Avoiding the Expense of Forgetfulness

It’s happened to all of us. You find a “free after rebate” offer in the Sunday coupons, or at a store, and immediately snap up the product. It seems a bit overpriced, but once you get your rebate, it’ll totally be worth it. You go home, receipt in hand. You’ll put the materials in the mail tomorrow morning. Right now, you have to deal with the sink full of dirty dishes and the mountain of laundry in the hamper.

So you get busy, then busier. And days turn into weeks, until either the proofs of purchase get lost or the postmark deadline passes. In the end, you wasted money on a product that you probably wouldn’t have bought anyway. Sound familiar?

It’s happened to all of us. And it’s not just with rebates – it can happen with late fees from neglecting to mail bills, and with forgotten coupons that sit unused in your organizer. Forgetfulness is expensive. But there are ways to curb it – even if you’re completely scatterbrained, like me.

Here are some methods that I use to prevent the “it slipped my mind” phenomenon:

1. Don’t do it later. When I buy the free-after-rebate stuff from Walgreens, I go home and immediately fill out the paperwork, then stuff it into an envelope and put it in my mailbox. Even if the mail has already arrived that day. Setting the task aside for later only increases the chances of failure. The laundry can wait a few minutes while you assemble your envelope.

2. Put everything in one place. In our house, bills are corralled in a neato wall organizer and checked every Tuesday night. Even if we’re 100 percent sure there’s nothing to be paid, it gets checked anyway, because occasionally we find a bill or stub that slipped our minds.

3. Write it down. I never go grocery shopping without a list, even if I’m only going in to buy three things. But just as important as the shopping list is the “coupon list” – the notations I make beside items that I have coupons for. (This is a rare occurrence, as I usually only buy store brand items or items that don’t typically come with coupons. But you may use them more frequently.) This way, coupons don’t sit orphaned in the bottom of my vinyl pouch.