You think you use your debit card for everything.

Does anyone else subscribe or regularly buy the magazine Real Simple? I love this magazine and have never been disappointed in it... until this month. Why is it so thin? It's like half the size it normally is. Apparently the bad economy just hit the magazine rack...

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Preface to the following stories. On Friday we finally went to the bank and got our joint bank account, meaning I'm on Cody's now and we both got new debit cards. Cody got a new one because his wasn't working for online purchases, so the lady wanted to save us the trouble of having to eventually come back in to get a new one. Key words from our trip to the bank: "You can use your debit cards now, but the credit part won't be activated till Monday."

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Last night we went out to celebrate six months of wedded bliss. I know. Hard to believe that six months have already passed since The Day That Consumed Our Lives For Nine Months. We splurged and went to Abuelos for dinner. We were starving when we went, and picked the perfect time to go, 5:30, so that we walked straight in and only waited 2 minutes before being seated at our table. The food was DELICIOUS, and there was only one flaw in our dinner. Cody's debit card was declined. Credit Card Strike 1. Awesome. Nothing better to make you feel like a hussy trying to get something free. No sweat off our back, I had my card from my other account, you know, My Personal Account That Used to Have Lots of Money In It Before I Got Married.

After stuffing ourselves silly at dinner, we headed to Hastings across the street so Cody could use his gift card to buy Graphic Novels (warning: do not ever call these cartoons in Cody's presence, unless you are me and you want to tease him.) Being the poor, resourceful couple we are, we immediately keyed in on the Rock Band in the center of the store just begging us to play. So we start rocking out, only to discover that its some weird left-handed version, which doesn't work out so well for righties like us. After failing to connect with our inner rock stars, Cody picked up the two graphic novels he was going to buy and another one he wanted to read. I proceeded to pick up three magazines I wanted to catch up on, and then we spent two hours in Hastings reading things we had no intention of buying. And I have absolutely no shame in admitting we totally mooched off of Hastings to just enjoy some down time reading. In fact, I highly encourage you do the same thing.

Cody then went to check out and I asked him to buy a magazine for me. Credit Card Strike 2. And sadly, I did not bring my purse in, so we had a looooooong line of people waiting for us as I had to run out to the car to get the Debit Card That Can Run As A Credit Card.

After the great Hastings mooch, we headed home to let the kid out and to pick up a Coldstone gift card. The trip to Coldstone was considered a huge success, determined by the fact that they had my favorite Cinnamon ice cream. We get up to pay, and their gift card machine is down. The total was like $9, and the guy wanted us to leave the gift card so they could swipe it and then call us when we could come pic it pack up. Umm, I'm smarter than that and I know there's $20 on the card... I'm not letting you keep it. So Cody pulls out his new handy dandy debit card, and bam, Credit Card Strike 3. So once again we're holding up the line while Cody runs out to get the old worn out faithful debit card. But thankfully, the guy knocked 50% off of our total, so we basically got one Like It for free at Coldstone.

So here's the moral of that story. You think you use your debit card for all our your purchases, but eventually you find out the hard, embarrassing way that actually, all of the common places you go to run your debit card as a credit card, which doesn't matter until your dang new debit card won't due that. But, the second part of the moral is that, if you can put up with the embarrassment and you have a second debit card that will work, sometimes you'll get great discounts out of your declined card!

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I'm off to enjoy my last night of freedom before returning to the working world tomorrow. Join me in praying for The Great Artic Blast of '09 to cancel work!!