washington business
Grandma’s Rubber Band Accounting
Don C. Brunell, AWB President
Is the rubber band around our nation’s mounting debt about to burst?
My parents were raised during the Great Depression,
when money and jobs were scarce. One grandfather was an
underground copper miner; the other was a plumber.
My grandmother on my dad’s side had an interesting
family accounting system. In those days, bills were mostly
delivered to houses by young people scraping to make a
buck. She would bundle the bills and late notices in priority
order and wrap a small rubber band around them.
directories and newspapers, swept out barbershops,
cleaned houses, took in laundry and babysat. Unfortunately,
the same people employing them were like my grandparents just scraping to get by. They often got paid late — but
they got paid.
Today, the rubber band around our nation’s bills is about
to snap, yet unlike my grandmother, our elected officials
keep stuffing more bills underneath the rubber band. Getting a bigger rubber band is not an option — it wasn’t