My personal finances and designer coffee

February 15th, 2010

Can a Payday Article pay for 2 coffees and pastries?

I sinned this morning. Somewhere in the Bible there is a commandment, a lesser one, perhaps, but nevertheless a commandment, that says, “Thou shalt not forget”. I forgot, so I paid. This morning my wife had a chore in the adjoining town, saw me sitting blankly in front of the computer and asked if I’d like to come along. With a gasp of relief at having an alternative, I grabbed my car keys and off we went. The business was over in a few minutes and as we walked back to the car she said, “how about morning coffee in the mall?” That was the moment of my sin. Now, too late, I remember the last time we had morning coffee in the mall. But things were different then.

The mall

The mall is huge. Two floors of intense shopping, and to my surprise as a Recession Writer, thronged with people. And most of the people were carrying shopping bags, a sure sign that they are buying or exchanging something they bought that doesn’t fit. The other alternative, I think, is that they are all out there operating on Cash Advance Loans which gives them enough money to make a shopping trip.

The coffee shop

The coffee shop is out of a designer handbook. It features the latest in coffee shop architecture and serves designer coffee to designer housewives wheeling little designer babies. The place is busy and the noise drowns out the coffee music.

We order

My wife orders a small cappuccino and a Danish. I order a medium latte with a shot of caramel syrup and a Danish. The Danish arrive on plates with miniature mounds of cinnamon dust on the side. Delicious! Then we got to the finances.

An article writer

I write articles. An article takes me between 40 and 60 minutes to write, read and send. The average article brings in about $25. The coffee bill:

• 1 small cappuccino                                                         4.75
• 1 medium latte with a shot of caramel syrup       5.50
• 2 Danish pastries with cinnamon in the side      10.00
• Tip                                                                                           2.50
• Total                                                                                     22.75

I’m satisfied

I never do exercises like this in case I come out losing. This particular one came out just fine – I’m quite content to devote an article to a coffee morning in pleasant surroundings which make me feel temporarily flush. Dinner, of course would have been a 3 or 4 article affair depending on the menu. Has my financial life been reduced to an “article scale” in personal economics? I don’t think so, but the article writing side of my life definitely affects the daily pattern.

Last time in the mall

I thought back to our last coffee morning in the same coffee shop in the mall. I was newly unemployed and hurting. The bill for the coffee was probably the same but at that time there were no Payday Articles to the rescue. I cried.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:33 am and is filed under Employment, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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