People love to win. Whoever has the most stuff, free time, fastest car, smartest kids, hottest wife, etc. wins. Money is their path to all of these things. Or so they think. People who choose this path, put money above all. Their decisions are clouded and justified by the coin.
Financial institutions are the worst offenders of competition. They only are concerned about money. One of our societies favorite movies is It’s a wonderful life. It is the fight put up by a small towner who wants to help people make ends meet. He is driven by an angel to stay and help the people he loves. And this is what makes his life so wonderful. This rarely happens.
The story of the Doctor who cured polio is one of these stories. There are many about coders who donated their work for the good of others. Working in this arena I appreciate their efforts and am encouraged to do the same myself. And encourage other to do the same. It makes your life much more wonderful than any coin could.
This is long term thinking here. Of course a million dollars will make your days wonderful. But now you require the coin for happiness. Is that really what you want to rely on? I’d rather be backed up by a bunch of people who know me and understand what I like to do. They can inspire me to do things, learn things, and entertain. It seems people spend their money on ways to replace what other people could bring to your life for free. Why do people enjoy working in the arts so much?
The Financial institutions spend time figure out how to entertain you. They give you rewards for spending money with them. They now also will give you an advance on these rewards if you promise to spend money in the future. AMEX will notify you you have reward points when you have enough to spend them on something. Even if you don’t use your account very much, they want to remind you you have an account that gives you rewards when you use it.
When you cash in your rewards, they alert you by email and phone that you have redeemed your AMEX reward points.When they ship the item, they call you and tell you it is on its way. At the end of the call, they ask how you prefer to be contacted.
All this customer support for what? For a reward I got for spending their money. Too bad I just paid off my bill. I bet if I forgot to make a payment, they wouldn’t give me these types of notices. Nope. That would lose them money.