The store employee rang up my purchases, and spoke, eyeing my snow-white hair.
“Are you a senior citizen?”she asked, hand poised over the cash register buttons.
It wasn’t a trick question, but I had to pause for a minute and think. One issue is that I’ve been getting senior discounts off and on since I was 40. The savings were involuntary. My then-prematurely gray hair began inspiring strangers to lighten my financial load, no questions asked.
The first such incident came at a McDonalds, where I took my two kids, then 4 and 10, for a quick lunch. As we sat down, I eyed the receipt, wondering why my coffee was nearly free. Then, I saw it: a 10 percent retiree discount off the total of the meals along with my cuppa joe.
I had just turned 40.
First, I was outraged. Then, I was amused. I decided to take the money.
My premature entrance into senior status continued off and on as my hair evolved beyond salt and pepper. Once I even got a complement on the good behavior of my 6-year-old “grandson.” “He’s my son, but thanks anyway,” I said.
Yet, this year, among birthday cards, a Medicare card had arrived in the mail. Now I really was a senior citizen, so I nodded in response to the cashier’s question. The register rang, and there it was: two bucks off my $20 purchase.
Now that I can look forward to a lifetime of savings, the practice has ceased to be a joke.
But now that I know I can look forward to a lifetime of such savings, the practice has ceased to be a joke. I don’t need the money.
If anything, young families need any discount they can get when the kids are small and the bills are high. I remember how the list of needs then was never-ending: Braces, high mortgage payments, a house that we couldn’t sell for years, expensive car repairs, student loan payments. It all made me feel like I had to run just to keep up with our debts.
And yet, we were lucky. Lucky to have jobs, medical insurance, food, heat; lucky to not to have catastrophic bills to pay.
Google “senior discounts” and the list is stupefying - and endless. Everything from rental cars, groceries, restaurants, security systems, clothing stores, you name it.
Why?
The U.S. has worked hard for many decades to reduce elder poverty, and it shows. In 1935, poverty among senior citizens was at least 70 percent. By 1959 it had fallen to 35 percent. Now, it’s 10.3 percent, lower than any other demographic group in America.
Besides simple compassion, my guess is there is another reason for the ongoing government concern about my new peers. Seniors have the highest voter participation rate of any other age group.
Yet the U.S. hasn’t worked nearly so hard to lower the poverty rate among children, which remains very high among Western democracies and hovered at 16 percent before temporary government aid increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
So I wish that, somehow, this discount that I am blessed not to need could be passed onto others. The single mom who works two jobs to keep food on the table for her small children, for example. The households of such women have a poverty rate of over 23 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Give it to the junior enlisted service members whose families have to go to food pantries to feed their kids. One study found that the percentage of such soldiers and their families who became short of food reached 31 percent, a national disgrace. It was exacerbated by the pandemic that shut down schools, put stress on spouses, their jobs and the family income.
Heck, let’s throw in the graduates who struggle to pay both rent and their student loans because they weren’t lucky enough to be born in an era when attending a good state college was easy and inexpensive.
There should be a way to pass on a senior discount to others, making it a random act of kindness, as happens at drive-thru restaurants once in awhile when customers pay for the car behind them. One such effort in Minnesota two years ago resulted in more than 900 people in cars paying for strangers’ meals in a human chain of goodness that lasted two and a half days.
Let’s pay the discount forward to those who really need the break. All ideas welcome.
Spare me my senior citizen discount
I love the idea of being able to pass the discount on to those who really need it. Not all seniors are fortunate to be in a position to pass on discounts, but to those who are, it would be a great idea. I wonder if this is an accounting software issue...
Perhaps until the “how to pass along the discount” is addressed, people could simply donate to various organizations/charities that address the issues you called out.