Pay day syndrome
Published Jun 7, 2025 12:05 am
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Updated Jun 6, 2025 04:07 pm
MEDIUM RARE
A lawyer called it a “pay day economy,” i.e., nobody pays for anything until pay day, which normally comes twice a month, on the 15th and 30th.
And when The Day arrives, it’s Christmas – we eat out, go shopping or supermarketing, pay some of the more urgent bills like the rent and before the electricity is cut off, for example, then take home a special dish for the wifey or buy a toy or two for the kids. Without pay day, what would life be? Summer without sunshine, springtime without flowers – what a bleak time, indeed!
It’s even more special when pay day arrives on a Friday, for reasons that wage earners can explain more colorfully. “Pay day Friday,” as special as it gets, for then we can plan what fun, nice things to do for the weekend. God bless our wage earners who have the patience to wait!
I remember, when I got my first pay envelope I saw that my payroll number was 1111 – a good sign, I thought, four tall, vertical lines all facing up. The cashier looked puzzled when I thanked him – as if the money had come from him and not from the sweat of my brow – but he must’ve understood, though belatedly, because I caught a small, short smile on his lips.
What is a pay day economy? For good or bad, a pay day economy implies the people living a somewhat hand-to-mouth existence, relieved only by the fleeting promise of physically touching the money before the bills start flying out the window. For people who have debts to pay, pay day hangs over them like a sword of Damocles; they have no chance to enjoy the momentary happiness, which would otherwise have felt like a reward for a job well done (or half-done).
The other side of a pay day economy implies the earner’s inability or unwillingness to set aside a meaningful sum to keep as savings. In the days of my youth, the advice was to set aside 20 to 30 percent of our salaries, a nest egg, if you will, for emergencies and special reasons (good ones, like a special someone’s approaching birthday).
In those days of my generation’s fiscal innocence, nobody warned us about inflation, bah!