Today, I am thankful for my all my mother taught me about being wise with my money.
On this Mother’s Day, I wanted to express my gratitude to my mother, who tacitly reminds me through her own selfless actions that a parent’s love is and should always remain unconditional. Even though my mother lacks a 6th grade education, she is one of the wisest humans I know. The life lessons she has taught me about kindness, devotion, and humility are priceless reminders I carry with me each day. So, to all the mothers out there celebrating this upcoming Sunday, may your Mother’s Day celebration be filled with unbridled joy, serenity, and love.
Yesterday, I shared the story of how Mother’s Day came to become a national holiday. Today, I thought it might be helpful to espouse on a core lesson my mother (and I’m sure many of your own mothers) taught me: Be wise with your money. Do not burn a hole in your product. In other words, don’t spend all your money in one place. All this got me thinking about today’s day: May 10, or otherwise 5/10. In other words, from commercial standpoint, today is not just Mother’s Day. It’s also ‘five and dime’ day.
For many years, while living in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, my mom would send me out on errands to the local ‘five and dime’ shop to buy milk or some other necessary item. So, with some money in hand, I would jump out the back-door of my house, cross over to my uncle’s lawn (yes, my uncle and aunt lived in the house behind us), cross Glen Street, saunter through the A&P supermarket parking lot, and come upon the bustling main street of Anderson Avenue. Just a few steps down the road, I would encounter the local ‘5 and Dime’ store. I would purchase the requested item (as well as a piece of Bazooka gum) and then head home with the change.
I never really understood why they called it a ’5 and Dime’ store until I did some research on this topic many years later. Long ago, a young, aspiring American entrepreneur named Frank W. Woolworth envisioned the idea of a store where all the items could be bought at a fixed price, of either 5 or 10 cents. As a young boy, he always wanted to be a retailer, owning his own store. When he was 21, he worked to stock the shelves at a general store. One of his roles at the store, Augsbury & Moore’s Drygoods, was to arrange the display in the shop windows, which he performed so meticulously. He was dismayed at watching customers haggling over prices, as was the norm for the time. Eventually, a few years later in 1879, he borrowed $300 and opened a successful ‘5 and Dime’ store. The name was specifically chosen to convey to customers that the merchandise was not only inexpensive, but also that all items were fixed at either a nickel or dime. Woolworth was the first to implement ‘self-display’ cases, thereby allowing customers to browse the merchandise without the support of sales clerks. The stores sold everything one might need, from baseballs to schoolbook straps. Gravy strainers to tin dustpans. Candlesticks to purses. As might be expected (and, I imagine, much to the dismay of mothers), candy and chocolate were top-selling items. Woolworth also implemented the practice of buying his merchandise directly from low-cost manufacturers, mostly based in Europe, thereby keeping his overhead low.
His approach worked. Fast forward 20 years later, the F.W. Woolworth Company had over 580 stores. The Company would keep to the promise of limiting prices to no more than a dime long after Woolworth’s death in 1919, eventually growing into the largest department store chain in the world.
I can only imagine how busy the stores were on the day of and the day before Mother’s Day. Somehow, I can envision thousands of children (and even more so, fathers) scouring the store aisles for the perfect Mother’s Day gift.
Hopefully, your children don’t ‘nickel and dime’ you on a Mother’s Day present. Happy Mother’s Day to all!
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