One of the hot topics in the news these days is the proposed tax rebate. As LS intuitively pointed out, Bush was his most popular the first time he issued an unexpected rebate, and perhaps he is trying to relive the excitement of those early glory days. As it turned out, I was not eligible for the first rebate, and my parents were still claiming me as a dependent, but there is still hope for this rebate.
The dilemma, of course, is what to do with the check. If everyone who got rebates followed the smart course of action and saved them, the economic stimulus package would do nothing to stimulate the economy, so I feel obligated to spend a rebate, if we do end up getting one. How to spend it, is the question.
I've come up with a few ideas.
- Furniture. Before we bought our bedroom set, we created a graph-paper model of our bedroom to decide how to arrange the furniture. Unfortunately, our bedroom wasn't big enough to fit all of the furniture that we wanted to buy, and we had to skip the wardrobe and a second nightstand. However, we always planned to buy them. We assume that the master bedroom in our next house will be large enough to hold all of the furniture, and what a catastrophe if our set were discontinued by then and we couldn't buy the remaining pieces.
- Summer vacation. We've been looking at Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. However, taking even a long weekend before our rather extravagant 3-week European jaunt seems, well, extravagant.
- Shopping spree? Replace my summer wardrobe? Yeah, I don't think B will go for that, either. But it was worth a shot.
