The Sweet Spot
Does your Optimum dashboard have these sorts of numbers?
... and while that might seem pretty good, the reality is when I retired in the spring of 2022; I had just over a million points for the preceding five years. A result that I suspect is common among Optimum cardholders. Since then, six million points in three years. That is shopping for SWMBO (a little old lady who eats like a bird) and myself (a rather large old man). Back in the day, when I had a growing family, using these methods, I might have done a million a quarter!
Let's play our little game for a moment with a typical grocery store where you live? You probably have four or five different franchises to choose from, all within ten minutes of your house. You need a bag of carrots, a loaf of bread, a pound of ground beef and a carton of milk.
How are these shopping choices all the same?
- Free floodlit parking, interior heating and lighting
- It's in your town, so they probably have similar rates for the land, taxes & utilities
- Similar hourly costs for wages, loss prevention & inspections
- They buy from the same middlemen and have the same transportation costs
- They make the same margins (about 4%, look it up)
So what is different about all of those choices?
- the esthetic of the grocery store (pot lights, wide aisles, high ceilings)
- the age of your store, does it smell like old freezer juice, have dingy floors
- how many staff are in the store, in aisles, on checkout
- how fresh are products, how much variety, new foods, new ideas?
- other services like florist, sushi, deli counter, meat department, wine shop
- the Loyalty Program offered, how generous is it, range of products, complexity
Those are the dials that the Galen Westons of the world are turning and tuning. At the high end you might start with bespoke cheese shops and independent butchers down through Whole Foods, Longos, Farm Boy, into Metro, Zehr's, FreshCo and Food Basics. Then settling into Wally World, No Frills, The Great Canadian Warehouse and landing finally on Giant Tiger and Dollarama. I leave Costco out of it because it is a completely different cat.
My contention remains that with these choices, my Zehr's gives the best value in terms of a nice clean full service place to shop, great staff, good prices and a loyalty program, that with a bit of planning each week, delivers the maximum return on my shopping dollar.
This Is New
Cryptocurrency does not require some filthy bank approval for transfers. Yaaa!
Cryptocurrency transfers are instantaneous and irreversible. Yaaa!
Cryptocurrency wrench attacks are when some criminal element invades your house and beats you (and your wife) with a pipe wrench until you give up your password. Wait, what?
So, if you put forty grand into Ripple (XRP on NASDAQ) at $0.37 and you are sitting on an untraceable million (basically in cash), I wouldn't be spouting off about it on social media. I should have listened to GA! What a world we live in.
Extra Extra, Read All About It!
I fly off the handle the same as the rest of us. I read this and can't find any countervailing point of view, so I wrote to the chair of my Liberal riding committee in disgust. He had an explanation and a press release? My reaction was, why is Carney not standing on the tarmac somewhere and punching back? I like the Western Standard, but this article demonstrates how easy it is to make something that is pretty normal ... sound nefarious. For a Calgary paper, they are less slanted than The Toronto Sun, which is saying something. This irked me, so I wrote to them. And they published it.
Letter to the Editor
This is crap reporting of the worst kind. Does the "journalist" responsible have any education in the field? I took five minutes to find out that these were severance costs for the changing of the guard at her office and vacation pay for staff. Some of whom had worked there for ten years and all of whom would have been eligible for these costs under a Harper government. I count on your paper to give me a fair Western perspective here in farm country Ontario. Please do better.
Our Optimum Week
I mentioned last week that I had done a Costco run. I found a new product that I quite like. The peppers were a small pecorino style, with stems. They have a little zip, but nothing crazy. They also came in a gigantic Costco jar that feels like a ten-pound kettlebell! This makes them problematic for quick access. A friend (VE) taught me you can make a simple, healthy snack easy to get to, or be tempted by junk food. I also needed to deal with the footprint of round vs. square containers we talked about when I set up our new fridge. Those gooseneck glass bottles (8, 16 & 32 oz.) are not handy for things like carrot sticks, radishes or these peppers. I found these plastic containers (see below) at Dollarama for cheap. They have snap-on lids, but I just leave them open.
First, we saved the juice, cut off the stems and any dicey portions. The square bottomed container automatically saves you 24% in fridge space, and these were 4 x 4 instead of the gigantic 6" diameter Costco jar. I love them just on the plate with my daily ploughman's lunch, something to munch on when I walk by the fridge or throw a couple into whatever I'm cooking. Flyer was just OK, but one thing that jumped off the page; PC bacon for NINE DOLLARS! What a deal? Not happening. Not in this lifetime. It's time to load up on Apple gift cards if you are going to upgrade in the next six months or play Santa in the Apple store? 10% back in points. Buy them in multiples of $500. That's likely the only bite out of the Apple you are going to get (get it?). Here is your list:
We Are Watching
Fast Charlie on Netflix - Does Pierce Brosnam really make a bad movie? Not so you'd notice. Suave hitman needs some payback. Predictable stuff, but Morena Baccarin plays the "been there, seen that" moll, and I could watch her read the phonebook. James Caan looks ready for the box. Pretty predictable, but still good. Four stars.
Pluribus on Apple - Nightmare fuel. Strap on your emotional seatbelts.
... and finally
Only one of you? Pitiful, I must say! We had thought there might be a few questions about the title of last week's blog? What happened was I tripped over the rabbit hole this time. In writing about immigration, I was looking for the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. We can all misquote the one line; give us your weak, your impoverished, something, something ... no one can quote the whole thing.
So, in 1883, the French government gifted a gigantic bronze statue to the U.S. It needed a permanent home and a foundation, for which funds had to be raised. A poet (Emma Lazarus) was commissioned to write poetry to raise money. Her intérêt prédominant was concern for Jews escaping European oppression by coming to North America. In her poem, she juxtaposes the Colossus of Rhodes (which celebrates military conquest and strength) with Lady Liberty, who was the first thing new immigrants would see when landing at Ellis Island in New York harbour. She called her poem The New Colossus.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Whew! That's not too bad. Now you know ... Mitch & Maddie