TheBanyanTree: Bag Lady

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Have you ever heard of a bag lady who died and they found a million dollars
stuffed in her mattress?  Well, that bag lady could be my coworker Sue.  She
’s absolutely amazing in how cheap she is.

When Sue’s father died a few years back, his family found $15,000 stashed in
the back of the refrigerator.  Obviously, the guy didn’t trust banks.  Sue
told me he would slap his children if they left a light on in a room they
weren’t using.  He taught them to watch for bargains.  He taught them never
to turn down a free meal.

So Sue took his lessons to heart.  Her small house is paid for.  She will
pay for any of the major upkeep required to keep it from collapsing, but she
won’t do the normal day by day to keep her home looking nice.

For example, she wanted to sell her house when the market was booming.  She
wouldn’t do any painting or recarpeting or decluttering necessary to sell
the home, because it would cost money.  Her real estate told her she had to
pick up the clothes, throw out the beer cans, and clean it up a bit in order
to sell it.  Sue responded by spending a Saturday scrubbing down the shower
which she hadn’t cleaned in three years.  Sue felt buyers should see the
“potential” of the home without her having to do anything.  Needless to say,
her house never sold, not even in that hot market.

To be honest, Sue looks like a bag lady.  She has thick and graying hair
which she grows during the winter.  When spring comes, she gets her hair
shaved off, and begins the process of letting it grow for another year.

She wears clothes that I swear are 20 years old.  They’re faded and torn and
now are too tight for her.  Sue’s put on a few pounds across her middle, but
she keeps squeezing into them anyway.

Going out to eat with Sue is really interesting.  If someone else is paying
for the meal, then she doesn’t say a thing, but if she has to pay for
herself, then all that comes out of her mouth are comments about the lack of
service, how rotten the food is, how expensive everything is, etc.  We
stopped asking her to go out to eat with us, because her complaining is so
bad and eliminates any other conversation.  I guess she expects a gourmet
meal for $6.  She won’t leave a tip, feeling the waiter or waitress makes
enough money without anything extra from her.

When we went out to eat this week (paid for by our company), Sue and I were
getting salads.  There was a bowl of cracker packages by the salad bar and
Sue proceeded to start shoving about 20 of those packages in her pocket.
Then she ordered a HUGE sandwich, and I couldn’t figure out why, until it
dawned on me that Sue did that to have extra food to bring home on our
company’s dime.

During the winter, she keeps her thermostat very low.  If she could go
through a winter without using her heat, she would be in heaven.  In the
summer, she refuses to use her air conditioner, no matter how hot and humid
it gets.  She’ll complain and complain about how she can’t sleep, but darn,
she will not use the air conditioner, preferring to stay miserable, I guess,
to save a penny.

She only does her dishes once a week no matter how many there are to save on
the water.  She made her live-in boyfriend dismantle his small aquarium,
because it was running up the electricity bill.

Sue has a lot of money stashed in various accounts.  She used to open new
IRA accounts every year for a tax deduction until a financial person told
her she didn’t have to do that and helped bring all her IRA accounts under
one roof.

See, Sue knows how to hoard money, but she doesn’t understand money.  She
won’t hire a financial planner, because she feels they’re “after something,”
which means she doesn’t want to pay someone to help her get the most out of
her money.  She won’t read financial books, because she finds that stuff
“boring.”  She loves Oprah and in turn loves Suze Orman, and told me she
does everything Suze says to do with money.  But when I asked her if she
read any of Suze’s books, she said no.  So the only Suze she gets is what
she sees on Oprah.  I imagine that’s a pretty limited view.

Sue says she would like to go to school, and our company has a tuition
reimbursement program, but she would have fork out the money first, so she
doesn’t pursue it.  Sue says she would like to travel, but she’s waiting for
a deal that would offer free transportation and hotel expenses.  That’s not
going to happen.  She would love to go to shows and movies, but waits for
free tickets, which don’t come her way.

So Sue spends her days coming and going from work.  When she gets home, she
watches Oprah, cooks dinner, and falls asleep by 7 pm.  Her fear of not
having money paralyzes her.  Whenever she thinks of going to school, buying
a new house, straightening out her money, she realizes she’ll have to pay
for it, and then uses that rationale to talk herself out of any changes.
And her life goes on as it is.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.skywaybpw.org
Skyway Business and Professional Women
Working women connecting.

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun.
Enjoy the trip.

~Author Unknown