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Let me tell you a story about a parking lot. My fiancé and I went away for the holiday weekend with three other couples. On the afternoon of the 4th, one of the other couples went into town to pick up some supplies, and learned from a local that there was going to be a big fireworks show that night. The local told them that most people here for the weekend would gather in the park, but they’d charge you $8 to park there, so the locals usually park for free at the golf course across the street and watch the fireworks from there.
“What great inside information!” I thought. “We can watch the fireworks for free!” I was apparently alone in my thinking. “The people here are really cheap, they’re not willing to pay for parking, but we can afford to pay for parking, so we should just go park in the lot” said one of my friends.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, the locals are indeed a bit seedy (we were in marijuana country) and we had children in our group, so perhaps my friend just wanted a more wholesome environment for the kids. However, something about the way he said “cheap” made me think that wasn’t the whole reason. There was the implication that the locals had to be cheap because they don’t have a lot of money, but because we are all gainfully employed, there was no reason we shouldn’t pay for the convenience of parking in the lot.
My suspicions were confirmed when, as we were approaching the gate to the parking lot, we spotted a parking space just outside of the lot where we could park for free and walk the extra 50 feet or so to the park – we’d get free parking, and we would be in the park with the tourists rather than the golf course with the locals. “Let’s just park there and walk into the park” I said, which thankfully at least got the agreement of one other person in the car. But despite that person being the one driving the car, she instead listened to her husband, who chimed in with “nah, let’s just go into the lot, it’s fine.”
My fiancé ran an experiment at work. Employees at his office get the very nice benefit of several shelves of snacks and a fully stocked drink fridge, and he is in charge of keeping them stocked. Inside the drink fridge, there are three flavors of sparkling water: lemon, lime, and mixed berry. The lime and mixed berry are stocked on the bottom shelf, and the lemon is stocked on the next shelf up with the orange juice. Every few days when he restocks, he notices that much more of the lemon has been consumed than either the lime or the mixed berry. This week, he decided to switch the lemon with the mixed berry, so the lemon was on the bottom shelf and the mixed berry was on the next shelf up. Sure enough, when he went to restock the fridge, mixed berry was the most consumed flavor.
Yesterday I wrote about the 
Now that another Christmas is past us, I’ve been thinking more about the holiday season, frugality, family, and giving. As perhaps you’ve noticed, I hate the concept of 
