getting my own bailout

I’ve lost track of the big bailout. I mean, I know that TARP was sposed to be a tich under a trillion dollars. I know that Bank of America just asked for another thirty nine billion dollars. I know there’s more than that, but I’m losing interest.

And seeing as I can’t (and don’t even try to) balance my own checkbook, or even really know if we HAVE a checkbook anymore, I don’t think I should really be expected to keep track of federal spending.

But still, every little bit helps, right?

We have a security system at our house. It was one of those where the door to door guy says “hey, the equipment and installation is free, you just pay a monthly bill.”

So we signed up, since $35 a month seemed pretty cheap. You know how these work? You get an alarm installed and they put a sensor on all the doors, on some windows, and they give you a “safe” word for when you accidentally trip the alarm yourself and you don’t really want the police to come.

The first time that happened, we couldn’t remember the safe word. We spent 10 minutes on the phone with the operator, trying to guess the safe word before the cops showed up.

She finally gave us a good enough clue and we guessed it.

Only then did the nice lady inform us that we weren’t connected to the police department anyway. And, well, since we had very low confidence in our ability to remember our password, we never did set up our connection to law enforcement.

Our contract with this alarm company finally expired, so we’re bailing. Since, and correct me if I’m wrong here, nothing will change. You know, because we aren’t connected to any protection agency anyway. So the alarm is pretty much the equivalent of shouting at an intruder (in a pretty loud, albeit incoherent voice).

But before canceling, Kim thought maybe we should call our insurance company to see if we get a discount for having an alarm. Turns out, yes, an alarm merits an insurance discount.

The bad news is, they had no idea that we DID have an alarm, so we’ve been missing out on our big discount for the last 3 years.

The good news is, the discount is $5 PER YEAR. I can start enjoying my new $5 annual savings as soon as I fax in a copy of my alarm bill to prove that I do, indeed, have an alarm.

But, you know, in this economy. I’m totally faxing it. Five bucks is five bucks.