My sister did me a favor. It cost me $51.
A month ago I bought new furniture. It’s pretty, durable, lovely furniture that qualifies as an investment. I opted to pay it off via a credit card instead of pulling the money out of my savings account. I did something similar last year and have nearly finished paying that off already.
Basically, I bought a new living room. A leather sofa/sleeper (queen-sized mattress), a coffee table and an end table. I also bought two chairs for my dining room set (which I bought last year), so I’d have the 8 chairs needed when I “extend” it. Obviously, I’m not going to need 8 chairs now, but I didn’t want them to discontinue the model before I bought the chairs.
These pieces of furniture replace a breakfast table, a futon, and some folding tables.
Anyway, I’ve received all my furniture except for the end table, which was on back order. Then it was in stock, but the furniture company forgot to tell me, and forgot to schedule delivery. Then we couldn’t schedule a delivery date and time that would work for me. Finally, after a lot of phone calls, we ended up with today as a delivery date. Yesterday I received a call giving me a window of delivery — 12:30-3:30pm.
I’m supposed to be at my apartment waiting for delivery. Instead, I’m at the office. Why? Because my youngest sister, Mom and the kiddo are all at my apartment waiting for the furniture delivery. They insisted on doing this for me when they found out I was going to have to work from home for a few hours to wait.
It’s a nice offer. In theory.
In reality, I had to meet them for lunch, which meant going to pick something up. My sister doesn’t drive “into town” if she’s not going to get a chance to eat out. So… she wanted Mediterranean. And I’m standing there taking her order, while she piles one thing on top of another and another. Then gives me $20 to “cover her food” — when the bill was $71. OK, so at least one item was mine. But this was money I wasn’t going to spend. I’d already prepared a turkey/spinach salad I was going to eat while waiting for the delivery. I wasn’t supposed to spend money today.
{{sigh}}
Exactly how was I supposed to say “no” to this?
I forgot to mention that I’d been doing really well in keeping on my budget.
I forgot to mention that I have a very permissive budget that allows for eating out and other little luxuries.
I forgot to mention that my sister tells me that she doesn’t even look at the price per pound of produce when she shops for groceries.
And I know that I could have, should have said “thanks, but no thanks” when she offered to wait for the furniture.
Another blog post you might enjoy on a related topic: “Sacrifice” (at BlogHer). It’s about how one blogger reduced her credit card debt by $45,000 in three years. http://www.blogher.com/sacrifice-0?wrap=blogher-topics/credit-debt&crumb=32405