Annual survey show how inflation has hit the Tooth Fairy business

Reason No. 341 that I'm glad my kids are grown: I'm not sure the Tooth Fairy at our house could keep up with the Joneses.

(And I say that both generally and specifically. Because our next-door neighbors and friends were literally the Jones family in Suisun City.)

During my childhood, the Tooth Fairy would leave a coin under my pillow in exchange for me giving him a tooth. Maybe there would be a dime. Possibly a quarter.

(Side question: What – if any – gender do you assign the Tooth Fairy? I have always assumed the Tooth Fairy was a male, but Mrs. Brad considers the Tooth Fairy female. It doesn't have to be one or the other, since fairies probably aren't limited in their genders. But I'm starting to go into an area of discussion for which I'm unqualified and I might make someone mad, so back to the column . . .)

Fast forward a generation to my two sons. As they lost teeth in the 1990s, we . . . uh, I mean the Tooth Fairy would leave either coins (we were not wealthy and we were bound by tradition. Just ask the boys, who more likely would use the word "cheap") or perhaps a $1 bill. More likely coins. That was the 1990s and I worked at a newspaper.

Well, things have changed. If you think the cost of homes has gone up, wait until you hear about teeth!

According to an annual survey by Delta Dental, the average value of a single tooth last year – as judged by the amount left by the Tooth Fairy – was $6.23.

Six dollars and twenty-three cents!

That was a jump of nearly a dollar from the figure in 2022 and was up from $1.30 in the first survey, 25 years ago (when my sons were getting 50 cents or maybe a dollar. They are right, we were cheap).Teeth are going up in value: According to the Delta Dental people, at this pace, the average tooth in 2048 will be worth $30.

I'm shocked by this in the same way I'm shocked at the price of child care and by how much people spend on their kids' shoes. It makes me feel like one of those people in my childhood who talked about how they'd go to the movies and get popcorn for a dime then play kick-the-can on the way home to listen to "The Lone Ranger" on the radio.

But six dollars a tooth? It seems outrageous.

A couple of other notes of significance from the study: 

• The Tooth Fairy is welcome in 81% of homes.
• Among parents, 27% say their kids go to bed early in anticipation of the Tooth Fairy's visit.
• In 33% of households, the first tooth gets the most money (an average of $7.29. Which begs the question of how the kids react when their second tooth gets less money?).

I'm glad information from this survey wasn't public knowledge when my sons were growing up. Of course, they knew their parents were cheap (their dad, for sure), but this might have made them think the Tooth Fairy was also cheap.

And I would hate for them to think that about him. Or her. Whatever. Never mind, I will stop talking about the Tooth Fairy's gender and focus on how generous he or she or they are now.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How you organize you books is like love and oxygen

There are few hobbies people love to brag about (and exaggerate) more than how much they read.

The truth is that most of us don't read much. But those of us who do tend to want to tell everyone how much we love it. How we read 85 books last year. How nothing beats snuggling up with a good book. How all you need is books. (Or maybe that's love. Or oxygen. Or maybe love is like oxygen, you get too much and you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die–as Sweet warned us in their 1978 song that has little to do with this discussion.)

Back to books, or more specifically, ownership of books. According to a survey by the folks at YouGov.com, 85% of Americans say they own at least one book (the physical kind, not one on an electronic device). The other 15% is made up of 9% who don't own a book and 6% who don't know (which means they don't own a book, right?).

Twenty-four percent of us own at least 100 books. And 7% of Americans own at least 1,000 books.

One-thousand!

The most interesting question in that survey wasn't even about how many books people owned. The best question (which dives deeply into how our brains work) is how we organize our books.

For starters, the obvious outcome: People who own 10 or fewer books don't really have an organizational method because they don't need one. That's true in the same way I don't organize my phones or thumbs. I have so few that they don't need organization (although I prefer to keep my thumbs on the opposite end of my hand from my little fingers).

People probably need to organize books when they get to 100 or so.

So think again: If you had 200 (or 800, 15,000) books, how would you organize them?

By title? Author? Color? Genre?

Well, according to the survey, the most common way for people with many books to organize their collection is by genre or subject matter (another word for genre, right?). That's by far the leading way: 37% of people with 100 or more books use that system. The next most common way for people with 100 or more books to organize is alphabetically by the author's name, which is tied with . . . by size.

Really? By size? That seems like something an 8-year-old would do, not something a 50-year-old would do. I apologize to 50-year-old readers who organize their books by size. If that's you, remember that the "Where's Waldo" books are big, so they go on the end.

There are other ways that a few people use: Alphabetically by title, by color, by another system (possibilities: Alphabetically by the first word on Page 8, by the attractiveness of the author, by the order they were acquired).

How we organize things is fascinating. If you don't think it's personalized, try going into someone's kitchen sometime and look at their spice rack. Or time travel to when people other than hipsters had record albums and look at their album collections. Where would you find the album by Sweet that had "Love is Like Oxygen" on it? Was it by genre (New Wave? Glam rock? Pop?)? Was it by the name of the band or album ("Level Headed" in this case)? Was it randomly?

Organization is so personalized that it's impossible to know what to expect from anyone, which is why the Dewey Decimal system, launched in 1876 and used in libraries is so brilliant.

Without the Dewey Decimal system you could go into a library and discover that the books are organized by whatever seemed right to the librarian: "Oh, you need 'Grapes of Wrath?' I think that's a paperback, so it's either in the green section or next to books that are the same size. Good luck."

Maybe we should organize books at our home by the Dewey Decimal system, too. Make it mandatory.

That would be sweet.

