Heather Anne

In my last month with a job, I had to start asking tough budget questions, like: What is an absolute spending necessity in my life? (Plane ticket to London and Eurorail pass, obviously.) And what is a total waste of money? (The $40 a month I pay to a gym I never visit, double obviously.) Some decisions were harder than others: Do I really need to spend $20 a month to have an unlimited number of DVDs delivered right to my doorstep? (Answer: yes.) Do I really need to pay Verizon for 900 minutes and unlimited text and unlimited data transfer/Internet access? (Answer: probably not.) Then there was the most important question of all: What is it that I can I get for free?

So I entered a 3-step program to find out

Step 1: I emptied out my wallet, which yielded:

$300 in Visa/American Express Gift Cards (Thank you, old bosses!)
$284 in REI Dividends
$50 in Borders Bucks (Thank you, Beth! Thank you, John!)
$50 in Regal Movie Dollars (Thank you, Betty! Thank you, Dad!)
$25 in O'Charley's eats (Thank you, Melinda!)
$18 in CVS Extra Bucks
$25 in Starbucks beverages (Thank you, old Battleship game, where I found this card.)
$150 in Pottery Barn accessories (Thank you, someone whose name escapes me, because I've had these cards for 3 years.)
$20 in Sonic fast food dollars (Thank you, little league basketball team!)

Basically, with one shake of my blue, velcro wallet, I ended up a rich, rich lady. So rich that Amy and I have painted and decorated and accessoriezed nearly our entire new office (for free!) at IKEA and Restoration Hardware and Pottery barn on gift cards. So rich that I got nearly everything I needed at REI for my trip with one swipe of a (free!) card. So rich that Amy and I saw a movie (for free!) last night with (free!) snacks I'd loaded up with at CVS earlier in the day. And to top it off, on the way home, we had ourselves a (free!) cherry limeade from Sonic.

Step 2: I asked Manmaw to mend all of my things that are broken. She, of course, said yes. In the next few weeks I expect to have many good-as-new things with tags sewn in them that say "Manmaw's Little Angel." (That's what she does when she sews my stuff back together, you see. To remind me that she loves me no matter where I am in the world. One summer she fixed the elastic in my favorite basketball shorts and sewed one of those tags in back, and I wore them nearly every day for the three months I was away doing charity work in Jamaica.)

Step 3: I got some hugs. Because whenever I start to feel gloomy about the state of affairs in the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow International Airoprt. And I get a hug. (Thank you, family!)

What in the wide world of capitalism can you get for free? (Answer: apparently a lot.)