I was doing some on-line banking this morning and as I was scrolling through my recent transactions I happened to notice that my bank, one of the largest in the world by the way, made an interest deposit in my favor…for 5 cents!
Once upon a time when I was little an interest credit of 5 cents would have meant that I was a five year old whose dad had just opened a savings account for him with 1 dollar.
I’m all grown up now and I have quite a few more dollars in the bank but I’m still getting 5 cents in interest!
I tried to figure out what kind of a percentage that meant I was getting on my money but my calculator melted while trying to do the math.
Honestly I don’t even bother to add the interest into my balance anymore. It’s not worth the time or worth using up one of the spaces in my register to add just pennies to my balance. I just wrote pennies didn’t I? Imagine that! Pennies in interest on a banking account in the 21st century… when I was teaching high school the students would throw pennies at each other rather than keep the annoying coins in their pockets. Now they’re my investment income.
Honestly, I’d rather they kept their 5 cents than insult me with such a transaction.
Soon I suspect they will be paying my interest in imaginary numbers.
I’d love to be able to take out a loan from the same bank and then hand them 5 cents when the interest on that loan came due… wouldn’t you?
Of course that probably would have meant that I had only borrowed a quarter.
I mean really, one of the largest banks in the world can only afford to give me 5 cents in interest these days on the money I put in there for safe keeping and which of course they are also allowed to use to make themselves money?
And yet the banks can’t seem to make ends meet and we’re in the middle of an economic downturn.
We’re doomed!
Has our government heard about this?
The one that’s made up of 47% lawyers and 43% millionaires?
Or is it the other way around?
No matter I guess…
I don’t know whether I’m more angry, insulted or depressed by the whole situation…
But it does kinda make you lose interest in more ways than one doesn’t it?