"There's just no way to make ends meet!"

2/25/07

The kids asked at Mass this morning if we could stop for donuts on the way home. Why not? We don’t go that often and, unfortunately, our kids aren’t crazy about Mass, especially at our parish, which, one suspects, would be far happier had Vatican II never taken place, and so a little reward, maybe a bribe, might have been in order.

We stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts and got three donuts and two hot chocolates. The bill came to $5.51. My first thought, as a financial guy, was “Wow! This is a profitable business.” But my second thought was far more profound.

There are millions of Americans who stop at Dunkin’ Donuts or its equivalent every day for a donut or two and coffee. Say the typical bill is not $5.51, as ours was, but $3.00. Doubtless many of those millions of Americans are complaining about how they can’t make ends meet, how they have to put in outrageous hours, how both parents in a family simply must work to keep the family going. Why, there is no alternative! These aren’t people who indulge in luxuries! Indeed, they are making a huge sacrifice by forsaking Starbuck’s for Dunkin’ Donuts. Everyone stops for a donut and coffee, right?

The math is obvious to most. $3.00 a day is $66.00 per month (assuming that our financially distraught whiner stops only on work days, not every day). $66 month is $792 per year. Over 20 years, at a conservative 5% per year interest rate, that money would accumulate to $26,188. This is money that is being frittered away on nothing but empty calories.

“Empty calories!” our put upon subject would reply. “Why, I need my coffee in the morning. It is the very fuel behind my work! And who can drink coffee without a donut? I need my nutrition in the morning!” The answer to our subject’s argument about donuts and nutrition is easily answerable: empty calories, negative nutrition. On the coffee, what is wrong, one might ask, with making one’s own coffee? With even the most modest of coffeemakers currently available, it takes a few minutes at most and produces coffee at pennies per cup. The cost of the coffeemaker can be recouped within a week or two of its purchase. But rather than stoop to making his or her own coffees, our modern American hyper-consumer will mindlessly fritter away and whine about how tough it is to keep his or her financial head above water.

The Insightful Pontificator