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On average, I deposit two or three small checks about once a month. (By “small checks” I mean $3 checks.) Fairly often, the tellers comment on the size of the checks. Usually they say something like “Oh, big deposit today huh?” and I just smile and say yup.

Whenever that happens, I can’t help thinking about the times when getting an extra $6 or $9 a month would have made a huge difference in my quality of life. And it STILL helps. After all, I’m grateful for every dollar.

But it makes me wonder about how people perceive the value of money. I get the feeling that some of those tellers wouldn’t even bother depositing a check that small. To me a dollar is a dollar, and I think about what it can buy or do either on its own or combined with other dollars.

However, my definition of “a lot” of money has changed over the years. $10 would have been a lot years ago, but now $100 is. I’m aiming for the day when it’ll take $100,000 to feel like “a lot” to me.

I guess that it’s only common sense that as incomes increase, the amount it takes to be considered a lot of money increases as well. But I think we ought to be careful in letting that situation change our outlook on the actual value of money.

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