The Ways of The Thrifty

My father woke me up with a phone call at around 9:00 AM, to wish me a Merry Christmas. He had to fill me in on his day's activities.

You have to understand that my dad's activities revolve around one thing:

Thrift.

He planned on eating lunch with an older couple at the local retirement home. Let me check off the requirements:

1: Gift giving required: No..... Check
2: Close to home to save on gas: Yes.......Check
3: No entry fee or ticket cost: No.........Check
4: Free food:Yes.........Check

If my father had been invited to drive to Indianapolis to get the free Christmas lunch he would have performed the following calculation in less than a second, in his head, while on the phone with the lunch host:

Hmmm. Let's see, gas is $2.79 a gallon, Indianapolis is 177 miles away, the Miata gets 26 miles to the gallon, that 177/26=6.8 gallons. At $2.79, that's $18.99, rounded up to $19. I could go to Gropps for $12 plus a 20%...... no make that a 15% tip for $13.80 and Gropps is 12 miles away, 24 mile round trip, so that's......... hey, wait a cotton pickin' minute, the Indianapolis calculation is only for one way, let's see, thats 2x$19 is $38. No way Jose! Man, am I glad that I thought of that before I got to Kokomo!

And so, he begs off of the invite from the big city to dine closer to home.

Needles to say he is sharing free Christmas lunch 1.9 miles from his house. His calculation was simple: (2*1.9 Miles) / 26 Miles per gallon = 0.146 gallons. 0.146 gallons * $2.79/gallon = 40.7 cents! Oh Baby!!

If he's lucky he will get to carry some leftovers home and both he and the dog will eat tomorrow for free, so it's essentially the same thing as free money!

Free money is hard to come by in Amish country.

The Merry Christmas phone call ended when my dad reminded me that we were not on night and weekend minutes on the cellphone. Immediately my wheels began to spin:

600 minutes total, today is the 25th, so we have probably used about 200 minutes, this call has been 15 minutes, leaving 385 minutes until the 14th of January. That's 20 days away, leaving 19 minutes and 15 seconds of daytime talk per day. And we have to get through all of the family calls on New Years which is also on a weekday. Ouch, this could be costly!

But what I blurted in less than a second was: OKMerryChristmasloveyoulotscallyouafternine!!

Click.

Twenty minutes later, my mother, who has been trained for decades in The Ways of The Thrifty by my father called me (on a VOIP line). She gave me the rundown of my father's day, in much more detail. She said that his aunt had died and gave me details of the funeral. I am willing to bet, that after 7:00 PM (when HIS talk is cheap) my dad will call me and tell me about his aunt and the funeral.