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We never stop learning. |
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I've lived long enough now to have personally experienced all sorts of economic "modes of living". And, I've had plenty of opportunity to observe others as well. Relative wealth, or the lack of it, can have a powerful influence on a person's sense of self worth, but it is by no means a direct relationship. A recent experience reminded me of this. Last Saturday afternoon, we drove an hour away to pick up a used small engine I had bought through an e-bay auction. Our lawn is on the large side, around 1.5 acres, and our long Texas summers make the grass grow for about eight months of the year. All that heavy use finally wore out the engine on our 17-year-old riding mower around the middle of last summer. In direct contradiction to the expectations of our modern throwaway culture, I was determined to not spend $1000 on a new mower when most of the old one was still working just fine. I am pretty amazed that the price of a similar riding mower has not changed in those 17 years - a real testament to advances in manufacturing productivity and technology, but I don't necessarily want one. Part of my obstinacy was the money, part of it was that I am just temperamentally stubborn at times, but mostly it was the principle of the thing. Machinery should be durable and fixable. I'm part of the secret resistance to the disposable-everything movement. When the old mower engine started vibrating and overheating, I called our local lawn-mower repair guy, who has been working on small engines of all sorts since I was a kid. I asked him if it was worth repairing one of these things. He works pretty cheap I think, and he has fixed several things for us over the years, but he told me he doesn't do major rebuilds on engines any more, since it costs as much for a major overhaul as for a new one. At $400 to $500, I didn't like the new engine option either. I asked if he had any ideas, and he suggested looking around for a used engine. And so I did. After watching ads in the local papers for awhile with no luck, it occurred to me that you can find almost anything on e-bay, so I set up a search notification to e-mail me when the keywords matching what I wanted came up. After losing out on several 11 HP engine auctions when the bid price went above my $100 self-imposed limit, patience eventually paid off. Since the seller was within driving distance, I also avoided $40 of UPS shipping charges. The seller lived in a single-wide trailer house out in the piney woods of rural southern Arkansas, with all manner of pieces and parts scattered about the yard, like carcasses and bones in a lawn mower graveyard. It turned out that he buys used lawn maintenance equipment from all over the area and resells the useful parts on e-bay. This provides a supplemental income when his main business, septic tank cleaning, is in a slump. I've always been interested in people who don't work for big companies, perhaps because I have always longed to be independent. In corporations, the money is great, security is high, but freedom is very limited, and rules are king. There seem to be people who really like that structured 8 to 5 environment, but there are a lot who don't. This erstwhile junk-man / septic tank cleaner immediately struck me as that latter sort. Skeptical about the availability and profit potential for used mower parts, I began quizzing him about his business plan (though I didn't call it that). He said that there were lots of old lawn mowers around, and he has ads in local papers offering to pick them up from people who don't want them anymore. He also said that most of the mowers he finds still run just fine, or at least the engines do. He figured that most people buy new ones on impulse when they get tired of the old one, not because they really need one. It's hard for most men to walk by that row of shiny new lawn machines gleaming in the sun at the local Wal Mart without feeling that ownership itch. When they break down and buy the new one, they have something they don't need any more and the wife doesn't want taking up space in the garage. But as they say, one man's trash is another's treasure. Curious still, I asked about logistics and costs, namely his traveling around to pick up parts and his packing and shipping, not to mention the value of his time. He said he spent a good deal of time on the computer setting up his e-bay auctions and answering questions from potential buyers. He also said that while hauling in dead mowers, breakdown of parts, and packaging for shipment took some time, he figured he'd just as soon be doing something useful as wasting time watching TV. Like most entrepreneurs, he filled up all his available hours with money-making schemes of some sort. As any good businessperson knows, the secret to financial success is to make sure the balance between revenues and costs is always positive. I think it would be safe to say he and his family have a low-cost life. By the measure of net cash flow, they appear to be financially successful, if not wealthy. I kept thinking that if I met this guy on the street, I would assume based on his appearance that he had never used a computer, much less had any business sense. I always look forward to my daily lesson on the danger of assuming things. Although I didn't come out and ask, this entrepreneur struck me as upbeat and content with life. It is when I consider his likely net worth that I conclude that for most people, the relationship between material wealth and happiness is not at all a direct one. This man (and his family) lives life on the cheap, but nobody tells him how to live it. He makes his way in the world by the fruits of his labors and his wits. And therein is a lesson: Wealth can provide comfort, security, and even improved health, but happiness comes from somewhere else.
12/3/03 |
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Last Update 4/3/04 |