February
Now that I’ve joined the real world, there are a few things that start to bug me, and simply don’t make sense. Take the month of February for instance. It has the fewest days of any month, clocking in at about 28.25 days on average, where as there are 30 and 31 month days for the rest. This gives the rest of the months about 30.64 days per month, on average.
What I want to know is, where is my ~7.5% rate cut for services I pay on a monthly fee? Surely their operating costs aren’t as high- such as salaries, power consumption, etc. The power and water companies are the only ones that this service is ideally built into, unless you have a pay as you go model cell phone. I guess we can chalk this up to convenience of the flat rate, ‘unlimited’ usage we get of things we pay the bills for, but i wonder just how much this is costing me.
Lets say i pay about $2000 on average for everything i pay a bill for. This includes rent, cable, phone, etc. The real value is not this high, i just want a round number. the 7.5% over a year is about 150 dollars. Not bad, 2 video games, or a few meals out and some pints at the pub. awesome.
Over the course of my lifetime, which I plan on living to 82, this is about $8700. about double the down payment on a car. SO am i really missing that much? Let’s find out.
I wouldn’t keep this money under a mattress, now would I? So lets say I put it in an index fund, generating 7% returns per year: after 50 years, I’ve got about $70,000 based on the beauty of compound interest. This is a god damn college education for some, a good down payment on a really expensive house, 2 cars (as opposed to two down payments) , or approixmately 70,000 double cheeseburgers from mcdonald’s. Do i even like double cheeseburgers? Yes, but i’d rather have 11,666 #6 meals from taco bell which is 11,666 hard shell tacos, 23332 baja gorditas: all in all about 729 pounds of baja sauce.
What I’m trying to say is, February is costing me a LOT of money.
And why? Because the Romans could figure out the calendar? It’s actually (I Think) because it was the last month added to the calendar, and it ‘worked out’ this way. lame.
This is just like being born in December, and missing out on my first Christmas which I still feel I should get presents for. Only in this case, I’d like $70,000 worth of presents, please.