My friend braves below-zero temperatures, camping outside dollar stores to take advantage of the door-opening specials.

I on the other hand, will never understand why 7-Eleven doesn’t provide shopping carts. How is a guy supposed to get a full week’s grocery shopping stuffed into a plastic bag?

Money is a funny thing.

It can inspire a lifestyle, or define one.

The upside of a lifelong pursuit of the best deal is that you may someday be able to retire if you choose to. The downside is that pleasure becomes measured impersonally and in pennies.

Millions of arguments have been waged around ‘quality vs. quantity’ and the tiresome wisdom that ‘you get what you pay for.’ It comes down to how much we are prepared to compromise personal experience and sacrifice even the simplest of pleasures for the sake of some logical but lifeless assessment of worth.

My friend is a wonderful person who delights in contributing to the joy of others by providing from her humble resources the means to tiny excesses. But surely the most giving among us deserve a little indulgence themselves. $4 dollars is $4, and if we cannot or will not spend more, we should at least reserve the option to spend it as memorably as possible.

The plastic bag of day olds is a deal that will disappoint as it has over and over in the past. For the same price, one can have a scone fresh from the oven; infused with pecans and sprinkled with cinnamon.

In the final moments as our life flashes before our eyes, the images that come to mind will have nothing to do with money. They will be truly priceless; ‘tho many will be recalled as a poor investment at the time.

So what will it be? A stale scone every day for a week, or a fresh one on Saturday morning?

That’ll be $4 … do you need a receipt?