I don’t read Reddit when I’m traveling to a new place. I’m not on my phone watching YouTube videos. I don’t scroll through Instagram or see what is going on in my email inbox. I like to make the most of my time traveling, especially when traveling for pleasure, and I generally do a good job of living in the moment and being present in a new place.

What if I lived like this? What if everyone lived like this? Why not adopt this value-based thinking to the time we have during a normal day at home?

To answer a rhetorical question, the answer is that we take the hours in our normal, everyday lives for granted, assuming that there are always more days to fill. I believe this is a dangerous assumption.

Preface: I don’t pay for Spotify premium, so I get (have?) to hear commercials.

TD Bank’s new marketing narrative makes me sad. Here’s why. The main narrative, which has been spun off into many different situational examples, is that an unanticipated expense caused an overdraft. Thankfully TD bank is nice so it doesn’t penalize you. Fair enough. Overdraft fees are insulting, and reflect the soullessness of the banking industry.

However, what saddens me is the examples that TD uses. All of them are what I would consider small dollar amounts, such as an extra bus ticket. None of these costs should be big enough to trigger a negative bank account balance in anyone’s account. But, the fact that TD is marketing this way suggests it is a common situation. According to Bankrate’s annual study, 1 in 5 people in the US have no savings for unexpected expenses.

Whether by the current political or economic system, or by an addiction to consumerism, Americans are over-leveraged. There shouldn’t be payment plans for small purchases, and the average American shouldn’t have to worry about a bus ticket overdrawing their account.