Craig Ruvere

“The phrase money doesn’t grow on trees is a proverb that stresses the importance and value of hard work and encourages people to make wise spending decisions.” – WritingExplained.org We’re all familiar with the phrase, “money doesn’t grow on trees,” but did you ever wonder where it came from or what it stands for? Its first usage, though not credited to any one person, appeared back in 1891 in a newspaper called the Statesville Landmark where it stated, “money doesn’t grow on trees here yet”. From WritingExplained.org, “This phrase relates to the fact that trees often produce fruit for people to enjoy—regardless of whether or not the people cultivate these trees. This contrasts the idea that money must be worked for with effort and is never given without a reason.” I have…

I recently had my car serviced by my local dealership and was surprised to learn that my battery charge was at a meager 20%. I was somewhat perplexed by this revelation as the battery itself was not old enough to warrant any concern.   Stay with me, I promise there’s a valuable lesson I learned from this. I spent the majority of my teenage years pumping gas and fixing cars at my father’s service station (yes, the state of New Jersey still pays people to pump gas). Shame on me for not figuring out what the problem was sooner. I won’t get into the boring and somewhat scientific details of how your car battery operates. But suffice it to say that if a car sits idle long enough, especially one…

Many of us have undoubtedly heard the phrase, Keeping up with the Joneses but probably have no idea where it originated from. As it turns out, Keeping up with the Joneses was actually the name of a cartoon strip, which was launched back in 1913 and ran for some 26 years in The New York World and other newspapers across the country. It focuses on the McGinis family, who perpetually struggled (many times unsuccessfully) to “keep up” with their neighbors, the Joneses. The premise of the cartoon was to repeatedly mock a growing need in society to impress other people with the possessions you purchased or the activities you participated in. While Keeping up with the Joneses was first published some 106 years ago, the message is just as timely…