Skip to main content

Getting Stingy at the Cost of Fire Safety?

March is fire prevention month, right? If there are people who are too extravagant then I'd like to talk again about stingy people (read the article here). I've tried growing up with the stingy vs. extravagant extremes. Some people become stingy even with the necessities. It's one thing to deny a child a children's party since it's a want. It's another thing to deny a child stuff they need all in the name of saving money. Even worse, some people may be more than stingy enough to ignore fire safety.

A stingy person just wants to save. It's almost like the story of the Miser and His Gold or The Rich Miser. I really find these stories entertaining at the same time, irritating. The first story has the miser who hid his gold under the ground. Some people today are too distrustful of banks and investments. The second story has a rich man who even dresses in rags, denies his son's shoes, had his wife cook some cake only for him, and was so greedy he had it coming. The stories may end up in the issue of fire safety as well.

I could think of absurd ways that a stingy person can ignore fire safety:

  1. Not setting up proper fire safety measures set by the fire department. 
  2. Buying cheap appliances (while ignoring the safety measures) so they don't have to spend more money now. 
  3. Getting super cheap repair services at the cost of safety. 
  4. Not setting up a firewall because it's too expensive.
  5. Not buying fire insurance because it's insurance is "useless" and a "scam".
What would be commonly ignored is that such would cause damage in the long run. Try to talk to stingy people about the damages and they may start hurling insults, saying that they've got more experience, that the fire department is just squeezing out their money, etc. I'm really amazed at how being a stingy person can deprive anybody of good logic. That's why I say that being stingy is just as misguided as being extravagant.

The damage caused by the fire will be greater. A lot of the events and expenses could've been avoided if these were done:
  1. Proper fire equipment would've probably prevented the fire from causing more damage.
  2. Buying quality appliances at a higher cost can help save electricity, repair bills, and be more useful for long term.
  3. Having quality repairs means fewer chances of having to return to the repair shop. Chances are some people "promote it cheap" so they can scam the person into returning several times. 
  4. A firewall would've lessened the chances of a fire.
  5. If worse comes to worst, fire insurance means having the money you need for repairs. 
This fire prevention month, think about it, "Am I too stingy to ignore fire safety?" If so, you can expect to lose a lot of money as if you gambled them all in a casino, in a pyramid scam, or in cryptocurrency. Think it over that you may end up spending a lot more money if you're that stingy to ignore fire safety. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Complain About the PHP 500.00 Noche Buena Remark While Supporting the Filipino First Policy

It's that stupid  when I read the remarks of DTI secretary Cristina Roque made a really tactless remark . Sure, the remark had people angry because, in reality, the whole noche buena at PHP 500.00 for a family of four will not match, given these ingredients: ham, P170 to P945; fruit cocktail, P61.76 to P94.41; all-purpose cream, P36.00 to P72; “nata de coco,” P52.50 to P62.50; “kaong,” P76.50 to P84; “queso de bola,” P210 to P470; cheese, P16.50 to P310; and mayonnaise, P20.40 to P245.85. /dda As I read through the list above, I'm reminded of how much I don't like December because it's the season of abounding toxic positivity . The song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is in full blast, even after Andy Williams died of old age in 2012 . I tend to drive the road and when traffic hits, I always think about the problem of last-minute Christmas shopping , and scream it, "Isn't it any wonder why the Philippines doesn't improve?" It...

Four Basic Chinese Conversational Questions, Grade 1 Style

I could remember how useless the Chinese classes were, not because Chinese is a useless language (there are actually over a billion speakers worldwide), not because the Chinese teachers were stereotypically very strict (Grade 2 was strict, Grade 3 was even stricter than Grade 2, Grade 6 was said to be the strictest ), but because of the way Chinese was to be taught. That's why I got encouraged to write about learning Chinese through meaningful conversations, not parroting . Fortunately, those old Sinjiang textbooks are no longer available except for museum purposes (read here ).  Just looking at this question and answer sweet from Ling Ling Mandarin's Instagram account--I remember what my Grade 4 Chinese teacher said, "If you want only one bon toi (question and answer), go back to Grade 1. But I don't think Grade 1 only has one bon toi." The problem with the old class was that we had to learn Hokkien before learning Mandarin. I confess my Hokkien is really bad. Th...

Instead of Hating Successful Chinese-Filipinos, Why Not LEARN from Their SUCCESS Instead?

It's Chinese New Year and I can remember some crazy stuff back in my childhood. Right now though, there are still some Filipinos of brown descent (either Malay or Indonesian) who still have their typical bitter attitude towards successful people. I was reminded of someone who blamed the rich, rather than their poor attitude towards money, as to why she had to work as a working student. There are still some who have their attitude of hating the rich for simply being rich . I don't deny that some rich people deserve hate. But why hate the rich person who has gotten rich through honest gain and hard work? Why not learn from good rich people who can offer sound advice instead of being bitter about their success?  Some Filipinos of non-Chinese origin may feel too proud about their being "Pure Filipino". However, any study of Filipino history will reveal that their brown skin isn't too unique. We can see Malaysians and Indonesians tend to have brown skin. Some of the ea...

How a Fitness App and Fitness Band Made Me Go from Sedentary to Active Lifestyle

Back in high school and after college, I had a sedentary lifestyle. I would play countless hours of video games and watch TV almost non-stop. Exercise tends to sound so complicated. Fortunately, it doesn't have to sound very complicated since exercise shouldn't always sound like being athletic. The moment I got a Xiaomi MiBand--I soon installed Google Fit aside from the official Xiaomi app (which gets really buggy) and the Notify for MiBand app. I started off rather fat in 2013 and I'm happy to say I've lost a lot of weight. A fitness band would be used to count steps. At first, I aimed for 6,000 steps a day but I wanted to beat that record. 6,000 steps was my bare minimum . There were times when an exercise would barely give me the steps I wanted. I could do some cardio boxing, feel very tired, and still not get the steps I wanted. Fortunately, fitness devices can be used in workout mode. With my MiBand, one of the things I did was to set it up to workout mode. I could...

