Skeletal Remains LOVE Oprah

Did you hear the latest quirky news? Investigators have discovered the skeletal remains of a woman who seems to have died sometime in 1999 still sitting around drying up in her house. Her estranged ex husband has been dutifully mowing the lawn this whole time. If the fact that all of her friends, family, and neighbors didn’t notice anything all this time is true, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that she was one of those people whose company can be thought of in terms of “Less is more.”

http://www.wfsb.com/news/13473195/detail.html?cnn=yes

Showing my usual pathos, you know what I wrote that introduction to lead into? A discussion of utility company billing practices. That woman’s electricity is still on, seven years after she paid her last bill. That skeleton has seen a LOT of free Oprah.

This story highlights (for me) a trend that I have been seeing a disturbing lot of lately. Many people with whom I associate (like it or not) have had great success with exactly this trick. Apparently, you can sign up for many basic utilities under the assumption that paying the bill is completely optional. Service will never go away, no matter how much you take it for granted.

Granted, I assume this does bad things to a person’s credit score.

But if we ignore that little detail for the moment, I really almost feel duped. I’m the sort of person who used to pay bills immediately, just so they would stop being on my counter. I use the past tense, because these days, my bills actually charge themselves to my credit card automatically and I only get them as email receipts.

I do not feel that I am boasting when I say that my system required more brainpower to set up and manage then the “ignore everything forever” method. However, I really have to say this. I felt proud of myself for finding a way to get 1.5% cash back on all my bills by setting them up this way. However, this savings seems quite insignificant in the face of widespread “100% off!” options.

Given that the deadbeats are saving money at a rate 67 times more effective than I am, I really have to stop and wonder who has the cognitive dissonance: them or me.

The scary thing is, to the best of my thinking, we’re both right. The way I want to live my life, my method is best. The way the deadbeats [claim verbally to] want to live their lives (interest rates seem to be irrelevant in this system), their method is best.

We live in an interesting country.