A chossid of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, managed an inn that he would rent from the local landowner. Each year, he would renew the lease and pay the ten rubles upfront for the following year.
Once, he sent his son to arrange the lease instead of going himself. The landowner offered the son to make an advance payment for five years, at a twenty ruble discount. The son, assuming that his father would surely be happy, obliged. Instead of paying fifty rubles for five years, he was pleased that he managed to get a lease of five years for only thirty rubles.
When he returned home and relayed to his father the details of the contract that he procured, his father was livid.
He angrily told him, “Not only didn’t you save us twenty rubles, but we actually lost twenty rubles! Surely Moshiach will come this year and we will not need to rent this inn anymore. You see, you leased the inn for four extra years, when we don’t actually need it that long![1]”
[1] Otzar Pisgamei Chabad, Pg. 401
