Skip to main content

Giving for a Good Cause (Posted October 24, 2016)

When you volunteer to give blood, you show up at the designated location (i.e. school, church, illegal cock fight, etc.) and wait to be called by one of the technicians.  Once they call you, you’re ushered over to a temporary cubicle away from prying eyes so they can ask you 348 health questions in 30 seconds to which you are supposed to answer “no” on each one. Have you had in the last six months bodily fluids that defy description with a standard pallet of primary and secondary colors oozing from any natural or recently created orifices?” (They read those suckers so fast – I think that was one of the questions.)

One would think that they could hand you a laminated card when you first check in that had all of these questions, and at the bottom of the questionnaire there would be a note saying: “If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the previous questions, you may not donate blood today – you have more important things to worry about.” Instead, they bring you back to the cubicle and grill you. Some of the technicians give you the evil eye if they think you’re lying. You’re sort of waiting for the tech to lean across the little table and say, “Look. I understand you got caught up in the moment when everyone was signing up for the blood drive – you wanted to impress everyone with ‘Hey, look at me. I’m as selfless as any of you.’ But let’s be honest: you’re not eligible to donate, so I’m going to let you sit here for a couple more minutes and gather your wits about you. When you get up to leave, if anyone catches your eye and questions you, just tell them you have iron-poor blood. Do you understand? And don’t let me catch you back here again. Peer pressure’s tough, I’ll grant you, but the business end of my size eleven shoe is tougher.”

I do find a great deal of personal satisfaction with donating blood. Sure, it’s nice to think about the people I’m helping, and that’s all fine and dandy, but what I really enjoy about the whole experience is watching how nervous people get with the whole ordeal. I feel beholden to feed that fear.
The son of a friend of ours walked up to me and said he accompanied his dad so he could understand the whole process. Noting a look of trepidation on his face I said, “Not a bad plan, Chet, but I’m surprised it’s so quiet here today. Usually you hear a lot of screaming and moaning. They must be using some pretty strong drugs today. Better make sure they don’t slip you something – you could end up with a needle in your arm, too.  As the boy screamed and ran to find his dad, I noticed a lot of people were looking at me. I just told them, “Poor kid just found out he has iron-poor blood.”

While I’m fairly confident this young man will grow up to be a strong contributing member of society and won’t need hours of therapy (knock on wood), I’m reminded of how our perceptions are shaped by little tidbits we hear from someone we perceive as wise or intelligent (I’m sure Chet sees me as a pillar of knowledge).  Our moms, for example, told us as children that we couldn’t go swimming for an hour after we ate.  The truth behind that was our moms needed a nap (understandably so) there was no scientific evidence supporting that but we took that counsel as gospel, even though we weren’t happy about it. 


At some point in almost everyone’s life, this little nugget of mortgage “truth” has been imparted: you have to have 20% saved for a down payment on a house.  Over the last 35 years, according to the National Association of Realtors, the median down payment for a first-time homebuyer has been only 5%.  Let that sink in for a moment.  How many people could buy RIGHT NOW (with rocking interest rates) but are waiting until they’ve put away 20%?  THAT should be a question they ask when you donate blood!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Age-Old Concept Reaping Future Rewards

W hy are social media like Facebook and Instagram so darn popular among real estate and mortgage folks?   Hint: the top reason might be an endless supply of memes, cat videos, and the chance to be snarky, but the other reason runs a VERY CLOSE second.   Give up?   Answer:   They’re free – and they really help even the playing field by enabling a one-person shop look and market like an organization who employs an army of wordsmiths and graphic artists. This new century is glorious, right?   With that in mind, let me re-introduce you to a centuries-old concept that is equally glorious – and can help IMPROVE the playing field for you, regardless of the size of your team: karma.   On the subject of “free”, I’m not suggesting that you work for free, but when you freely give of yourself and your knowledge, you’ll see a greater payoff, I promise! Recently, an agent came to us with a question: she has a client who is looking to sell his condo.   It...

KNOWING is Half the . . . Problem

If you’ve learned one thing from reading these columns, it’s this: I don’t read a ton of books by or about the French philosopher Descartes or spend large amounts of money traveling the world to view the Masters’ paintings in far-flung museums – my entertainment and sources of knowledge run to the more . . . mundane, if you will.   Well, I’m not about to disappoint.   In the movie Men in Black , the two main characters J & K (played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, respectively) have recently met and K is trying to recruit J to join the clandestine government agency that monitors aliens on planet Earth.   Agent K has just shown J a lot of things that are hard to believe/explain and urges J to keep them secret.   At this point, J interrupts him, and this piece of dialogue ensues: J: Why the big secret?   People are smart.   They can handle it.   K: A person is smart.   People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you...

Control Your Money, Not Vice Versa

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post very similar to this - in fact, some aspects are identical - but I'm putting a slightly different twist on it to alter the perspective by a tad.   Whenever I meet a real estate investor who likes to take the fix-n-flip approach, I always ask why they go that route rather than subscribe to a buy-n-hold approach.  There are different answers to that question, but they all seem to have a common thread running through all of them: "I need the money to go out and buy another house to flip."  Sure, most people have a limited supply of cash on hand, so that makes sense.  With that said, there are three options EVERY real estate investor should know about - but, usually, they only know about the first one.  Let me set this up: Real-life example: the property in question costs $77,000 to acquire and $18,000 to rehab (total cash put out equals $95,000).  The property then can sell for $135,000.  Ready? Traditional...