For myself if I know that I can get say $50 or even $5 from some kind of rebate for a purchase or a tax return refund I would want to do it right away as that is money that could be in my bank instead. So to me it is very surprising to hear so many people who presently don’t care about getting their tax refunds that are easily worth about $300 early. Typically, they would wait the very last minute instead.

Kind of weird as I bet if most people found even a dollar on the floor they would try to be the first to snatch it up right away. The only reason I heard that I can semi understand is how one person said if they get their refund early then they are inclined to just spend it. So, they would rather try to delay it as long as possible.

I guess the other explanation is that the fear of loss isn’t there as the thought is that it will always be there. The mindset should be more about how you can get more money now though I’d say.

Well this is something new. I recently bought an item that qualified for a $15 mail in rebate. Of course, I was fully aware that these things can take forever to arrive. Upon going to the manufacturer’s site it appeared that they offered their rebates in the form of a credit/debit card of sort as you can see here:

The surprising thing though is that they offer an option of express processing your mail in rebate for a $2 fee. In this case, they say that they will send it within 5-7 business days as opposed to a 6 to 8 weeks timeframe. Would you be inclined to pay in order to get your rebate faster? Kind of makes you wonder why a 5-7 business day timeframe isn’t the regular timeframe.

On a side note, it was kind of funny that the literature indicates that this is a pre-paid Mastercard yet they use a credit card with a Visa logo as the picture.

I notice recently that a lot of people online have been going crazy over certain brands of cereal because for a limited of time buying one would mean that you can obtain a $10 off coupon for a future purchase of a board game. So, buying a $3 box of cereal in essence would mean that you are gaining $7 if you planned to buy a board game.

Would you immediately consider that as money made though necessarily? I would think that would only be true if you were originally planning to buy like the board game for say a present or with the intent to sell it. Otherwise you basically ended up buying something extra that you originally wouldn’t have.

In cases like these I would be inclined to sell the coupon to someone who would have an immediate use of it if I wasn’t originally planning to use it. Example, selling the $10 coupon for $3 to $6 where you essentially get the cereal for free or more.