"It's ok that I spent all this money, because I saved money doing this other thing" is the mating call of every stupidly, intentionally poor person in the Western World. It's the middle-class equivalent of "I can go into debt to buy this because I'll be able to pay for it as soon as I get my tax refund."
Sorry, "honey:" that's still a lot of shopping, and you probably still should be saving more and spending less. And your mother forgetting to pick her husband up at the airport doesn't change that fact in the slightest. It's just a mean piece of misdirection that isn't going to improve your credit score.
So you're disappointed that you inherited a train set while a cat inherited regular pet supplies "in perpetuity?" Well, considering that the cat is apparently capable of (at least internal) speech in the way that I imagine most pet owners think that their ridiculous little hairball-producers are, and apparently capable of higher thought processes which allow them to comprehend things like wills and words like "perpetuity," I have some very simple and totally free advice for Todd:
Get on this cat's good side. I mean, let's be honest about this situation, shall we? I don't care how old Todd is or how old Mr. Marbles is, Todd is going to outlive Mr. Marbles and we'll be back in this lawyer's office in no time. Sorry, Mr. Marbles, but when Todd considers what "in perpetuity" means when it comes to your Chewy shipments, he's thinking in years consisting of single digits. If your dead owner was responsible, Mr. Marbles, you aren't producing any heirs of your own. So you either make a will- good luck with that- or your estate is going right back to the other people in this room inside a decade. Time is NOT on your side, Mr. Marbles.
So the Brains Trust that works at this particular Wendy's decided to put together samples of the latest Meal Deal being offered by the sludge factory that signs their paychecks, lock the doors, and have a Meeting of the- um- "minds" concerning the deal while standing behind it. Considering that the total brain wattage of the staff couldn't power a keychain light, I guess it's going to take this kind of cooperative learning activity to absorb the Very Very Complicated offer they'll be preparing for customers who are willing to consume food personally prepared by people I would not trust with a foam rubber ball or talking wall trout.
After a few hours, even the employees not as "smart' as the guy they acknowledge as the "smart one" (the tallest dwarf in the enchanted forest, I guess) will figure out what the promotion entails and will be ready to re-open the store, fire up the - um, whatever heating element Wendy's uses- and wrap greasy warm garbage with greasy warm paper and place it in greasy warm bags to sell to to greasy warm customers. And the Saga of the Stupid Wendy's Choads will have completed another chapter. Whatever. What's happening with Lily over at AT&T? That store still using five employees to deal with a single customer, you know- like in real life?
...because if you take advantage of this "Everyday Deal" every day, well, your days are numbered, and those numbers probably don't hit triple digits. Unlike your A1C.
That being said, it's a remarkable triumph of American Advertising that two of these piles of warm grease for $7 can be sold as a bargain. I mean, that's about the same price as two gallons of gasoline for roughly the same impact on your digestive system.
In all of these commercials, there's only one person in the entire office who realizes that the easiest job on the "big project" the Boss wants done is ordering a bunch of promotional giveaway crap that everybody expects and nobody wants.
So while the rest of her coworkers do actual labor on the project, she'll be going to 4imprint and spending the day "designing" t-shirts, pens, baseball caps, carafes and other junk that new clients will receive and quickly discard because seriously, who the heck needs more of this garbage lying around the house?
As for the other coworkers- well, I have to assume that they are all over the age of sixty and don't realize that there are companies that do all the work for you when it comes to producing promotional materials. It's not like when I ran for Congress back in 2002 and I had to make phone calls and create designs and approve templates for t-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers. Now all that stuff is done for you online and you can pick out what you want and order it in a matter of minutes, if not seconds- leaving people like this very smart young woman to enjoy her afternoon sipping coffee at her desk and pretending to work on that Big Project while the idiots who fled from the easiest task on the list are stuck doing the actual labor for The Man and his Big Project.
Maybe Joan Lunden loves her mother, maybe she doesn't, I don't know...but here's what I DO know: Joan Lunden has an estimated net worth of $25 million. If she's willing to spend money on her mother's Senior Care, that care is probably out of reach for the vast majority of her audience. If she's providing the same care for her mother that any middle-class person can provide for THEIR mother, well....as I said, maybe Joan Lunden loves her mother, and maybe she doesn't.
I mean, come on. Joan Lunden can afford to buy her mother a condo and provide her with 24/7 cleaning, cooking and health care. Why is she gushing about some bleak senior "community" people who DON'T have a net worth of $25 million put their parents into? I suspect her mother is asking the same question, assuming she's still alive- considering that Lunden has been pushing this service for about 20 years now, and is herself 73 years old, I'm not sure that's even a fair assumption.
(Never answered by Colonial Penn in any of their ads, anyway....)
According to this spokeschoad, the ONLY thing anyone is ever concerned about when purchasing life insurance (or any other insurance, for that matter) is Price, Price, and Price. As in "how much does it cost, can I afford it, will the rates ever change?" But of course, this is NOT the only item a consumer should be concerned about when purchasing insurance. There's another P that Colonial Penn only hints at in all of it's ads, and that word is "Payout." As in "Payout Amount."
In every single one of these noxious, fetid commercials- and especially the ones that feature actors who would be a disgrace to any neighborhood drama club- we get nothing but hints concerning how much Colonial Penn will hand recipients of their "$9.95 plan." We see people off-handedly comment on how the payments "can help" pay for this and "contribute" to paying for that. Kind of like Endurance and Car Shield yakking about "Roadside Assistance" and "helping" with car rentals, which could mean anything from "I suggest you call AAA" to "I understand Budget still rents cars, google their number on your Smartphone, dummy."
What we are NEVER given is an actual amount- as in, if grandma lets Colonial Penn charge her VISA card $9.95 a month for five years and then kicks off having paid a total of $600 in premiums, how much does her son get toward putting her body in a box and dumping it into a hole decorated by a carved piece of Vermont Granite?
Turns out that Colonial Penn sells life insurance by the "unit," and each "unit" is $9.95 per month. And how much coverage do you get for $9.95 per month? For two years, none at all. After that- about $700.
Considering that Colonial Penn itself likes to remind us that "the average funeral can cost $30,000," you're going to need to buy a lot more units if you want to come close to covering your fancy party followed by dirt nap. But Colonial Penn caps the number of "units" each customer can buy at 12- which would cost you $119 per month, and pay out-- about $8600. And remember, there's that 2-year waiting period to prevent people from spending their final seconds on Earth- maybe during a heart attack- from buying insurance with their last gasp, because you know people will do that. People are scum.
So in fact, there's actually no way to use Colonial Penn Insurance to cover the cost of a funeral. A cremation, sure, but that's cheap anyway- why even bother with insurance to cover the cost of cremation? Don't send Colonial Penn any money- just set aside $10 a month in your own, interest-bearing account. And live a few years, which Colonial Penn's own plan requires in any case.
So yeah, Colonial Penn, your price is the selling point- your ONLY selling point. It's the "As Low As..." scam that anyone who has ever pulled up to Jiffy Lube expecting to get an oil change for $29.99 is very, very familiar with. Of course, nobody who wants actual coverage is going to sign up for that $9.95 plan because it's basically worthless- your company plans on people hanging up the phone confused and a little distressed that they called you willing to invest ten bucks a month and ended up agreeing to eight or nine times that because the nice young man you hired to take the call took them on a polite but firm guilt trip. I have another P for you- "Pass."