Like the band that performed "Love is Like Oxygen."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Data provides a scientific prediction for today's Super Bowl

Today is the ultimate game: Super Bowl 58 (I refuse to use Roman numerals. I haven't used them since I was forced to learn about them when I was XIV years old. They're II hard II remember, like trying to remember what you VIII for dinner a week ago).

Today's game matches two of the NFL's preseason favorites, the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is: The teams met in the Super Bowl four years ago, when the Chiefs stole a 31-20 victory that was (according to a rumor I just made up), the decisive moment in the spread of the COVID-19 virus that hammered the globe a month later.

It really should be called the Chiefs virus.

So who wins today? As a longtime sports fan and former sports editor, I rely on the same tool that I trusted to help us deal with the pandemic that the Chiefs released on us four years ago: Science. Or  more accurately, data, which isn't science, but play along with me.

Numerous factors will determine today's final score and they're listed here. Experts have analyzed the information and provided a specific point total for each category. Ready? Here are the factors for today's game:

Regular season wins: We start simple. The 49ers won 12 games, the Chiefs 11. We multiply that by six and it's six points for the 49ers.

Commercials: This is ranked on a scale of one to seven. The Chiefs have those Patrick Mahomes (and Andy Reid) State Farm commercials that are pretty funny. Add Travis Kelce (see below) and then compare it to the 49ers' local commercials. This is a blowout. Chiefs get seven.

City image: San Francisco is one of the world's most famous cities. It's the Golden Gate. It was the center of the Summer of Love. There are probably a dozen songs about it. Even people who claim San Francisco is overrun with homeless drug abusers know about the city. Kansas City? It's where the Chiefs play. That's all we know. 49ers get 11 points for this. It's not even close.

Star players: Patrick Mahomes is the biggest star in the NFL and Travis Kelce is famous for football and other reasons (see below). Even though the Niners have their share of stars (Christian McCaffery, Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel, Brock Purdy), it's a win for the Chiefs. Four points for Kansas City.

History: The Chiefs won two of the past four Super Bowls and are playing in their fourth Super Bowl in five years. But . . . the 49ers are in their eighth Super Bowl and have five championships. Tradition says the 49ers get six points for this.

Players' significant others: Kristin Juszczyk, the wife of 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, became famous when she designed a jacket for a blonde woman who is somehow related to or friends with someone on the Chiefs and that woman got on TV. People loved the jacket. Nobody on the Chiefs has a wife or girlfriend even half as famous as Kristin Juszczyk. Four points for the 49ers.

Famous brothers: Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is famous because of a relationship: He is the brother of All-Pro center Jason Kelce. Nick Bosa's brother Joey is an NFL player, but he's not Jason Kelce famous. Six points for the Chiefs.

That's it. That's the data. Add up the points and get the final score. This would have been a blowout, but Travis Kelce has a relationship with someone famous. His brother.

San Francisco 27, Kansas City 17

Reach Brad Stanhope at brad.stanhope@outlook.com.

One generation thinks happiness costs at lot more than the rest of us

I once suggested millennials – people born between 1981 and 1996 – were the greatest generation. Of course, I made that declaration because I rely on those people to keep me employed. Also, both of my sons are millennials and I may need them at some point. Still, I was on board with that generation.

But a recent survey on how different generations view financial matters made me spit out my discount baby boomer coffee.

The big picture: According to a Harris survey, 59% of Americans believe you can buy happiness. That's an unsurprising conclusion, although it suggests that most people don't see the miserable rich in our culture. You can, of course, make the case that having more money relieves pressure and makes you less unhappy, I guess. So maybe money can make you less unhappy? I don't know.

To be fair, the answers were more nuanced than, "gimme more money." People said they wanted the ability to pay bills on time, purchase a home and live debt-free. Those are all good things, but still . . . the consensus was that more money would bring more happiness.

The coffee-spit part came when people were asked how much money they'd need each year to be happier. In other words, what annual wage would make you happy?

Those in Gen Z (born 1997-2012) said $128,000. Members of Gen X (born 1965-1980) said $130,000. Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) said $124,000. All of those figures are vastly higher than the national median family income of about $75,000 but are all similar: People born from 1946 to 1980 and those born from 1997 to 2012 all said around $125,000 annually would make them happy.

Millennials were asked the same question: How much would you need to earn annually to be happy?

Their figure was . . . are you ready?

$526,000.

Per year.

Yes. Millennials think they need a half-million dollars per year to be happy. Their amount to be happy is more than four times more than any other generation thinks they need to be happy.

What? Really?

I mean, I understand that a person would think they'd be happier if they made a half-million dollars a year, but do those millennials (the youngest of whom will turn 28 this year, so they're not children) realize that less than 2% of American households earn more than $500,000 a year? Do they think they need to be in the top 1% of all households to be happy?

I'm a baby boomer nearing retirement. I own a home and have a reasonable 401(k) account. I'm the target of the young people who insist that you could purchase a huge home while working at a fast food restaurant when I was young.

That's not true, of course.

But if you think you have to earn $500,000 a year to be happy, you probably think every boomer was rich when they were young (Adjusting for inflation, the 1985 equivalent of $500,000  was $183,000 per year. Not only did I make less than 10% of that in 1985, I'm pretty sure I had no same-age friends who made $40,000).

Money surveys are interesting. We use them to measure our standing. We use them to understand others' perceptions about "normal." 

The fact that millennials (at least those in this survey) think they need to earn a half-million dollars to be happy leads to one conclusion: An overwhelming number of them will never be happy, which makes me sad.

It reminds me of the old story about when John D. Rockefeller, America's first billionaire, was asked by a reporter how much money was enough. Rockefeller replied, "Just a little bit more."

Millennials apparently would say, "just a whole lot more."

Reach Brad Stanhope, a grumpy, judgmental baby boomer, at bradstanhope@outlook.com.