Financial Uproar

Stories are fun, right? Let me start off this post with a story.

I know a guy. Since I’m all nice and discreet and whatnot, I won’t mention his name. Anyway, before a long weekend, he decided he was going to take advantage of his time off and visit his folks. His parents live a few provinces away, so it’s a bit of a trek for him to get home. Wanting to maximize his experience, he decided to ask for the Friday before the long weekend off. And, if you can imagine, his boss had the audacity to say no.

What did he do? Did he go into work and perform well, feeling guilty of asking for time off for something that wasn’t really that important? Did he go into work and half-ass his day like most people reading this blog would do, pouting because his boss is such a jerk?

Nope. He called in sick. By the time his replacement was starting their day, his ass was on a plane heading across the country. This wasn’t an impulsive decision either. This was planned, almost immediately after the initial request for time off was denied.

Where’s The Line?

I would hope, if you have any sort of ethics, you would agree that this type of behavior is wrong. If not, knock yourself out hitting up kids for their lunch money and stuffing your pockets full of office supplies. Just stay away from my house.

Let’s look at another example. Say you’ve been sick for a day or two. It’s really nasty, and you feel as terrible as it gets. So work says don’t worry about coming in for the rest of the week, use it to recover. Well, it’s now Thursday, and you feel fine. You know somebody is covering for you, so there’s really no need to go back to work. What do you do? Do you go back and do the honest thing? Or do you relax and catch up on episodes of Pawn Stars? Now the line isn’t quite so clear, is it?

We can go down this slope all day long. Is stealing a pencil from work really wrong? Most people would argue that it’s just a damn pencil, and that you should just steal away. But what happens if a pencil turns into a stapler? And then the stapler turns into a paper shredder (try smuggling that out under your sweater) which turns into something else, and so on.

At what point do we draw the line?

Does Stealing From A Company Make Us Justify It?

Let’s say you’re shopping online for cheap car insurance. You input all your data, click the submit button, and a quote pops up on the screen. It’s hundreds of dollars less than the quote from any other company.

You take the steps to sign up for this insurance, when you realize that their algorithm is messed up. It’s giving you far too big of a discount for that defensive driving course you took 4 years ago. Would you keep on going with the process, telling yourself it’s okay because it’s a for profit venture that screwed up?

I’m willing to bet that most people reading this post would be willing to take the cheap insurance. Yet I’m also willing to bet that most readers would be honest with the cashier at Wal-Mart if she gave them too much change. If someone can explain the difference between the two situations, it would be helpful. Because, from where I stand, they both are pretty much the same thing.

If the Wal-Mart cashier gives you too much change back, nobody is getting hurt besides the big, bad conglomerate from Arkansas. The cashier isn’t out that extra toonie she gave you. (Canadian reference!) She’s not taken to the back and spanked for her faux pas, unless she’s really sexy and the manager is into that. She’s not out of a job, unless she screws up a lot, in which case she’d be out of a job because of incompetence.

I know a guy who specifically didn’t pay his satellite tv bill for as long as he could get away with it. I would probably lend this guy money, I don’t think he’d intentionally screw anybody. And yet, because he was dealing with a big faceless corporation, he had absolutely no problem milking the system for free tv.

In case anybody is wondering, he got tv for 8 months, basically for the price of 1 month, since he would mail them $20 when they’d really threaten to cut him off. I wouldn’t recommend his methods if you value your credit score.

The reason why people are willing to screw big companies (including the ones they work for) is because they view the big company as having all the advantages, having all the wealth, which they’re just a little guy trying to make ends meet. It’s unfortunate, and we shouldn’t do it, but we’ve all been guilty of it at some point, even just a little.

I’ll leave you with the best example of all. In late 2001, Martha Stewart avoided a $45,000 loss by selling all 3,900 shares of Imclone Systems right before they came out with some bad news, thanks to information supplied by her broker. She was later convicted of insider trading and sentenced to 5 months in jail. Her net worth at the time? Close to 1 billion dollars. That’s not such a good thing.

LIVING IN A LONELY WORLD!!!

SHE TOOK THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN GOING ANYWHERE!

I swear, this post isn’t going to be about Journey. I’m not sure what got into me there. That song is just so much fun to sing. Isn’t it, guys from Family Guy?

