Price Your Paradise

I didn't get much in the way of life wisdom from my parents (I suspect I was switched at the hospital), but there were a few useful chunks. I've already reported the ones from my father (this and this ). The following is from my mother. She never explained herself, but I managed to work out her thinking.

Mom took great pleasure in being able to afford to buy gas wherever was most convenient. Wealthy readers (nearly all of you mo-fos) will not relate. Poor people have a very different sense of luxury.

Here's my poor person's luxury: Soon after I sold my website to a major corporation, I made a short stop in Manhattan en route to dinner. Returning to my car, I found a parking ticket. I didn't go home and pause all recreation until I'd refilled my coffers. I blithely continued on to dinner, where I even ordered not-the-cheapest wine. It may sound odd, but I couldn't have felt wealthier if my apartment were loaded with Picassos.

My mother had spent her youth driving around seeking the cheapest gas. The cheapest everything. So the freedom to pull into any old gas station felt like Paradise. It was her caviar.

That's interesting as-is, but let's approach from a different angle and consider the actual expense. Let's price out her Paradise!

The average driver goes 12,000—15,000 miles annually, and the average fuel economy in 1975 was 13 miles per gallon. So that's about 1000 gallons of gas per year. She wasn't going out of her way for pricier gas, so let's say half was still cheap, and the other half cost 2-15 cents more per gallon. That means she was actually paying around forty bucks annually for Paradise. The cheapest Paradise ever!

My mom, naturally, never did that math. Nor would I have spoiled her glee by pointing it out. But I learned two lessons—the first direct, and the second a bank shot:

1. Sweat the small stuff when it's gleeful sweat. Be petty about pleasure.

2. Price your paradise, and don't be surprised if you can afford it right now.

A friend of mine drooled at the prospect of wealth. He bought lottery tickets galore, and plotted get-rich-quick schemes. His dream was to own mansions in Brazil, Hawaii, and France.

I pointed out that he hated maintaining the house he already owned. There were constant headaches, unreliable carpenters and plumbers, and you can't wave wads of money at the sky to summon a helicopter full of competent people who make your problems vanish. He'd only multiply his misery by owning—Jesus!—three more houses.

Plus, he hated shopping and decorating. All in all, he'd wind up working harder keeping up his housing portfolio than he currently did fabricating tabletops at his day job. And he had responsibilities keeping him local, so he couldn't get away for more than a few weeks per year anyway.

He could skip all the pain without losing a drop of pleasure by opting for high-end resorts in those same locales. Nothing but pure beachy bourgeois luxury! He agreed, so I did the math. He has three open weeks per year. Let's go wild and book $600/night properties. That's $12,600.

If he were to take a weekend job bagging groceries—or sell his Toyota and drive a junker—he could afford Paradise sans windfall.

Realistically, he'd only go away for two weeks and spend the third lounging on the crappy little boat he dearly loved.

Always, always price your Paradise.


N.b. The parking ticket cost $50, and the step-up wine was an extra $6. I could have lived merrily and given myself five of these per year for a mere $280. The problem was that, for my first 42 years, I didn't have the $280, though I worked like a demon.