Nov 30th, 2008
My Black Friday Contribution to the U.S. Economy
I’m not so cheap that I don’t want to spend any money; quite frankly, if you can restrict yourself to the true “deals”, you can do quite well if it’s stuff that you’d be buying anyway (or gifts for the holidays). But this year, my real contribution on Black Friday was:
$500 to Honda Windward, my deductible for truck repair;
$224.20 to Hotwire, for my car rental;
$10 in cash to a couple of friends for giving me rides during this tough time.
GEICO’s share of this was more than $800. Yes, I’ll get 5% in rebates on the repair and rental, but that’s only a small bit of the total that I shell out of pocket. Still, I’m lucky; at least I have that money to do the repairs necessary. To this day, I still don’t feel angry toward the individuals who did this; I just feel sorry that they were that desperate. It’s sad, though; just think how much good that money could have done donated to a social service agency or given out in gifts to those in need. But instead, it’s now in the hands of the repair shop and the car rental company, which will help their businesses, but not as many as it could have.
[...] The unfortunate part is that when I look at my various accounts this year, it’s hard to believe that’s true. My investment accounts are all down considerably; my emergency fund was its fine and dandy usual self until I needed to pay for the truck repair. [...]