A Penny Saved

My older brother likes to brag about how good he is at finding deals. He claims that he doesn't buy anything at regular price unless it comes with something better for free. He even jokes that MSRP stands for "Management Suckering Rich People" (he's frugal, not funny). And because of all that, he's part of every free membership you can imagine, from Best Buy Reward Zone to coupons.com. So even when he buys something at a huge discount (or occasionally free), he gets points towards another purchase later. There's really no telling how much money he's saved. Actually, there is telling. He tells people all the time how much money he saves. In fact, he doesn't stop talking about how much money he's saved.

And I'm not knocking that at all. If you can keep all that straight and remember where and when to buy what, then good for you. But that doesn't mean I won't give him a hard time about it if given the opportunity.

Last year, my brother wanted to buy a converter cable for his computer that could turn his HDTV into a large monitor. And without doing much research, he bought one for about $12 online. And he happened to buy it from a retailer whose email newsletter I subscribe to. And he also happened to buy it the one week it wasn't on sale. So I keep getting these emails with sale items, and about half the time, the exact cable he bought is on sale for $5.99. So every time I get the email, I forward it to him and say, "Hey, weren't you looking for a converter cable like that? Can't beat 6 bucks." And he never responds.

He responds to all of my other emails. But he never responds to that one. And I know it just eats him up that he paid twice as much as he should have for something like that. I like to imagine that he reads my email, realizes he failed for once and then starts silently weeping. And I hope that every time he uses his overpriced cable, he remembers that he could have done about 5 minutes of research and saved himself six dollars.

Also, this post is a lie. It's all about me. I bought the stupid cable and didn't look for a sale. Now it goes on sale all the time and I hate myself for not getting it cheaper. And by the time I realized it, it was too late to return it. Why do bad things happen to good people?!