Are People Complaining About Inflation in the Philippines Because They Feel the Need to Celebrate Christmas LAVISHLY?

Philippine Star Christmas is just in a few days, right? I'm reading Facebook comments about the ongoing inflation. There are those so-called thought leaders like Silent No More PH that have been putting, "Merry Christmas" while addressing inflation. It's no secret that the prices of noche buena (Christmas dinner) items have been increasing. There are a lot of virtue signals on Facebook which makes me wonder, "Do they realize that inflation has many factors ?" Do those whiners realize that prices in the grocery are more expensive than if you bought in the public market? I feel that those people complaining over social media about price inflation may have felt the need to make their Christmas celebrations lavish or it ain't Christmas. I could remember how prices soared after the Odette disaster. The simple answer is all on supply and demand . The prices of distilled water increased. The prices of vegetables increased. The storm destroyed a good supply of i...

A Careless Noche Buena as the Red Death to One's Holiday Finances

It's the first day of December. Right now, I don't even feel like celebrating Christmas. Cebu is still in a state of calamity overall. I don't even look forward to Christmas parties. I'm glad some churches have canceled Christmas parties, to divert the fundraising (such as paying PHP 500.00 per head or family) to convert them into relief goods purchases instead. However, some people can have a callous mentality that's akin to the Masque of the Red Death . Boomers may have tried seeing the film Masque of the Red Death starring the late Vincent Price. The story of the Masque of the Red Death had Prospero trying to deny the terrible plague called the Red Death, choosing to hold a lavish feast instead of helping his citizens! Lessandra The typical  Noche Buena can be high in cholesterol and the like. As I thought of DTI Secretary Christina Roque's rather tactless (but probably badly needed) statement that PHP 500.00 is enough for a Noche Buena of a family of four. T...

Kabataan Partylist Seriously Needs to Learn ECONOMICS from the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union

Vietnam National University, Hanoi Kabataan Partylist, is that you? No, it's actually the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (Đoàn Thanh niên Cộng sản Hồ Chí Minh), or alternatively, it can be called the Vietnam Youth Union . The color blue may remind some of Kabataan Partylist. Both Kabataan Partylist and the Vietnam Youth Union are involved with recruiting youths into the organization. However, there's a crucial difference between Kabataan Partylist and the Youth Union in how they view economics. The  Kabataan Partylist Laguna's blog  even writes this: It believes that the Philippines, as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, is plagued by a system which allows foreign and big business interests to dominate, while the majority of our countrymen are left poor and hungry . We are living in a society where foreign subservience, peasant landlessness, and rampant corruption are the top three ills. To that end, Kabataan Party-list strives to galvanize the Filipino youth in u...

I'm Trying to Understand the Recent PSEi Decrease from 7,000+ to 6,800+

Business World Online The Philippine Stock Market Index (PSEi) has had another decrease. The score reached 7,000+ and I was getting pretty excited. I was thinking, "Should I sell my stock index or should I continue averaging into it?" I'm still holding some funds because I'm going to invest more in the   long term  than do day trading. I agree with Charlie Munger that day trading is nothing more than a   speculative orgy . I got through Google News and found some factors that caused the recent decrease. I'd like to do this not as an analyst but as a lay investor and blogger.  Profit-taking  before  key data The  Business World  website sites that there was profit-taking before key data . I was reading through and found out that there was indeed some profit taking The score that went from 7,000+ to 6,800+ can be affected. Here's an excerpt of the report which caught my attention: “Philippine stocks were sold ahead of the January inflation print tom...

Learning About Reversible Chinese Words

I wanted to write more about Chinese education. I did write about the constraints that hit Chinese education . I had problems with how too much memorization became the focus. With Chinese, there's also the world of reversible words which change in meaning . In English, we can compare that to the anagram where switching letters change the meaning . For example, evil and vile may be synonymous but live and evil aren't. In Chinese, we can have two characters getting swapped which may either change the meaning entirely or change to a related meaning. Remember that they may be related but they don't have the same meaning. I could remember how the Hokkien calls visitors lang ke and while we called the customer ke lang. Both are people but both have a different purpose. I got into the LTL Mandarin School website and found reversible Chinese words. I won't tackle it all here because 164 words would mean I'll have to write an entire lecture. I think one of the biggest probl...

Removing 60-40 Equity Policy in Education Will Get More Filipinos Access to Mandarin Language Education

I just read from the Inquirer that House Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan wants to encourage the learning of Mandarin . Sadly, the article also says the following regarding Libanan's aim of wanting to learn Mandarin: “ If we are going to continue to rely on the export of labor to help drive our economic growth, we might as well equip our future workers with Mandarin and other foreign language skills to further build up their competitiveness, ” Libanan said on Sunday. Libanan, the representative of Pagtibayin at Palaguin ang Pangkabuhayang Pilipino (4Ps) party list, noted: “In foreign labor markets, we already have the edge because our workers can speak English. We should now aspire to double that advantage by encouraging more Filipinos to learn Mandarin at an early age.” This reminds me what we can't keep relying on what I call the labor export policy. I even wrote an article addressing the destructive obsession with OFW remittances . Sadly, the lawmaker may still be focused o...