Penny wise, pound foolish

What is the smartest, cleverest bit o' wisdom that has ever been passed on to you which you actually use or have used? They say the old like to pass on their wisdom to the young and the young need to learn it themselves by making the same mistakes. Who told you something which you have found to be true and have used in your life path?

By txholdup | 01/20/2012 12:31 PM | 10 comments

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In dealling with a situation, I always ask myself 3 questions: 1) Is there anything that I can trully do about this problem, 2) Will it matter in a year, 3) Is it worth getting grey hair over! If the answer to any of the questions is NO. "I let-it-go!"

niceass4me 02/02/2012 01:56 PM

Mother: "Don't put strange things in your mouth, you don't know where they've been." What do you suppose she meant by that? :O

hisbiguy 01/22/2012 06:53 PM

Father always told us never to bother to read fiction when you can go out and make it. Grandmother always said to
us that you'll never be that rich to buy poor and how true that turned out to be...

tobayer 01/22/2012 01:32 PM

One of my favorites bits of wisdom from my dad, "Never get a dog smarter than you are".

So I've never owned an Australian Shepherd.

PDQuesnell 01/22/2012 07:02 AM

make it short.

fenwaydav 01/22/2012 06:07 AM

"This too shall pass"

craigop 01/21/2012 11:49 PM

My own dear mother was full of witty advice and bits of wisdom. "You can't put an old head on young shoulders." Which I am sure meant that you can't tell a young person anything, they think they know it all. I know that I did. And: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." It's a miracle that I ever gave in to cell phones and PCs. Get away from me with those smart phones and tablets! In my day a tablet was something that you wrote notes on. And phones weren't smart, the operator (actually an employee of the phone company- Bell Telephone) was smart.

hisbiguy 01/21/2012 07:16 PM

I would like to add a modification to the phrase: "You get what you pay for." A good friend of mine taught me this: "It is not necessarily true that you always get what you pay for (sometimes you pay, and end up w/ crap...but that's the price for not doing your homework or, perhaps bad luck or a combination of the two), but it will ALWAYS be true that you never get what you DON'T pay for."

GAMsilvrfoxHUNTR 01/20/2012 11:04 PM

My aunt (wife of my father's youngest brother) and I connected well when I was a youth. During times when I would drive her to get groceries (she did not have a driver's license) we would talk. One of the phrases that she said often was one that has stuck throughout the years...

That phrase is "you get what you pay for." In other words, if you buy cheap stuff you will end up replacing it sooner. Cheap does not mean one saves. There are so many times in life when remembering that lesson as I drove her to get groceries that I have applied in my own life.

A second lesson was from my 8th grade math teacher. We didn't learn much math in that class. The teacher spent the whole hour talking... and talking... and talking... But, surprisingly, I listened! One of the comments he made was "watch out for the quiet ones." It isn't the person who heaps praise or lets loose with a torrent of verbal abuse one needs to react to - rather, it is the one who says nothing. The quiet ones are the ones who will put a knife in your back and maybe smile in your face as they do it. As customers, the client who leaves and doesn't say "thank you" or who doesn't make a comment about service is perhaps one who will never return. In my present employment we have the idea that a person is checking out the office and within a few seconds making a decision about returning next year. They may suffer through the experience of getting their tax return done today (since they are already in the door) but by scoping out how the employees express themselves, how they appear, the cleanliness of the office and so forth all add up to a decision as to whether they will ever return again. Such decisions happen very quickly.

Finally, when I taught high school our principal would always lecture the teachers that for every student who leaves the school we are really losing students in multiples of 10 - because they have friends and relatives who may go as well. Turns out the same is true where I am employed - when we fail to deliver service or in some other way don't score a home run that one dissatisfied client will tell every other person he/she knows. Our reputation suffers accordingly. On the positive side however, somebody with a truly positive experience may mention that to others but extending the recommendation very far seldom happens quite as rapidly as from the dissatisfied customer!

everysooften
west Michigan

everysooften 01/20/2012 10:02 PM

Have an old friend who is a venture capitalist in New York. He flies around the country going to start up companies and if he likes what they are working on he raises capital for them. When I first started investing he said always remember, "bears make money, bulls make money, pigs don't make money". I learned what he meant many years ago when MCI-WorldCom offered $65 a share for Sprint. I had worked for CENTEL which became Sprint and had a little over 250 shares in the company. I read that "analysts" expected there would be a bidding war for Sprint. So instead of selling my $17000 worth or Sprint for a $12000 profit I waited for the bidding war which never happened. Shortly after the offer MCI-WorldCom collapsed. Two years ago I sold my Sprint and claimed a $4200 tax loss. Lesson learned.

txholdup 01/20/2012 12:39 PM