thependulumswings

Did you participate in the mad dash for your cash called Black Friday?  In today’s world you can “save” money without out even getting in the car.   Retailers provide brick and mortar locations and virtual locations to entice you.

For your sanity we hope that if you did it did not involve any time on Thanksgiving Day itself, or waiting in line for a store to open, or a swift elbow to the ribs around a “sale” table, or a parking lot demolition derby.  If you did venture out, did you get what you needed?  Or, did you get what you wanted?

Boom Boom directed the Purchasing Dept. for much of his 32 year career at Dixie Machine Welding and Metal Works.  He called it “The Dixie.”  If The Dixie was buying something, anything, his name was on the purchase order eventually.  He asked all who worked for him, “do we need this, or do we want it?”

Naturally this mantra permeated our family life.  If you asked for something, he asked “is this a need, or a want?”  If you didn’t answer correctly you had no shot of getting what you needed or wanted.  If you did answer correctly “wants” often went wanting.  In the mid seventies I wanted a pair of Adidas basketball shoes.  They sure looked like they could make me run faster and jump higher.  “Your Converse basketball shoes are fine.  You don’t need new shoes.  What are you going to do with two pairs of shoes that serve the same purpose?”

I suppose his upbringing through the Great Depression might have driven this careful thinking like other words of wisdom that he lived by and shared often.  Perhaps more people should live by them as well.  A recent survey details the utter failure of a prosperous generation of baby boomers to save enough money to afford retirement, much less enjoy it.  The survey details that an astonishing 80% of Americans aged 55 to 71 have not saved enough to retire.

In short, they “want” to retire, but they “need” to work.  The sooner one learns the want v. need lesson the better.