Good or better

By Rennie Phillips

A lot of things fall into this subject but the first one that comes to mind is pizza. Most if not all of us like pizza of one kind or another. My wife and I buy some pizzas from the store but most of the time we buy ready made, ready to bake ones. Some are just pretty good. But there are times when Marge makes her own from scratch. She buys the crust from the store and then we use our own ingredients as add ons. When we end up it's a pretty thick pizza. Boy are these good.

The ones for sale at pizza places is what I have in mind. And I don't mean to belittle pizza places. I'm just using pizzas as an example. I've seen pizzas advertised for $8.00 for a large one topping or to be more exact $7.99. Hate when a store does that. Bought an ice cream cone the other day and it was $2.03 with tax. Silly. I asked the gal at the window why her boss couldn't change the price so it comes out $2 even. That would be smart. Back to the pizza. It seems like when one store has a pizza for $7.99 another will advertise about the same pizza for $6.99. Now let's be realistic. The lower the for sale price the lower the profit. You can only go so low before you aren't making ends meet.

But I guess I'm wondering if I want a $6.99 pizza? The favorite part of a pizza for me is the toppings so I want a pizza that is loaded with meat and veggies. I'd rather pay more for a good pizza then get a pizza offered for sale at a cheap or cut rate price. Same with hamburgers. That old commercial "Where's the beef?" is as true today as back then. We don't buy many fast food burgers but I've had some fast food burgers that one had to open it up to find the meat. Rather than a quarter pound burger it's more like a 1/16 pound burger or even less.

A bargain to me is when you get a good product at a good price, or even if you get a great product at an even higher price. Webster's dictionary says one definition of bargain is "a thing bought or offered for sale more cheaply than is usual or expected." To me it's a kind of a floating scale. Pretty much every time we are in Sikeston I buy a coffee from a coffee shop close to Legion Park. The cost is $2.05 I believe. (There's that $.05 again.) For some this is too much or too high but I think it's a bargain. I get a great cup of coffee at a reasonable price so to me it's a bargain. It is a pour over coffee made using freshly roasted ground coffee just for me as I watch. That's a bargain for me but it may not be for you.

Our son and his family like to go to Cape on a certain night and after a certain hour and get a Sunday. At that particular time all the Sundays are a special price so a true bargain. But wait a minute! Their Sundays are top of the line even at full price so even at full price they are a bargain. Kind of like me. I get a craving for a salted carmel Sunday with peanuts so the $3 dollar Sunday is a bargain and well worth the cost and the drive. Matter of fact I'd probably pay more for the Sunday if I had to.

Now there are times when I am walking through a hardware store or a tool store or a garden shop and there is an advertised bargain staring me in the face. The normal price is like $29.99 and it's on sale for $9.99. I just might buy that bargain just because it's a bargain even if I don't necessarily need it. It was a bargain but not really. I really didn't probably need it. Now If I needed it then it was a bargain.

My shaving brush went kaput on me a month or so ago. It was probably an average run of the mill shaving brush. All I had left was a cheap brush that kind of worked. So I'd kind of lather up using the cheap shaving brush and Ogallala bay rum shaving soap. I really needed a new shaving brush. I looked at a bunch of brushes and decided to order one that cost about $25 dollars regular price. It was better than the cheap brushes but definitely wasn't top of the line. I just about pulled the trigger and ordered it when I checked the sale items at this same on line store and low and behold they had two brushes on sale. One was a $50 dollar brush for $25 but they also had a $100 dollar brush on sale for $30. It didn't take me long to order the on sale $30 dollar brush. A bargain for sure. But after getting the brush it was most likely a bargain at even $100 because it was a really good brush.

A grocery store has turkeys on sale for 59 cents a pound with a $25 purchase. Turkey is a bargain, however how many times will you leave a grocery store with just a $25 dollar purchase. Almost never! Turkey was a bargain but the bargain was offset by all the other stuff one purchased. A store has a going out of business sale that advertises 50% off but they seem to have it yearly. Probably not a bargain.

A true bargain is getting something that you want or need at a cost that is lower then you think it's worth. When I married my wife I got a true bargain. Many of you out there got a real bargain as well. Many of us when we really look at our kids and grandkids we got a real bargain as well. They might have cost us but they are worth way more than the cost. A true friend is always a bargain. That friend may have cost us hours and hours developing that friendship but it is a bargain in the long term.

I guess what I'm driving at is life is a bargain if we invest in people and things eternal.