Taylor Armerding

Convenience is seductive. It is also expensive.

It is a major reason why, as the country song says, too many of us have too much month left at the end of the money.

This is not just me talking. You can look it up. This comes from a high-level university academic. Check out the study recently completed by MIT economist Amy Finkelstein on the difference between the traditional types who still pay their tolls in cash and the cutting-edge types (like me) who use Fast Lane transponders.

Her findings won't surprise you. Most people who pay in cash remember what it cost them to drive on a particular toll road. Most people who use the Fast Lane have no idea.

That's good for insatiable government, but not good for us. Here's another of her findings that may surprise you, but shouldn't. Once a majority of drivers on a given road have transponders, governments raise tolls more often and by greater amounts. Why not? They don't get nearly as many complaints, because most people don't even notice when the price goes up.

I like convenience as much as anybody. I get a small thrill every time I drive through a toll booth without waiting in a line. I figure if I had to sit there for a couple of minutes, I wouldn't only lose time, but it would probably cost me a dollar's worth of gas.

But I, and everybody else, pay a penalty for that little thrill — a penalty that makes no sense. Logically, electronic toll collection should decrease the rates, or at least keep them stable, since it saves government lots of money — it's much cheaper than paying wages and benefits to humans. But instead they charge us more, because we're not looking.

So, while it's nice not to have to root around for change or dollar bills when you're approaching a toll booth, there's some value — real value — to having to fork over the cash. It's a regular reminder of yet another government "service" that is not covered by the confiscatory taxes and fees you already pay. When people get those reminders of what things cost, it makes it harder for legislators to slide through another rate increase.

We could use more reminders. Tolls are only one of the "painless" ways that both government and business have found to suck money out of our wallets. It should not take an MIT study to tell us why we're having financial trouble.

I don't use a debit card, but I have adult children who do. One of them, in particular, is forever thinking there's money in his checking account when there isn't. For a while, he was "protected" by having his account linked to his mother's savings account. So, when he'd go in the hole, money would transfer from mom's savings to his checking. But, there were fees attached, both for his account going into the red and for the transfer from the savings. This cost the bank next to nothing, of course, since it was all done electronically. But it cost him and his mother big time — big enough that she severed the accounts — a little financial tough love.

Same with credit cards — it's so convenient not to have to carry cash all the time and to have all your purchases documented at the end of the month. But that convenience also makes it very easy to spend more than you have. Can't afford something you want right now? No problem. Forget about delayed gratification. Put it on plastic. So, you go into debt and pay interest on what you owe. Good for them — very bad for you.

And, of course, government was onto this long, long before Fast Lane transponders. The vast majority of us don't have to write a check every quarter to pay our income tax, FICA tax, Medicare tax and state tax. Government removes it for us, before we ever see a penny. How convenient. And what an effective way to keep the masses from storming city halls, statehouses and Washington itself with pitchforks and torches.

It brings to mind another parental anecdote, when one of my kids got his first paycheck. He was still under the delusion that he was going to get what he was told he would be paid. He got a check for about two-thirds that. He was outraged. "That's my money they're taking," he fumed.

But now it's 10 years later, and he rarely even looks at all the withdrawals from his paycheck, just like all the rest of us, who are lulled into complacency through convenience.

Imagine if you got paid your full salary — no withholding — and then had to pay your taxes, instead of the government just taking them.

The outrage that would produce might actually lead to people having more money at the end of the month.

Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmerding@eagletribune.com. Read him daily at The Soapbox, the Eagle-Tribune blog at blogs.eagletribune.com/soapbox.