How $46.17 Can Make Someone’s Christmas
My 14year old son and I stood in the electronics section of a Walmart on a busy holiday shopping day doing something you’ve probably read about often, but was a first for me… paying off random strangers’ layaway accounts.
It was 8:40 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Things were going fast. They had two registers running, bringing up and clearing accounts with practiced efficiency. The average balance was around $250, and as I was doing the math on how far I wanted to take this, a figure popped up that brought everything to a stop.
$46.17. I never thought I’d think twice about anything that costs just $46.17. But, this number and all its implications hit me hard. I looked at my son and said, “Do you see that?”
“Yeah, it’s a small one”, he replied.
“Yes, but imagine the situation they must be in...”
I didn’t say it out loud, but I felt sad and ashamed.
See, in 2011 my family started a tradition of visiting a local Walmart to buy toys for local kids during the holidays. It all started when I heard a news report that the U.S. Marine’s Toys for Tots program was 28,000 toys short of what they needed for their Denver operations. My kids and drove to Walmart and filled up 30 carts, which the Marines loaded up into a huge military truck.
It felt good. So we did it again the next year. Only this time, I invited my network of friends and business partners to join us. The year after that I made the experience part of a day-long workshop for entrepreneurs to draw even more bodies to the cause, and I’ve since made it the centerpiece of our company holiday get-together at Royalty Exchange.
Over the last eight years, we’ve collectively bought more than $1 million worth of toys for kids on Christmas. But as proud as I am of that number, it means far less to me this year than that $46.17.
My Son and I loading up the carts for Toys For Tots in 2012
That’s because this year I added a little personal twist to our annual company-wide Walmart shopping/giving spree. I paid off all the open layaway accounts at the Walmart we visited. This was a new experience for me and proved one of the most rewarding and educational acts I’ve ever done.
But I couldn’t get past that $46.17. Think about that for a moment. Imagine not having a spare $50 to buy your child or children a Christmas present such that you need to pay it down increments over time. Imagine what other hard choices you have to make, day in and day out, with that kind of financial restriction on your life. Pay the gas bill or feed the family? Buy new shoes or fix the toilet?
My Son and I with the awesome staff who helped us pay off all the layaway accounts.
As I was contemplating that reality while still in the store, one of the women who had items on layaway happened to show up, discovering her balance had been paid off. She tracked me down as we were leaving and — tears streaming down her face — thanked me over and over again… and gave me a long hug.
There was a lot in that hug. Gratitude for sure. But more than that. Relief.
Paying off this woman’s Walmart layaway seemed to have a big effect on her Christmas. Just imagine what a greater amount could have on her entire life and that of her family? It was a very personal reminder of something that’s so easily taken for granted — how the right amount of money injected into a person’s life at the right time can have an outsized impact.
It’s something I think about almost every day here at Royalty Exchange, and why we’ve made this holiday shopping/giving experience the foundation of our holiday party. While we follow the day’s shopping with a modest get together as a team, the experience is all the richer thanks to our spending the day together reminding ourselves how fortunate we are.
Royalty Exchange Staff & Families after our charity shopping spree
For the Royalty Exchange staff, this is particularly important. Our job is to help creative professionals like songwriters raise money… turning what’s often a trickle of royalty payments into a meaningful lump sum they can use to make a real difference in their lives and careers.
Over the course of the year, the impact of this effort can get clouded with the drive to meet monthly goals or the struggles with minutiae that any company faces day to day. We need to remember that what we do is more than just numbers of a balance sheet. It’s literally improving people’s lives.
I started the Walmart shopping tradition these eight years ago because I was feeling sorry for myself for some insignificant reason, and needed to remind myself how lucky I really am. What’s interesting is that the path to this realization is not one of feeling superior or more successful than those we’ve helped over the years by virtue of being in a better financial position.
If anything, I feel ashamed… for every moment I let myself feel unhappy with my lot in life, for lamenting not having more than I do, for complaining about little things that others would gladly accept without question.
And that, to me, is the new significance of $46.17.