Flashes of Panic

Like nearly everyone else in the country over the age of 20, I’ve had mail lately from the Currency Conversion Fee litigation people. I don’t have the kind of records that would let me itemize my overseas purchases for the last ten years, but that passport I just retired got used once or twice, so I decided to pass up options A (take $25 and run) and C (itemize everything and we’ll figure a refund) in favor of B, in which I estimate the days I spent outside the USA in the ten-years-and-a-few-months from 1996 to 2006, and get a refund based on “average spending” multiplied by that number of days.

The number I came up with was 60, which surprised me a little. I’m no hardened traveller, as you can tell by the enthusiasm I approach my trips with, but I didn’t imagine that I’d averaged nearly a week outside the US for the last ten years.

Too bad the window doesn’t extend to the end of 2008; I’d be over 100 days total and the average would be over a week.

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