April 29, 2008...2:29 pm
Rules on Spending Free Money
Picture this:
It’s Christmas morning. You’re ten years old. You don’t slowly wake up as much as explode into a giddy state because of the promise your father had made. For the past few months he’s been promising to buy you a brand new, state of the art, can’t help but be jealous when you see it glide by -bicycle. You run down the stairs, wondering if falling would get you down faster and burst into the living room to find…no bike.
Not only is there no bike, but your father’s not there either. He didn’t come home last night. When you’re almost done opening all the presents which don’t fill the void left by the let down of not getting the bike you coveted, your father shows up. He stumbles into the house completely drunk and almost knocks over the Christmas tree because he can’t keep himself upright. 
Your mother is embarrassed so she tries to make light of the situation. However, this angers your father and he slugs her in the face, vomits on your brother and kicks the dog in the grain. Everyone in the room is crying. Christmas is ruined.
Now picture your father sobering up a few hours later, seeing the mess he created and going out to buy you a bike out of guilt. When he comes home with the new shiny bike, what do you do?
In other words…what do you plan to do with your $600 economic relief money?
Our president has spent the last 7.5 years finding ways to take proverbial dumps on the public’s chests. Even when he’s tried to do something good, such as giving back a diminutive amount of money as inflation grows and consumer confidence plummets, I can’t help but feel like the decision to do so involved him asking, “How much should we give these retards?”
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting money. Like most people, my morals are susceptible to bribes. I can be bought and $600 sounds like a pretty good number to me.
The real question is: How should I spend my $600?
I know I’m not the only person asking this question this week. While everyone knows they should be putting their money into a high-yield savings account, few will. Even fewer will spend the money correctly. Here are some rules on spending your economic relief fund check.
Don’t Give It To The Bad Guys
There are certain companies who should not get your $600. They are:
1) Gas companies – somewhere in America there is a board room where gasoline executives are sitting around taking advice from Mr. Burns.
2) Apple – I could have only $40 and I would somehow find a way to buy the new $200 iPod (which is almost exactly like the one I bought 9 months ago). They don’t need any help by people getting a lump of cash in the middle of the month.
3) Credit Card Companies – I’m convinced George Bush runs these too.
4) KFC – the last time I went there they forgot to give me my potato wedges.
Most Purchased Products
The two most purchased products in the next few weeks will be bags and sunglasses. I’ll put my economic relief fund on it. Why those two things? As summer approaches we want to show we’ve escaped a dark, dirty and crud-filled winter to emerge in a world where the sun is bright, things are clean and everything has a bright white shine to it.
Sunglasses and bags are what people in the industry call “I’ve been treated unfairly, I’m going to splurge on something that has been designed to make me happy at this moment, but will never give me even a second of satisfaction after this”-products. Give people extra cash and they’re going to be helpless against the urge to buy them.
How Much Is That Memory
Ultimately, if you’re not going to put the money in savings, you should spend your money on something you’ll always remember. If a picture is worth 1,000 words than a memory must be worth $600, right?
Two words:
1) Ski
2) Ball
Not only will you have a blast playing ski-ball for roughly 120 hours (I really did the math – I assumed each game was 3 minutes long and you found a place to play for a quarter), but you might get a perfect game at some point. That may not mean much to you, but I know I’d pay $600 to be able to say I was perfect without knowing it was a lie.
Practicality Isn’t Enjoyable
One Christmas, my brother and I received $30 worth of gift certificates to KFC (this blog is brought to you by Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mmmm…). We thought about using them over time to pay for our meals, but at the last minute, decided to buy 60 biscuits instead. We marched out of that place with four huge bags filled with nothing but biscuits and enjoyed throwing them all over town more than all the thigh and leg meals in the world.
Buy a Laugh
I’m hoping to see at least one person with a T-shirt that says:
“I got $600 as part of the economic relief package and all I got was this dumb T-shirt”
It makes just enough sense, while being completely confusing at the same time.
No matter what you spend your money on, try to enjoy it. There’s nothing worse than hearing someone talk about the TV they bought last year with their $600 and remembering yourself paying an electrical bill and getting a comforter dry-cleaned. This is your money; you’ve earned it by enduring all the mishaps, collapses and moments of shear panic. Get on that bike and ride it around the block.
1 Comment
April 29, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Dude you gotta patent that t-shirt idear now!
or let’s go get some iron-on designs and make our own.
GO GO GO!!!
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