A Face of Panic
Oct 12th, 2008 by rdonoghue
I like to think of myself as a pretty savvy guy, with a decent education, a good job and a good understanding of technology. This is well and good, but I think all of those things have contributed to the oddness of something I haven’t done in a while.
This morning, I clipped coupons.
It shouldn’t be that odd — it’s something I did growing up, and continued to do after college when my income was on the painful side. I think I stopped when I moved to California. There were new grocery stores (that sold liquor) and I was making better money than I ever had before, so it seemed kind of unnecessary. I fell out of the habit.
Now, in recent years I’ve gotten my financial habits under much better control. Paid off credit card debt, stayed within my means, saved, invested, all that jazz. I am perhaps not as frugal as I could be, but all in all I run a pretty tight ship. So, given that it was interesting to me when, in the midst of all the bad financial news, a little switch flipped and said “get the coupons today”.
As panics go, I feel like that’s pretty restrained, but what scares me a little is that the behavior is bad in the big scope. I’m not entirely sure thrift is consistent with the needs of the economy in its current form. What I’m not sure of is whether that’s a strike against thrift or a strike against the economy.