maximum use out of the smallest amount of paper, saving money and the pipes.”
At first, we protested. How could any little girl be expected to accomplish the task in a meaningful way with only two squares? But our protests fell on deaf ears. Later, we got wise. Sure, he’d know that toilet paper was still disappearing at an unacceptable rate, but the door was locked…the bathroom a one-person show. There was virtually no way for him to figure out who was using what. So we nodded in tacit agreement, promised to do better, and bore up through yet another toilet tissue lesson bravely.
I don’t remember my father ever lecturing on other money-saving-related topics. There was no discussion about the cost of gasoline, or the high prices of clothing, entertainment, or education. At least, I don’t remember any.
But I will always remember the toilet paper lecture. And whenever I watch a rerun of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine reaches under a stall in a public restroom, and plaintively begs her neighbor to just “spare a square,” I automatically think, “Elaine, what’s the point? Don’t you know that you need two?”
I'm trying to get back in the habit of writing every day. Lately, I've been working on character sketches. Some of those will find their way here, in the form of individual comments to this post.
Comments
Financial planning is all about the big picture. It’s not about the $5 you dropped at Starbucks yesterday, but about the $5k you put in your retirement fund this year.
Of course, we all know that enough visits to Starbucks and you can literally drink your future away, one caramel mocha latte at a time; which is perhaps why my father chose, at home, to focus not on the big picture of money, but on the minutiae.
Like most of us, there were things on which he focused and things which could be ignored, or justified. I doubt my dad has ever spent $5 on a cup of coffee, and he’d likely consider that a frivolous expense, but a big, thick steak on the grill, every Sunday without fail, well, that was a different matter altogether.
When it came to food, my dad, being a child of the Great Depression, placed a high value on having plenty on the table. Big heaping bowls were passed of whatever was on the menu for that meal, and all the kids were encouraged to “eat up.”
But I digress. The minutiae. Long before the term ‘environmentalist’ was a part of the American lexicon, and back when being “green” meant your lunch didn’t agree with you, my dad set out to save the rain forests, one roll of toilet paper at a time. (He didn’t really have the rain forests on his mind, I’m sure, but it sounds more noble.)
My father and mother had four children together, three of them female, and as any reasonable person with a basic understanding of human anatomy knows, girls need more toilet paper than boys. It’s that simple. It is not, as my father suspected, a sinister plot of little girls everywhere to run up the family expenses and clog up the family plumbing.
But, ulterior motives notwithstanding, on more than one occasion, he tried to teach his daughters economy in the toilet tissue realm. We were all gathered from the far-flung corners of our home, herded into the nearest bathroom, and given the toilet tissue lesson. (And don’t roll your eyes at me, child, because ….)
The lesson went something like this: It began with a lecture on the high price of household goods, followed by an assurance that money does not, in fact, grow on trees. Then a roll of toilet paper was secured and my father would carefully tear off two (count them, 2) squares of tissue. He then proceeded to fold them just so, as though he was creating some sort of origami we would proudly display in the living room later.
“This,” he said, “is all the toilet paper any reasonable person needs. Carefully folded thusly, we can all get maximum use out of the smallest amount of paper, saving money and the pipes.”
At first, we protested. How could any little girl be expected to accomplish the task in a meaningful way with only two squares? But our protests fell on deaf ears. Later, we got wise. Sure, he’d know that toilet paper was still disappearing at an unacceptable rate, but the door was locked…the bathroom a one-person show. There was virtually no way for him to figure out who was using what. So we nodded in tacit agreement, promised to do better, and bore up through yet another toilet tissue lesson bravely.
I don’t remember my father ever lecturing on other money-saving-related topics. There was no discussion about the cost of gasoline, or the high prices of clothing, entertainment, or education. At least, I don’t remember any.
But I will always remember the toilet paper lecture. And whenever I watch a rerun of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine reaches under a stall in a public restroom, and plaintively begs her neighbor to just “spare a square,” I automatically think, “Elaine, what’s the point? Don’t you know that you need two?”