Wednesday, October 15, 2014

To Feel Rich

Today I was chatting with a friend and he mentioned that he buys silver coins.  A lot of people buy gold or silver as an investment so I was not surprised.  I said that I bought a home-made silver coin from the fellow at The Field Lab.  Last year, the Field Lab guy was buying sterling silver silverware off of Ebay, melting them down and making his own Field Lab coins.  My friend completely missed the frugality of my story and decided that he needed to buy sterling silver silverware.  So I asked why in the world he would want that and he said "To feel rich".  So, I start looking online for real silverware sets just to humor him.  He buys a lot of stuff from Amazon so we looked there and most of it is silver plated.  He wanted real silver so I showed him what was available on Ebay.  It suddenly dawned on him that real silver tarnishes and he decided that he doesn't want dingy looking silverware after all.  I suggested that he hire a maid to polish his sterling silver and then he would really feel rich although he would be very poor very quickly.

That conversation got me thinking about what makes me feel rich.  I'm just talking about money here not love or happiness or any of those other things that are important.  What makes me feel rich is the ability to help someone or give someone something when the need arises.  For example, being able to afford the trip back to Minnesota to visit my nephews for the funeral.  That was an expensive trip but I had to money available.  I guess I could say that my emergency fund makes me feel rich, and my savings, of course, but savings are like a giant emergency fund anyway.  So, right now I do feel rich.  My savings have been depleted a little after paying for the trip and buying the car but I am slowly replenishing the fund.  I don't need to eat with a sterling silver knife and fork everyday to feel rich. but knowing I could buy them if I needed them is enough for me.  

7 comments:

Practical Parsimony said...

Sterling plated utensils will tarnish, too. However, both can be protected with cloth, some sort of silver cloth. Every time that silver anything needs to be polished, some of the silver content is lost.

Owning outright my own home makes me feel rich, but it falling down! So does having sterling silver utensils.

Tessie said...

Ha! Funny you bring this up, I was just reading a book that talked about "rich" people owning solid gold and silver plates and utensils...it was interesting. They really did it because there were only so many ways to "safely" invest excess money up until roughly the end of the 19th century. There was land/real estate (the biggy, but in Europe especially, extremely finite), and then there were a very few government bonds, and a lot of scary "speculations" and unregulated privately owned banks/financial houses that seemed to always be going bust. Which is lucky for me, because I love me a good Dickens' novel featuring a little debtors'-prison action. So gold forks were portable, fairly liquid, and also sort-of practical as an actual useful object!

Ok, that was really nerdy, sorry!

Daizy said...

Practical Parsimony, I know what you mean about the house falling down. I'm still working to pay off mine but in the mean time, it needs fixing. More money, more money.

Daizy said...

Tessie, that is really interesting! I was just watching a movie about people going west in wagon trains. A woman was stranded and she was going through the boxes of another person who died looking for food. All she found was silver serving dishes and China dishes and she was tossing them aside. How meaningless it all becomes when one is starving to death.

Lizzie@her MFW Homeworld said...

I cant imagine how buying stuff makes anyone feel rich! They are coming from a completely different place. Maybe if i could work out a way to take it all with me at the end............ :)

Lizzie@her MFW Homeworld said...

I cant imagine how buying stuff makes anyone feel rich! They are coming from a completely different place. Maybe if i could work out a way to take it all with me at the end............ :)

Daizy said...

I know, Lizzie. I couldn't figure out why he would want silver flatware, I mean, he would be the only one who knew it was real silver since everything looks silver color anyway but is either plated silver or stainless steel.