How to Sweat the Small Stuff

by Brenda Evans

If buying a room-sized birdcage means you have to buy the parrot that goes with it, think twice. Parrots can live to be 100. Besides, parrot owners tell me you also must buy super-sized, sound-deafening earmuffs. Parrots know how to scream loud. Note I said scream, not chirp, whistle, or coo. Ear-splitting, glass-breaking, hear-it-a-mile-away loud. I’m quoting parrot owners on that. You also may have neighbors who do not own big earmuffs, may get angry, may even shoot. You should know, too, that some parrots are both screamers and biters. Are you prepared for that?

But this is not really about parrots. I’m making a point. If you sweat the small stuff like you ought to, later you probably will not have to sweat the big, really bad stuff. That goes for all sorts of things both spiritual and material.

Take Jesus at the Samaritan well, for example. It was noon—a small thing, but not an insignificant thing. An adulterous woman gave Him a sip. He gave her more, a whole artesian well of living water. What if He had arrived earlier in the day? He would have missed her. She would have missed Him and so would her Samaritan friends. All would have remained lost and thirsty and perhaps never have found the Water of Life. Small things matter.

Materially, too, many things turn on small wheels. Take real estate contingencies. Some are trivial; some are not. Imagine you want to buy a house on the edge of town. Your agent finds exactly what you want, but there is a contingency on the contract. If you buy the house, you have to take the three llamas that go with it. The upside is there’s no extra charge for the llamas. The downside is you know nothing about llamas. So you think at least three times about this contingency, and you do research. You learn that llamas are a South American camel. They live 20-30 years, are intelligent and sociable, willing to be pack animals and, best of all, if all your good intentions toward them fail, they are edible. So you sign the contract.

Contingencies in real estate purchases range from minor to deal-breaking. I remember a minor one: the water feature on the second-story deck of a house we were negotiating for in Nashville years ago. That gurgling, water-spitting frog almost did the deal in. It was ugly, and it took up precious space. We didn’t want it. The owner insisted we did. Bill and I insisted we did not. Eventually we were able to sweat that water-spitting frog off the deck, so we signed the contract.

Of course, there can be serious issues. “As is” on real estate contracts in earlier days often meant you got the house all right, but also the termites, the black mold, and the backed-up sewer. Today, most states require inspections and forbid “as is” home sales. In short, you must protect yourself and look closely at the small stuff. What if there are still issues? Ask for a contingency of your own: the seller must fund a 12-month warranty.

In fact, look closely at any contract. Last year we bought a “new” used car. New to us, but three years used to everybody else. It was a snazzy 2010 mocha-colored Buick LaCrosse with bucket seats, black leather interior, stick shift (never mind that it’s a three-in-the-floor automatic), tilting seats and mirrors…the works. A real step up for retirees who owned The Old Man’s Car, a white Buick LeSabre, for ten years and 186,000 miles. The point is, much to the annoyance of the car salesman, I read the entire contract—large print, small print, the whole thing. Four pages as I remember. All the small stuff! Bill, too.

You have to pay attention unless you like bad surprises. Know what you are doing, what you are buying, what the terms are. Don’t get caught with three llamas you didn’t want and didn’t even know you had paid for.

I’ll go further. Another way to sweat the small stuff is to be downright suspicious. Now, I don’t mean paranoid or irrational. In fact, I mean just the opposite. As a consumer, keep your eyes wide open. Be mentally alert. Watch, listen, question, doubt.

Do you know what the word consumer suggests about us? It’s not entirely positive because the verb form means, among other things, that we can become engrossed, take up things, devour them, even engorge ourselves without thinking. If we sweat the small stuff—stop, question, compare, restrain our impulses—we probably will not wolf down every so-called “great deal” in sight or polish off ten sales racks like a ravenous glutton.

Here’s another thing: admit that not every great deal is really a great deal. Last fall, before the holiday shopping frenzy began, I read a lot about buyers and sellers, including new terms like retail theater, framing, and engineered illusion. I also brushed up on old terms such as list price, markdowns, and profit margins.

Retail theater and engineered illusion especially grabbed my attention because I love drama. Theater is exciting with its tricks of light and sound, ironic turns of words and plots. I like smoke and mirrors, too, even when I know the truth is being embellished. At the theater, I want to be deceived and transported for the moment. I want pleasure and pathos. I want to feel.

We shoppers don’t seem to mind retail theater either because we also like to feel. We want “bargains” even if we suspect they are carefully engineered illusions. Suzanne Kapner who writes for The Wall Street Journal says what we are after is the feeling that we got a good deal. We want elation, exhilaration.

Truth is, we know that markdowns have first been marked up and that steep discounts are already priced into the product. Kapner reminds us of the usual way this is done: “Big retailers work backward with their suppliers to set starting prices that, after the markdowns, will yield the profit margins they want.” Only a few of us buy at that starting price. Most of us wait until prices are marked down once, then again. That’s when we get that I’m-getting-a-bargain feeling, and retailers still get their really healthy profit margin.

So what’s my point? There are a couple, actually. One, I must take care of small things both materially and spiritually so that they don’t become big bad things. Two, that when I go feeling my way along or when I’m heedless or indulgent or too passive, I probably won’t take care of those small things. That goes for everything from how I shop the sales racks to how I witness for Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, remember what He paid attention to that day in Samaria? Small, but not insignificant things: time, place, purpose. He’s our model. Small stuff matters. Let’s sweat it.

About the Writer: Brenda Evans is a retired English teacher. She and her husband Bill (former director of the Free Will Baptist Foundation) live in Cattletsburg, Kentucky. They are proud grandparents of seven.