WDM, IA - I Snoozed and I Loozed

Tax time again. This year I thought I’d be sitting under a palm tree in Galveston with warm winds wafting over me. But I’ve substituted sitting in our lower lever, looking out at the pond with geese gliding gracefully over it and the sun streaming in the window. Not a bad trade. But, hey, if I’m gazing absent-mindedly at the geese, I must not be doing our taxes.

I did get them done. I do them on Turbo Tax and am able to download all of our pertinent investment information directly from Wells into the tax program. Pretty slick and certainly a time saver. When I e-filed, I got this message back:

‘Tax triumph?’ Now, with whom would I share? Who would ever want to get a tweet from me saying that I’ve triumphed over our taxes? I can’t imagine that my tax triumph over taxes would make anyone’s day. Oh, well, I don’t live in the social networking space.

Now about that snoozing and loozing. Last June I booked an 11-day trip for January 2013 to Hawaii for $2200 - flight and hotel. And, the hotel was more a condo with a kitchenette in it. So, we could save money on meals. Or, at least, save a lot of time in restaurants. Breakfast in the room, sandwiches as we travel about and dinner out. Well, that trip went up in smoke so I went online Friday to see what I could come up with for this coming January but decided that we wanted to spend 14 days rather than 11 since I found more things to do than we could manage in 11. I found a great price:

        $2200 for 14 days

        a non-stop flight rather than one stop in LA

        boarding at 10:00 am rather than 6:45

        returning at 7:30 pm rather than 10:45.

Whoo - eee. How much better could it get?

And, then I snoozed - and lost that great deal. I wanted to wait until Gary got home from Fort Dodge to talk it over along with our schedule for the winter. And, today, I went online to book that great deal. Big mistake - Expensive mistake.

Now, the price is $1500 each for a total close to $3000. Ouch. Well, I was stunned. Shucky darn. And, I was so bummed out that I didn’t book the trip. I’ll probably lose that price too. Of course, $3000 for 14 days is quite reasonable and almost comparable to $2200 for 11. But - shucks - I wanted a GREAT deal not just a GOOD deal.

I also checked on a 3 week trip to China which would cost about $3000. Maybe I’ll go for that - and get that hike on the Great Wall that I’ve always wanted to do.