My Family’s Money

The other day I realized that I went out and lost me $10 by being a lazy man. I bought my wife this scrap booking software for Christmas because it was the one that she wanted, and it was on sale, and it had a mail-in rebate. I felt so proud of myself about the whole thing. I had gotten a bargain and had bought it while Santa was still visible in the night sky (not really, I bought it two days before Christmas Eve – but I really did procrastinate some for reasons outlined here). The day of Christmas, after we had opened all our beloved goodies, I went on the old Compy 386 and went straight to the rebate site. I printed the forms, filled out the registration card, and got the receipt in a place where I could easily find it. I even got the box ready. But since it was the day of Christmas my wife really hadn’t gotten a chance to check out the software to see if it was right for her and if it worked properly I didn’t remove the UPC code just in case. Instead, I stored my well-organized, rebate-getting information in a common place for future use.

Fast forward ahead 42 days and I found myself looking at the rebate forms for the 30th time and deciding that I am just going to do it. I peruse the rebate instructions and find that I had to send in my rebate request within 30 days of the purchase. Zut! I just wasted $10 bucks. But this has taught me two very important lesson:

Lesson #1: Fill out and mail in rebate stuff before the deadline. Don’t be lazy and do it now.

Lesson #2: Know when the deadline is and actually keep tabs on it. The present may not always be the best time to do something, but sometimes the present is the only time to do something. Think about it.

If only I had learned these earlier I would be $10 richer in 6-8 weeks. Life goes on and my lessons have been learned.

Special Note: Scrap booking. What an interesting combination of words. What does ‘booking’ mean here? Going at a great pace? Departing quickly? Registering for some future activity? Entering a charge, like the police? I just don’t get it. I mean I get the scrap part – you find scraps of this or scraps of that and you make it into some sort of art. I guess because you normally make a book of sorts (really an album) that it get the name of ‘booking’ but I think another combination of words may actually be a better description. How about ‘Scrap Savings Because You Think It Looks Pretty’ or ‘Collecting Old Stuff Because I Think It’s Cool’ or ‘Trash Utilizing for Decorating’? These are by far more accurate linguistically if you ask me.