“It’s not your salary  
that makes you rich,  
it’s your spending habits.”   
Charles Jaffe

Growing up in the Sunset District of San Francisco, quite often my Mom would hand me a one dollar bill and ask me to walk down to Fairlane Food Store at 39th & Vicente to pick up two half-gallons of milk. I knew she meant Foremost milk. That’s what we drank in our home. I would walk to the dairy case in the back of the store, pick up the two containers of milk, and proceed to the checkout stand. The milk would be placed in a brown paper bag, for which there was no additional charge, and I would get a few pennies back from the cashier. 

Do you remember when candy bars at the store cost a nickel, when a glass bottle of Pepsi Cola from the vending machine near the exit was a dime, and when the price for a two-pack of Hostess cupcakes would only set you back 12¢. I do. And I remember when the cost went from 12¢ to 13¢, because no longer was I able to purchase two packs of cupcakes with my quarter. 

Some of you will remember the price of a gallon of gasoline when you first got your driver’s license. I got my license in August 1970. My Dad would instruct me to drive up to the intersection of Portola Boulevard and Woodside Road, directly across the street from juvenile hall. There was an Arco station there that sold gas for 24.9¢/gallon. 

On many Sunday mornings, after attending the 10:00 Mass at Saint Gabriel Church at 40th & Ulloa Streets, my Dad would hand me a buck and tell me to run up to Billy’s Donut Shop on Taraval to purchase a dozen donuts for the family breakfast. One dollar was sufficient.

I also have pleasant memories of my Dad, slowing the car down at the toll gate on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to allow me to drop the toll money into the unattended “hopper.” The cost was a mere quarter. And when Dad and I would attend a San Francisco Giants baseball game at Candlestick Park in the mid-60s, upper-deck reserved tickets ranged from $2.50 to $3.50.

I guess I could go on and on about how things have changed, how the cost of everything has skyrocketed, and reminisce about how things were in “the good old days.” I will refrain from doing so, however, because that was then and this is now. It’s 2026. I’ll turn 72-years-old in June. I like where I am in my life. Certainly, things are not perfect in the world or in my life, but I am grateful for what is. 

Whether we look back to the days of our youth or examine our lives as they are today, we have the option to do so through the lens of gratitude. Those were some good times, but these times are pretty good, too.