A Thought for Thursday – Penny for Your Thoughts
There are two schools of thought on pennies:
School 1 – I’ll call it the “old school” - Exemplified by an elderly lady I know who cannot pass by a penny anywhere – on the ground – on a table – in a store — without taking it. She says that every cent is valuable and that the accumulation of all those 1 cent pieces adds up. She’s obviously a child of the Great Depression (1929 variety), when people got used to hoarding things and stuffing money in mattresses.
School 2 – I’ll call it the “new school” - Exemplified by Valerie of Thinking Out Loud Blog, who says: If a penny of mine falls on the ground, I know it’s going to cost me more energy to pick it up than it’s really worth, so I leave it there.
I tend more toward the old school and my interest in the Law of Attraction. Picking up a penny is somehow a good omen. It means you attract money and if you don’t pick it up you are rejecting that attraction between yourself and money. OK, that sounds crazy, but you never know.
Like many other Baby Boomers, I didn’t grow up during the Depression, but my parents lived through it, and their stories had an effect on me. Maybe it was negative – I was horrified, for example, to find that my mother had hoarded aluminum foil for many years. When we cleaned our her home, we found 19 boxes of foil. We Baby Boomers have gotten our (deserved) reputation as spenders in part because we don’t want to be hoarders like our parents.
So what is your attitude toward money? Do you figure every penny is worth saving? Or is it just too much trouble and we should be getting rid of all those pennies?
Vote on my poll – I’m curious.