As the fine folks from Control Your Cash like to mock me about, I come from a small town in Alberta. My hometown is full of all the rural redneck stereotypes you can think of. Lots of big trucks? Check. Rampant homophobia and racism? Yep. I probably know a full 25% of the people in town – not necessarily by name, but by association. Hey, there’s that guy who works at the Ford dealership. It’s a comfortable existence, if that floats your boat.

For at least half of the graduating class of the high school, they want nothing to do with the small town where they grew up. Once the fall semester of university starts, they’re gone faster than a piece of cake in front of Paula Deen. (Topical!) Others choose to go find a job in another town, which is their own way of throwing off the shackles of their hometown. Bruce Springsteen famously sang about leaving New Jersey for the bright lights and opportunity of New York. I understand that, for many youths, starting their own life in a faraway place has a certain allure.

But is it the smartest move? Perhaps not. In fact, maybe you should be moving from a big city to a small town. Here’s why.

You Can Still Make Bank

My town has 6 lawyers, spread out among 3 law firms. 1 of the 6 is basically senile, he’s got about 32 clients who are all equally senile. Between those 5 lawyers, they do every single real estate transaction, every single divorce, every single lawsuit, you get the picture. I bet each of those lawyers make a gross salary of $250k. There is enough business that they will tell you to hit the road if you’re making their life miserable.

In a lot of small towns in Canada, there is a shortage of doctors. And since doctors get paid per patient seen, a hard working doctor could make more cash, providing they’re willing to put in the hours.

It’s like that with all sorts of other businesses too. I know a lady who recently started her own accounting firm. She stopped taking on new clients 6 months later. The two dentist offices in town are always swamped. The two optometrists don’t even try to undercut each other’s prices anymore. When you don’t have to worry about the 94 other competitors in town, there’s a lot of money to be made.

It’s the same thing with other professions. Teachers, nurses and the like are constantly looking for new people, since many people decide to transfer to the big city. Often these jobs are filled with young folks just out of college, who generally repeat the cycle after a few years. And yet I still can’t get one of them to go out with me.

It Costs Less To Live

Where I live, the nearest big city is Calgary. Basically, it costs almost half as much to live where I do compared to Calgary. Here, $300k will buy you a nice family home, completely renovated, in one of the preferred areas of town. My house cost $210k, and it’s a reasonable place with a nice yard that only sometimes smells like cat pee. What does $210k get you in Calgary?

(I just checked. It gets you a somewhat small house in a crummy neighborhood. Or one of approximately 1.54 million condos.)

If my house were to be plunked in a similar neighborhood in Calgary, I estimate it’d sell for about $350k. The difference between a $210k mortgage and a $350k mortgage? Only $700 per month. We’re talking some serious dough here.

If I pay $8400 per year less for housing costs, it means I can make at least $10k less for an income and be in the exact same boat as someone in the big city. If I can manage to make the same amount (which I would if I worked for the government) I’m automatically that much ahead.

And Then There’s The Commute

How long does the average city dweller take to drive to work each morning? 20 minutes? A half hour?

Compare that to my commute. I hop in the chip truck and a whole 2 minutes later I’m at my first stop of the day. Even if I had to drive clear across town, I can do it in approximately 5 minutes. The closest thing we have to a traffic jam is when everyone is leaving the hockey game at once and it takes 5 minutes to drive home compared to 3.

Driving through rush hour traffic is horrible. You’re surrounded by cars, which are usually driven by ugly people. You go forward slowly, then slow down, then go forward slowly again, repeating the process until you’re ready to give yourself a concussion. There’s always some knob who thinks that changing lanes 5 times is going to get him through the maze of cars slightly faster. No wonder people are always so pissed off when they drive.

Us small towners get to avoid that whole experience entirely. How would you like to glide to work in less than 5 minutes?

There’s no public transportation, but that’s no problem. All you’d have to do it get a place relatively close to where you work, and you can easily walk. Everything you need is clustered in one core area, all of which is easily accessible by foot. If you need to make a Wal-Mart run, you just suck it up and pay the cab.

This is why many people who don’t make a whole lot of money end up in small towns. Rent costs less, you can get away with not having a car, and there are usually still plenty of low-paying unskilled jobs to choose from.

What are you waiting for? Come move to my small town, but only if you’re single, female, cute and willing to sleep with me. I’m not liking my chances.