Tag Archives: advice

optimism, point of view, problem solving

Prepare for the worst

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I’m going to say something uncharacteristically pessimistic. I always prepare for the worst.

Now for something optimistic. I always hope for the best.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. My mom told me that years ago, and its always stuck with me. It’s become a life habit I don’t even think about doing. I just do it naturally.

One of my biggest lessons in doing that was when I didn’t get flag corp when I tried out my Freshman year. I couldn’t fathom not making the squad. My life would be OVER. I never considered the worst seriously. I never had a healthy approach to this ordeal.

I didn’t make it. My life was not over. I was, however, numb and devastated a few days. I justified it 1000 ways, but at the end of the day. I’d just failed to acknowledge the worst case scenario, and as a result I melted down.

I’m sure there are countless other times that I failed to even acknowledge the “worst case scenario” and as a result I was unprepared when it came to pass. But that example is probably the biggest one that always comes to my mind.

Hope for the best. Believe in the best.

Mindset is half the battle in all things. If you think you can, you will. I believe this to be true. However, if you put so much weight onto something HAVING to turn out a certain way, I think you put yourself right into the position of it not happening. Similarly, if you go in assuming a certain result, you’ll undoubtedly be disappointed when it doesn’t go exactly like you expect.

Today, my dad prepared our tax return. I went in bracing for the worst: owing. I know too many people who DO owe this year, and I knew much of our combined income had not had taxes taken out of it. And even though I work with tax returns right now on a daily basis, there is still so much of tax laws I don’t understand. One being what deductions are allowed and how they are applied. (This is why I make the returns look pretty as opposed to actually preparing them.) I was truly prepared to owe.

When we came out with a refund, I almost cried with joy and relief. Literally. I had hoped for the best, but I was fully prepared for the worst. And as a result, the outcome was better than I expected. Even if my refund was only $1, it would have been better than I was prepared to see. I was tickled.

I hope for the best in all things. Always. But I also brace myself for the worst. It allows me to have some sort of game plan and calmness in the situation that the worst does happen. In the same breath, it usually makes anything that happens a very pleasant result.

I plan to keep this mindset for a long time to come. It’s served me well so far. I am certain it will serve me well in the future.

lessons learned, travel

Fine print and research

Read the fine print. We’ve all heard that advice time and time again, but I’m willing to bet we are ALL guilty of not doing it now and then. Most of the time, I read the fine print when something seems too good to be true, and I want to prove to myself I am right. It’s the times I want to believe “too good to be true” IS true that I don’t read it. That, or when I think I already know the fine print.

Within the last few weeks I’ve run into cases where I failed to read the fine print. The first case came out fine, and I think I ultimately ended up making a better decision for my situation than I would have otherwise. The second case… Well…

My husband and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary this week. We celebrated it in the Smoky Mountains area of Tennessee. We’ve made many trips to the Gatlinburg area, and I think its safe to say that its our favorite vacation location.

This past summer, we got signed up for a three day/two night trip to Pigeon Forge through this time share resort company. Go on our trip, sit through their presentation, and receive gift cards to Bass Pro Shops whether we sign up for the timeshare or not. It was that easy.

Too good to be true, right? We should have thought so, but somehow it all made sense. And somehow we missed the “minimum income required” in the fine print.

Fast forward about six months to this week. Excited for our trip, we’d not been out that direction in over a year, and after a stressful few months we figured a pre-paid vacation would be the thing to clear our minds. We arrived at the check-in location, and it was at that time we were given a “questionnaire” and the one that stumped us was “yearly income.”

See, in both of our careers, nailing down a yearly income is a struggle. We both have income from multiple sources through the year, and usually we don’t know how we came out until we file our tax return. It usually ends up being the surprise that we are never really happy with. So, we opted to go fairly middle of the road in our answer. Enough to live comfortably, but low enough to show we’re not exactly able to have that many “fun times and toys.”

Page two comes. First requirement, a minimum income. One check box above the one we’d checked. We looked at each other with alarm, but I ultimately shrugged it off. Its not like we were drastically below that minimum (Literally could have been less than $100 less given the span of income choices) and we WERE starting a whole new year. Surely this wouldn’t be an issue. The final requirement would be that we both attend the presentation, lest our deal be voided and we’d be charged full price for our room instead of the discounted rate. (After all of the events of our trip, I read the fine print and discovered all of this in there. So they did cover their butt there. Its in the fine print, why should they tell you this from the get-go? Right?)

Our room was very nice. It reminded me of a small apartment, and with a full (small) kitchen we were able to avoid eating out that night. I had brought food along to cook, and we spent the whole evening inside from the cold.

The next morning — our actual anniversary — we headed over to the presentation. We checked in, and before long were called to the front desk. “You don’t make the minimum requirement, you can’t take the presentation. We can’t change the original answer you gave. Call this number for more details.”

We wouldn’t be ALLOWED to sit through the presentation? What did this mean for the room rate?

We found out fast it voided everything. No gift cards and the room price went immediately back to full price. AND we were minutes after check-out time. In other words, “You don’t make enough money so we are going to screw you over and charge you more money.” Kind of like credit cards these days.  Can’t pay your bill? OK! We’ll just charge you  MORE MONEY because that just makes the most logical sense. Right?

Married 3 Years!
Married 3 Years!

I’ll never be a millionaire because I have too much logic going on in my brain. I can’t think of these ways to make people who can’t afford things to pay more for those same things that I’ll give to a rich man for free. But I digress…

Luckily, at the actual resort, the front desk woman was incredibly sweet and checked us out immediately and assured us we wouldn’t be charged for a second night after all. If more people were as kind as this woman, the world would be a far kinder and happier place.

I’ve carefully left out the name of this resort company all along, and I’ll continue to do so from here on out. However, I will add a link to “Pissed Consumers” page regarding the company… Reading this page made me realize that they probably did us a huge favor in the end. It is also in reading this page that I wish I’d done my homework sooner and known better what kind of company we were dealing with.

My husband and I refused to let it ruin our Anniversary, and in the end we made our way home a day early. Snow and ice that fell over night made us very grateful we HAD decided to come on home, and everything came out all right. We had a wonderful and memorable day. Made it home safely. And didn’t have to sit though some stuffy 90 – 120 minute presentation on our special day.

Oh and the lesson to read the fine print was nailed down even harder.