Receipts, Money, and Buying things here

I think that I mentioned in an earlier post that they like to test things in stores here to prove to you that they work before you buy them.  Even though they work in the store, we have had a couple of things that didn't perform exactly like they were supposed to when we got them home.  Ashley's cd player-the play button works but not the stop button-generally not a problem since we turn it on when she goes to sleep and it stops when the cd is at its end.  Scott's digital clock has one line that doesn't light up-this is his second clock.  After having to exchange the first one I decided not to exchange it again over one line that didn't light up.  We have also found out though that sometimes houses here have some 120 volt outlets and some 240 volt so that may be part of the issue.  Greg is going to check this out when his meter arrives on the ocean container.

So today while grocery shopping I bought 2 lightbulbs.  I laughed when the guy wanted to test them for me.  He had a little wooden board with sockets underneath, plugged in the bulbs and showed me that they lit up.  Then when I went to check out and pay for them, the cashier asked if they had been tested for me.  On this same grocery store visit though I successfully returned a clock that I had bought, brought home, put a battery in, and it didn't run-oh well!

Receipts and the keeping track of how money is spent is usually an interesting topic between couples.  Greg and I joke that we have come a long way in this area in our 17 years of marriage-meeting somewhere in the middle.  I never saved a receipt unless I thought I was going to need to return something.  Greg saved them ALL for decades and I'm not joking.  We still sometimes had trouble with ATM receipts because it is easy to spend cash and not keep track of it.  Here that issue has been greatly multiplied because many places here do not accept credit cards.  So, of course, Greg has created a cash accounting place in our Quicken software and we were entering items into that last night before he left for his trip.  We were kidding and laughing as we tried to remember where we had spent all our pesos-there are about 43 to $1 so the numbers are also a lot larger.  We try to jot down cash spent in places where you don't get a receipt.  I had written down one of Ashley's carousel rides but had forgotten about a 10 peso ride on a giant stuffed animal.  When Greg calculated how much money was "missing" he asked me how many times she rode and just to get him I said that I paid for all the kids in the mall to ride an animal.  We had to pay for a neighborhood id for the pool guy and then finally remembered that Ryan had lost a tooth and the nerve of that tooth fairy to not leave a receipt-HOW TACKY!  We finally got to where there was the equivalent of about $10 "missing" and Greg called it quits and entered a balance adjustment and entered how much cash we had in the house.  I told him that I was impressed that he didn't have to have it balance to the exact penny or centimo (as they are called here).

As if all the dealings in cash aren't bad enough, the larger stores that do take credit cards give you 2 receipts to sign and often 2 or 3 receipt copies that are yours.  Some of them say "this is your official receipt" and sometimes if it is something that Greg's company is paying for we have to have that kind of receipt.

I wish that my receipt loving (but otherwise very dear) sister in law Jodi could just move here and be our personal receipt keeper and enter-er.