Dialogue: Penny wise but pound foolish

By ROANNE PARKER

God, it's cold today. I think we need a referendum to lobby the Ministry for the Environment. Bring back chlorofluorocarbons - we need a bit of global warming.

Those lobbyists are a funny bunch, aren't they? I saw the Save our Flag guy and his combi van parked just off the end of the bridge last week. What a nice man he is, spending his own money to defend what must be the least patriotic flag in the modern world. Oh gosh, is it the flag or the anthem he's saving? Now I'm confused. Whichever it is, it seems we are in good hands with that guy. That's real passion.

It's just so good to know that somebody still cares about something other than whether it is kosher to buy your family Christmas presents on Boxing Day because that's when The Warehouse sale starts. (Yes, I know Jews don't celebrate Christmas, but kosher seemed the best word for the job, all right?)

Now, I can buy on hire purchase anything I want but cannot afford, in the hope that in 36 months I will be enjoying that elusive budget surplus.

If someone rang me today and asked me to name one thing that drives Kiwis into a frenzy, I would say it's a retail sale. If I were asked to name one thing we excel at, the first thing out of my mouth would be that we owe a lot of money on our credit cards.

I don't owe any money on credit cards because I can't trust myself to have one. My plastic fantastic is a debit card that has to be paid off every month. So at the point of purchase I have to stop to decide whether I can afford to pay for this thing in a couple of weeks.

The reason we love plastic is because spending is completely painless when you whip out the card to deal with it.

I hate handing out cash. I've been told that I'm tight with the twenties but don't flinch at the thousands, and it's perfectly true. I have made stupid decisions that have cost me zeros off my bank balance in less time than it takes me to work out which peanut butter is the lowest price per gram to save 15c in the supermarket each week.

It's funny how we think about saving money on some items and don't even stop to think about others. Yesterday I bought 2 litres of milk at the local dairy and it cost me $3.40. That's $1.70 a litre. Ouch, I thought. But it's expensive only when compared with the alternatives.

So what is the alternative? Well, there is water, wholly unpopular at my place, but cheap from the tap and good at its key task of rehydration. Scare campaigns and spin-doctoring mean you can get New Zealand water for about $2 a litre in a nice squeezy bottle but I'm sure it is straight from the rivers we swam in as children, and I can't bring myself to pay for that.

All of a sudden petrol seems to be a relative bargain at a bit over a dollar a litre, but then it's not very good to drink.

More comparisons. Next time you bypass the fillet steak for mince, bear in mind that when you buy a 50g packet of chips for a dollar you are paying $20 a kilogram for fat-laden, salty potatoes.

When I stopped to work it out, I discovered that we pay $35 a kilogram for our regular chewing gum.

And here's a brilliant example: that little, egg-shaped children's chocolate with a minuscule plastic toy inside costs $84.50 a kilogram.

So the moral of that story is to close my eyes and ears next time I buy milk and just cough up the cash. In fact, I should give thanks, while I hand over the money, that I can afford to buy it, and that I live in a clean, green, grassy land with plenty of milk for all.

Speaking of which, as I write we are soon to hear the results of the great cow cocky vote. I was chatting to some dairy farmers at Fieldays last week, and they all seemed to think it would go ahead. Milk solid prices are up now, and they hope they will continue getting stronger.

Who knows what we'll pay for our milk if that happens, but I have decided already that if we are in for a nice game of Dairy Board Monopoly, I bags Oxford St. I hear the shopping there is fabulous.