Beans

Today I'd like to talk a little about beans.  It's not gonna be a sermon soy beans as a source of protein or the fiber content of green beans or the restorative properties of some funky jungle bean...although if you know of some funky jungle bean that will drop fifty pounds for me, I'm all ears.  But no, today we're gonna discuss counting beans.  Shortly before I jumped into this, while I was in the preparation stages, I did a little math.  Yes, I can do math.  With a calculator.  And a spreadsheet.  And a jar of beans.  And a highly trained monkey who does the math for me.  Except she tends to eat the beans, which may have affected the outcome.  Anyway, several days ago I mentioned there were a bunch of other things that occurred to me in the planning phase of this program.  Today I'm gonna share a big one.

So let's talk turkey...or beans.  Say we live in a world where the currency is beans.  You go to work and every couple weeks they give you a sack of beans.  You pay your taxes in beans.  You send the electric company a little box of beans every month to keep the power on.  You go to the grocery store, load up your shopping cart with healthy food (except beans because they're money), and toss the cashier a handful of beans on your way out.  Scrooge McDuck has a huge vault filled with beans that he likes to swim in.  On his show Glenn Beck bursts into tears and tells his viewers to invest in beans.  Periodically the national treasury releases a new limited edition bean commemorating the moon landing, a great president, or another state's statehood and all the nation's vending machines have to be re-calibrated because the new bean weighs slightly different than the last edition.  You get the picture.

Every morning on your way to work, you swing by the corner convenience store for your daily diet coke and maybe a granola bar or power bar or something snacky.  It costs you about 2 or 3 beans.  Then at lunch because you didn't pack a sandwich, you run to a nearby Schlubway for a sandwich, chips, and a soda.  Another 4 beans.  Assuming that you're trying to be judicious about your dinner every day and make something healthy, that cost factors into your weekly grocery bean budget, and doesn't count here.  But say every Saturday you splurge on a delicious pizza (or two) from Shmominos.  Add in a 2 liter diet coke, breadsticks, and a tip for the delivery guy and you've forked out about 15 beans.  (Now would be an appropriate time to note that given the current state of the economy, the dollar to bean ration is clearly not one to one...in case you are scratching your head and cursing my fuzzy math.)

Let's say your birthday is exactly 22 weeks from today.  (Five months from tomorrow, but since December 9th (the joyous day) falls on a Thursday, it's exactly 22 weeks from Thursday, July 8th.)  Every week you spend roughly 17.5B (17.5 Beans) on soda, 28B on lunch, and 15B on Shmominos.  That's 60.5B every week, give or take, and a whopping 1,331B you will eat (i.e. spend on crap food) between now and your birthday.  Assuming that an iBean, the magical device you so desperately want but can't justify, costs about 250B.  Do you realize that in the next five months, you're gonna basically eat five iBeans in junk food?  FIVE!

According to the statistical data I just made up, fixing a meal at home costs about 1/4 the price of fast food for lunch...and that's eating pretty nicely at home.  So, for the next several months, you're gonna skip the pizza, cut back on the soda by half-ish, and bring your lunch from home at least 3 times a week.  And when you DO eat at Schlubway, you're gonna skip the chips and soda and limit yourself to a healthy 6" sandwich and a glass of water.  According to my super-scientific calculations, verified by the helper monkey just before she ate all the beans, in this very reasonable situation you're saving enough to buy an iBean and still have 700 beans to put in the bank...or feed to your helper monkey.  And this INCLUDES the extra grocery money you'll be spending for real food.

It's a no-brainer.