My father once bought a pickup truck with an interesting negotiating tactic. He did his research about the price of the truck. Then he wrote a check out to the dealer for the amount he was willing to pay. After verbally negotiating price with the dealer for a while he took the check out of his pocket and gave it to the dealer, saying, “Here’s my offer.” The dealer began to explain to him title registration fees, vehicle prep, and a dozen other items that are usually a part of the sale of a vehicle. My father cut him off and said, “It’s simple. Either you can take that check and give me a clear title to the pickup, or you keep your pickup and I’ll keep my check.” The dealer once more tried to explain how he couldn’t sell the pickup for the round number of the check. My father reached for the check and started to rise from his chair. The dealer backed down and figured out how to sell the pickup for the amount of the check.

I never had the courage to try the same tactic. The closest I ever came was when I was at a dealer, hoping to trade my well-used pickup for one that was a lot less-used. At one point in the negotiations, I commented that I didn’t need to know about auction values for used pickups or dealer overhead. I wrote a number on a piece of paper and said, “If I can trade for that amount or less, you’ve got a deal. If not, I’ll keep shopping.” I ended up making the deal for just a few dollars less than the amount I put on the paper, and I left wondering what would have happened if I had written a number a thousand dollars smaller.

I suspect that I have generally paid a bit more for vehicles than the lowest available price. I’m not that good at negotiating. I don’t enjoy the process. I would much prefer that prices were upfront, clear, and exact.

It seems that the price paid for a vehicle is in part due to the skill of the purchaser. And if a system in which some people get a better deal than others seems strange, just think of the way airline tickets are sold. Our daughter and son-in-law recently purchased tickets to travel from the east coast to the west coast for a family gathering this summer. After being disappointed with the high prices they were being quoted at various online sites, they began to get creative in their search for tickets. Knowing that the week after this trip they were planning to drive from South Carolina to Washington DC, they got the idea that perhaps tickets might be less expensive if they made the drive first and flew from DC, rather than their home. They were right. The total ticket price difference for them and their son was more than a thousand dollars.

People who fly between two large cities pay less than those who need to depart from or arrive at a city with smaller population. Even so, nearly every seat on any given flight has a different price from every other seat. The pricing structure of airline seats is so confusing that I am convinced that no one, even airline service employees, can explain how it works. It is generated by a series of computer algorithms.

And if you have the mental acuity to explain airline pricing, I’m guessing that you can’t explain health care pricing.

In order to live in our complex, modern society, everyone ends up paying without knowing the reason a price is what it is. We engage in transactions and money changes hands, but a full understanding of the process is beyond us. A lot of very smart people, including some of the bank’s executives, were caught by surprise at the failure of Silicon Valley Bank last week. They thought they understood the complexities of venture capital, uninsured deposits, and cryptocurrencies, but they failed to accurately consider trust. The bank failed, in part, because depositors lost their trust in the bank.

A loss of trust can be expensive. Ask the executives of Credit Suisse Bank, who were forced to borrow 50 billion Swiss franks after their bank lost 24% in value on the stock market. That sparked fears across the banking sector and stocks prices plunged in the banking sector around the world. It remains to be seen how much additional capital will need to be pumped into the banking sector to prevent economic collapse.

We’ve seen it before. It appears that the lessons taught by the 2008 financial crisis have not been learned.

The dollars involved in these banks is completely beyond my understanding. I have never dealt in millions of dollars, let alone billions. The financial crisis I sparked last week involved the distribution of coin banks to raise funds for One Great Hour of Sharing. The tellers at the church are not happy with the anticipated flood of coins that will have to be counted. It could involve hours of extra volunteer time for them. I’m no financial wizard. Then again, I don’t have to be. I certainly handle a lot more money than I did decades ago. I can complain about rising prices with the best of the old geezers at the coffee shop. Well, I could if I hadn’t given up going to the coffee shop because I am unwilling to pay those high prices. It turned out to be an easy decision for me because I’ve given up caffeine on the advice of my doctor.

All money is a product of human imagination. We have decided to participate in an economy that places value on items in search of fair ways to conducting trade. We choose to trust that a plastic debt card will work when we make a purchase at the store and that the funds our computer tell us are in our account are indeed available. I don’t know how my smart watch works, but I use it to make purchases. I’ve decided to trust something that I do not understand.

And, unlike the million- and billion-dollar depositors in Silicon Valley Bank, I’m pretty sure that the federal government isn’t inclined to bail me out if I place my trust in the wrong place.

The longer I live the more convinced I become that the secret to happiness has nothing to do with the amount of money one acquires, but rather in learning to live with less.