Self-Restraint

Cheerio. Gladstone Bear esquire at your service. While I may not be at the forefront of Furry Thoughts for Fuzzy Times, my quiet role in the bear bureaucracy is one of great importance. I manage the bear bank, where we teddy bears save our coinage. Perhaps in other settings I would be hedging funds or finessing options, but it is my solemn duty and honor to lend a guiding hand to teddy bear finances. I have often admired Pudgie's insight and Wagsy's gregariousness, but neither of my two esteemed colleagues possess the necessary investment acumen for managing teddy bear funds.

The committee on training and instruction decided that the young Misters Bear and Pi required tutelage in the world of money. I was only too happy to lend my services to the enterprise. One of my favourite activities is to teach fecund minds the value of self-restraint and discipline.



The first lesson is that you cannot have your cookie and eat it too. Take for example my beautiful cookie. It is chewy and sweet and scrumptious. The mere aroma of my cookie could cause a palace guard to break stance and drool in anticipation. A cookie this exquisite should be cherished and savored. Precisely BECAUSE I cherish my cookie, I do not eat it. My cookie and I have been together for as long as I can remember. Much like the finest of wines, my cookie is much too valuable to be eaten. A less cultured and more impulsive person would have succumbed to temptation long ago. However, my self-restraint has been rewarded and I still possess my invaluable cookie.



The same principle can be applied to money. Take note, young bears, a penny saved is a penny earned. Some hedonistic bears would have you spend your money on ephemeral trifles such as cable tv, but do not succumb to such temptations. A solid reserve of coins can ensure that rainy days feature an umbrella and that the stitch in time arrives as scheduled and not a moment later.

A little known corollary to the rule is one hundred pennies saved is twenty nickels or four quarters earned. The reader might think I am daft for mentioning simple currency arithmetic, but such calculations are of the utmost importance to teddy bears. For when our bank overflows, our people offer assistance in exchanging our coinage for bills and other promissory notes. While the gesture is kind and perhaps genuine, past experience has taught me that such transactions are a poor deal for teddy bears. Too often the coins disappear and no bills are returned. The remaining coins from the exchange are returned to the bears, but by and large the bears are left with a steaming bowl full of nothing! Therefore, the prudent money manager ensures that no one stash of coins exceeds $1. Why, I have small stashes of coins in many tax havens across our globe. While I certainly enjoy my trips to Guernsey, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands, the primary purpose of my travels to ensure the fiscal security of our teddy bear clan.