Add It Up

Sometimes the amount we have (or owe) doesn’t look like much at first glance. My theory is that it’s always better to know the facts, so go ahead and add it up. For example, take this list:

931.28
2678.85
500.00
161.45
276.51
335.51

Those could be a listing of almost anything. By themselves, they don’t look like much, but add them up and you’ve got nearly $5000. (Which could be a good thing if you’re talking about little bits of funds that you’ve got socked away here and there, but not such a good thing if the amounts are money you owe to various credit cards.)

What about $3.86? Not much, right? But that happens to be what it costs for three chicken strips at Long John Silver’s. I added up all the little amounts like that that I used to spend on dining over the past 9 years and came up with around $25,000. Yeah, you read that right. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Adding it up gave me the big picture.