RE-Cycle: You Charge How Much? For WHAT!?!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

You Charge How Much? For WHAT!?!

OOOkee, Dokey!
As we have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and adopted the use of a (*shudder*) cash register (not to mention having to charge and claim tax....) has created the need for coinage. Before we worked in solid dollar amounts so their was no need. Well after having exhausted our coin jar at home, I stopped by Amscot (the closest and ONLY financial institution in the neighborhood in walking distance) this morning and inquired about buying some rolls. Now granted it has been a few years since I had to change bills into coins (it's usually the other way around, usually when the water bill comes due) but when I was told it costs $.50 a roll I was stunned to say the least. Their quick retort was that the bank charged THEM for rolls of coins.
hmmmm.
Either I am being simultaneously lied to AND screwed, or they are one poorly run business. Would anyone requiring such a large amount of change on hand be stupid enough to pay an additional $.50 for a fifty cent roll of pennies? If that were the case may I suggest you install a CoinStar in your lobby and purchase a coin rolling machine. You know, the same one the BANK uses to roll the coins. Would save you some SERIOUS bank!
ANOTHER RANT...
Whilst perusing the Yahoo News prior to checking my mail caught wind of this story from Australia. Seems a billionaire Mining heiress has been taken to court by her kids because she cut them off from their inheritance, saying that instead they needed to get a real job. Siting their inability to manage money and their unwillingness to work for their supper, to coin a phrase.
OK, where do I stand on this issue?
tough call.
On the one hand I applaud her desire to make her children understand the benefit and necessity of working a full days work for a full days pay. And the author of the piece questioned her efforts at raising the kids and had she spent their informative years showing them what it MEANT to work a full day. She herself inherited her wealth, so had she in fact worked at all in HER life. Is their more venom in her efforts then patriarchal concern? The writer also sites how a child living in affluence cannot be expected to put out an effort later in life to support themselves. Well here's where we enter a "?" area. Angela and I have shown our kids throughout their lives the necessity for hard work, both at home and at work. if dad doesn't work, we go hungry, or homeless. If mom doesn't work at home they don't eat and the flies start to build up a formidable army and yet, regardless of all our efforts, threats and red face tantrums we are hard pressed to get them to put out the effort to do something as strenuous as flush a toilet! Forget about getting them to WORK! Our sixteen year old, although helpful to a point with the baby, will be damned to take advantage of work for cash offered by dad at the shop. After several times of being told "if you want the money you so desperately "NEED" then come to the shop, work for a few hours, and make some scratch!
NOT so much.
Guess he really didn't NEED it.
So where does the Parental example end and the childhood stubbornness begin?
Nowadays kids seem to expect everything handed to them, as an unfortunate side effect of our "instant gratification" life style has seen fit.
If I may offer a compromise. Set up a trust, predicated on the understanding that each child has a certain amount of year in which to establish a career, work a length of time and receive a managed trust at the end of that time period.
Hey, think of it as the ultimate "performance" bonus!
Here's the goodies WE worked on yesterday. The Bonus is yours!