What Small Thing Would Make You Feel Rich?

Forget the manse on the hill or the beemer in the garage. What small thing would make you feel rich?

As I was yelling at my kids to please close all the doors (to the upstairs, to the basement, to the bathroom) before turning on the heat this morning, I realized that being wealthy, to me, would be turning on the heat and neither worrying nor caring if it "got wasted." Given that my two-story 1929 house has an oil furnace, being wealthy would also mean never worrying that the tank would run dry--something that happens to me at least once every year, clogs up the lines, and costs me an extra $90 to put back into operation.

For my long-deceased mother, it would have meant using each teabag only once. As it was, she never got over her depression-era habit of using each teabag at least twice before discarding. I still can't see a saucer with a used teabag sitting on the counter without thinking of her.

My oldest daughter told me that being wealthy would mean that she could fill her car up with gas, rather than getting it $10 at a time; Her husband said he'd know he had it made when he could purchase a woodworking tool without concern that there would not be enough in the bank account to last until the end of the month.

One of my colleagues at work said he'd be wealthy when he could go through the local bookstore and pick up whatever he wanted instead of weighing how much he wanted a particular book against the amount of time he was willing to wait for it to become available at the library.

Another colleague felt that wealth would be hers when she no longer felt compelled to buy generic breakfast cereal and frozen orange juice.

So what about my readers? What minor change would make you feel richer than you are now?