Going broke still hurts, even one penny at a time

Going broke still hurts, even one penny at a time

Columns

By: Bernie O'Neill

The recent call by an MP to do away with the penny made me feel sad.

Not just because it has become rare to find an MP who knew the value of a dollar, let alone a penny, and I would hate to think one had been elected and I had missed it.

Rather, it was that the coin’s demise might mean the death of a lot of colourful sayings you don’t really hear a lot anymore.

See a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck. We’re counting our pennies. He’s a real penny-pincher. A penny for your thoughts. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Once the penny is snuffed out, sayings associated with it can’t be far behind.

Hopefully this idea of quashing the penny will never come to pass or gasoline prices will be going up a nickel a litre every other day instead of a penny.

But it is interesting to think it costs the government more than a penny to make a penny.

If we could all bring in those pennies that are sitting in desk drawers and glass jars, maybe the penny crisis would be averted.

Then the politicians could get back to nickel and diming us to death. (Some day, nickels and dimes will be gone and they’ll resort to loonieing and toonieing us to death, which is tough to say and even harder to spell.)

Ever notice how many of them present tax increases in terms of how many pennies a day it will cost us, trying to make it seem like we’re silly to be concerned?

A 3.9-per-cent or 4.9-per-cent tax hike (they’re smart to not make it 5 per cent) is presented in terms of how many cents a day it would cost the average homeowner.

They don’t mention the homeowner who already thinks he’s paying too much at $1,550 a year will now be paying $1,600.

But the point is, it all adds up.

Opposition MPs who were against a cut to the GST, or provincial politicians who never offer to cut the PST, won’t say so. When it comes to giving us a break, they say, “Why would you want a penny back?” When it comes to hiking taxes, they say, “Why would you fuss over a penny?”

I was thinking about pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies this week as our household looked ahead to the summer and what my sons are going to do to keep themselves occupied.

We’ve got a few good things planned but there are several large gaps in the calendar. No pen marks in there whatsoever.

I jokingly wanted to write, “Watch TV, all week,” or “Sleep in really late, until one of your parents gets home,” but that might be a little too close to reality and I don’t want to leave behind extra evidence when the Children’s Aid Society shows up.

I’d love to send them to summer camp every day — a different type of camp each week, sports, music, drama — heck, why not specialize?! basketball camp, water skiing camp, drum camp — but I fear that’s too much like school or putting them in a kennel.

And I was the one who wanted to spend summers goofing around with them, not some camp counsellor. That’s why we had them.

Besides, it is expensive.

There’s that one camp that advertises, “Send us your child for a week and we’ll send you back a new one,” and you think that would be good — maybe the new one wouldn’t notice that I had to sell his bicycle, iPod, video game console, desk, bed and most of his other possessions to pay for it.

Although my kids don’t need boot camp, just fun.

For now, both are too young for a summer job.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t work on ways to make money.

Which brings us to what I am hoping to run this summer, at least on a day here and there, and that’s Capitalism Camp (fun with finances!).

My older son is going to do some babysitting. And he and his younger brother will occasionally run a lemonade stand.

Not any lemonade stand, but one strategically opened Canada Day weekend when there are hundreds, even thousands of people at a festival near our house.

I am not thinking university tuition here, but certainly enough money for a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old to pay for a few rounds of golf — another afternoon on the calendar checked off.

I’m thinking we’ll keep a jar of pennies on hand and our sign will read, “99 cents a glass”, which, like the 4.9-per-cent tax hike instead of 5, sounds better. That’s marketing.

They won’t be glasses, of course, but paper cups. Glass just sounds better. That’s marketing, too.

We’ll give 10-per-cent of our profits to charity. That’s also marketing. We will really give it to charity, but our costs will be pennies a glass (cup), so that’s OK.

And we’ll say, “No GST”, which is also marketing, although unlike the big businesses that just include GST in the price and then remit it to the government, we won’t collect it, of course, which is the beauty of being a kid with a lemonade stand and no GST remittance number.

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