Economic Dominos – Buying Local

Our 1995 van dies. The mechanic says its toast.

An elderly couple upgrades their ride and trades in my dream car.

My local car salesman calls me because he knows its in my price range. The month is coming to a close and he has bills to pay.

The mechanic says it’s clean and mechanically sound with a great price.

The owner of the dealership says he’s hoping my husband’s company makes it because his car dealership is dependent on its employees. He’s also running for school board and wants our vote. He thanks us for buying the van – and he means it, he doesn’t want his business to go under.

We stop and buy insurance from our friends from church. They thank us for getting the loan locally, they’re also on the bank’s board.

My husband calls a local bank, he does freelance work for them, the manager gave us an interest rate at 6%, 3% lower than other banks we asked.

They make plans to play golf in the future.

We spent $7,500 for our dream van.

The salesman made a commission, the car dealership made a profit, the insurance broker made a commission, the bank manager made a commission and the bank took its cut.

That’s at least 5 families and 3 small local businesses whose economies were positively impacted by the purchase of my van.

Hopefully, all of them will look to my husband in the future for freelance graphic design and advertising and it will come full circle. We’ll be needing another car eventually.

That’s what we did to affect the unemployment rate and the economy yesterday.