The 99 percent blues

Overall, it's been a pretty good week.  First, we have great weather for mid-November!  And, it's Thanksgiving--my favorite holiday for several reasons.  Finally, my stock at work seems to have risen--long story, but I got a little recognition for a couple things, and that was much appreciated.  In short, I'm feelin' a bit happier than normal and kinda successful, too.

Then the mail arrived yesterday.  It included a brochure from my undergraduate alma mater titled, "Macalester Tomorrow: Making a Difference One Student at a Time."  I thought that sounded appealing, so I turned inside to read, "You can help students forever with an endowed scholarship."  (Well, there's an appeal to immortality if I've ever read one--helping students FOREVER!)  And so it turns out that the college is asking if I'd like to help fund an endowed scholarship.  How can I support such scholarships at Macalester?  "With a gift of $100,000 or more, you can establish a new endowed scholarship fund."

Whoa.  Time out.  Stop the presses.  With a gift of $100,000 or MORE?  How about $75 or LESS?  Who in the bleep has this type of money to donate?  Where have I gone wrong?  In general, we seem to be doing OK, financially.  For most of the year, there's been a little bulge in the checking account of a couple grand--we haven't had that month-to-month, paycheck-to-paycheck panic that used to characterize our finances when there were two additional mouths to feed.  But the idea that we would have $100K--$100K--to give is so far out of my latitude of acceptance (social judgment theory/Sherif) that it's all at once amusing, insulting, and depressing.

There's been a lot of talk in the last year about the "1 percent."  I have to admit that I am envious of those people.  I consider it a big expenditure (as it was this week) to spend $344 to fix one of our vehicles.  But for some people, $344 truly is chump change.  The CEO at my workplace has a base salary of about $250,000--that's over $20,000 every month.  Yikes--what would I do with that kind of coin?  I think I'd figure out a way to spend it.  But I'm still not sure I would have enough to fund one of those endowed scholarships!