Putting Your Money Where Your Feet Are

A new book is in bookstores nationally and I’m interested in it. Something like $27 worth of new book at retail; from Amazon, as low as $14.50. Dilemma: I’m cheap, but principled. Cheap means I log onto Amazon and pay maybe $17 total to have it delivered. Principled means I walk a few blocks to the local Barnes & Noble and keep at least some of the money in Wilkes-Barre. Salaries, etc. It’s a chain, but at least it employs local people and is paying local taxes. There was a good book store across the street, but the owner finally gave up and, much later, B&N came to town.

Are my standards worth $9? At what point do you stop subsidizing something just out of principle? My feet are in this city; should my money stay here also? And to what extent?

To the extent possible, I do not patronize chain restaurants. My favorite eat spot is a locally-owned place across the river; a husband and wife own the land, the building and the business. When I need a picture backed or framed, I go to Ken’s shop down on South Main Street, rather than to a place at the mall.

We can’t have someone in Arkansas, or California, or Delaware walking off with the top layers of money that leaves our hands. Why should so many of our transactions have an automatic “tax” to these companies’ bank accounts? Perhaps we can find ways to keep more of our money circulating in our own towns and less of it heading away.

The Olive Garden turned me off, but no local diner ever did.