Random acts of kindness

This par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista was sit­ting at the bus-stop last night, when a lad on a motor­bike scoot­ed up, and asked me if I want­ed to make use of his now unneed­ed daytrip­per pass. Of course I did! $2.80 saved (the cost of a click on my 3‑zone ten-trip)! Score!

This led to some dis­cus­sion on the Welling­ton­ista list as to oth­er acts of kindness/generosity you can per­form for your fel­low cit­i­zens with­out any great oppor­tu­ni­ty cost of your own.

The oth­er obvi­ous one is park­ing coupons. Got half an hour left when you go to leave? Just roll the tick­et up and pop it in the coin slot of the vend­ing machine. Next per­son to come along will (hope­ful­ly) realise they’ve got a free­bie, and every­one wins (except the coun­cil rev­enue depart­ment, I sup­pose).

Might I also remind our read­ers that while the library does­n’t send out over­due reminder notices until after your books/cds/dvds/whatever are over­due (and thus already accu­mu­lat­ing late charges), you can use the Library Elf ser­vice to send you reminders before the due date. This has saved my fam­i­ly lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of dol­lars over the last few years.

Any oth­er sug­ges­tions for ways to save peo­ple mon­ey or, indeed, just to make their lives more pleas­ant, with a min­i­mal amount of effort on your own behalf? Pop ’em in the com­ments.