Little Things Mean a Lot

Have you ever noticed the odd pricing when you go to buy gas? They use a tactic much like stores that price an item at 99 cents. They think they are fooling us by not pricing it at $1. I don't know about you, but for me, I'm rarely fooled by it. If I see $1.99, I read that as $2, not $1.

However, the gas stations are a bit more clever. Any price you see always has a little 9 after it. What is that? It's 9/10 of one cent. Quick, reach into your pocket and grab a 9/10 cent coin. Got it? Of course not. There is no such thing. It's a game where they hide one cent of the cost of a gallon.

Who cares. It doesn't make any difference. After all, it's an amount of money so small there is not even a coin small enough to pay it.

But what is the cumulative effect? According to the Department of Energy, the daily use of gasoline nationwide in 2005, the last year for which there are statistics posted, was 3,784,734,000. If every one of those gallons sold had that extra 9/10 cent tacked on to it, that is a total of $34,062,606. That is $34 million per day hidden in plane sight. That's over $12 billion a year.

I is amazing how something so insignificant to us can have such a huge cumulative effect. Little things really do mean a lot.