Tuesday, February 26, 2013

What would you do with $.27?



Last week Amazon had my book, The Epic Tales of a Misfit Hero, on sale for a great deal3% off! I was so excited with the prospect of my beloved fans saving $.27 that I decided to give away a copy of the book (the full retail version).

I asked everyone to leave a comment on The Facebook telling me what they would do with an extra 27 cents. The answers were amazing, to say the least. I decided to list the honorable mentions here, since they technically should be mentioned to be an honorable mention. And while this may not be honorable, here it goes:

Honorable Mentions

“I'd convert it to British Pounds Sterling, and look forward to spending that 18p in England this summer.” – Sara R.


Sara, this is a great response. I love the creativity, the forward thinking, and the great knowledge of foreign currency exchange rates. I think that since the museums in London are free, 18p would be a nice addition to the little collection cubes in the front. But alas, this response made me so upset that I wasn’t going to England this summer that I put it in the honorable…er…honourable mention category.

“According to www.arizonagasprices.com - the price of 1 gallon of regular gas is around $3. $.27 will get me about 0.09 gallons of gas. My truck gets about 15 miles per gallon. That means I can drive about 1.35 miles - just enough to pick up the Teachers in our Teachers Quorum for our campout this weekend.” – Jordan H.

Wow. Great job Jordan. You were astute to site your source, albeit errant information. If gas is supposed to be around $3.00, I’ve been getting ripped off for a good 7 months. But I love that you thought about your Teachers Quorum and the upcoming campout. I’m glad that the $.27 would allow you to pick them up, and no doubt that is money well spent. But I’m concerned that you’ll reconsider things when you’re actually on the campout and nobody is sleeping at 3am. For that, you get an honorable mention.

“I saw some leftover Valentine's day candy at Bashas yesterday for 14 cents. If I looked real hard for an extra penny I could get two.” – Camille R.


This is a great example of not thinking like a victim. Need an extra penny? “Look real hard.” That’s the kind of hard work and ingenuity I like to see! And heaven knows I’m all for Valentine’s candy. The only thing keeping Camille from the finals is that the candy was “leftover.” Had it been February 13th, things might have looked differently.

“I would donate it to charity. That means that along with Mr. Bill Gates, we will have donated $48,000,000,000.27 to charity since 2007.” – Francis J.

Very classy, Francis. This is a great way to give back to the children. I am a big fan of what two people can do if they each put in all that they can—that’s the true definition of teamwork. You would have been much higher in the rankings if Windows 8 hadn’t just come out…I can’t find the stupid Start button anywhere on my laptop. Ask Mr. Bill Gates if he knows where it went, and then we’ll reanalyze the standings.

“Buy an egg, incubate and hatch, raise the chick to give my family more eggs...it could happen.” – Brandon R.

Brandon is on the right track here…it’s all about return on investment. This is a great way to be self sustaining well into the future. The only drawback? I kinda threw up in my mouth thinking that an egg from the store could actually hatch. [shivers]

“With coupons and advertised sales, I would buy a week's worth of groceries for my family of 10 again! Love couponing!!”  – Shawnee J.


Pretty amazing use of coupons, Shawnee! The only problem is that I don’t understand all of the math that goes into couponing. You might as well have said you would be dividing the hypotenuse of the burn trajectory by the cosine of the turn radius (times pi) to regulate a sustainable atmospheric reentry for Apollo 13. It’s all gibberish to me.

“Buy an extra ranch sauce from McDonalds for my kids chicken nuggets.” – Tiffany A.
Love this, Tiffany. There’s nothing like Ranch to satisfy tired, grumpy kids. Not that your kids are grumpy—I was talking about mine. But as a matter of principle, I have to leave this comment in the honorable mention category. Nobody should have to pay for extra sauce. Freakin’ McDonalds.

“I'd take it and have a rat gnaw that thing off.” – Thomas J.

Yes. Wait, what? This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve heard since we read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in college. And since I got a "B" in that class, so should you.  

The Winners

“Throw it into the kids mission fund. Every little bit counts!” – Tera M.


This is great, Tera! With the recent announcement of 58 new missions and the circulation of this awesome video, I’ve been a little teary-eyed about missionary work. So you caught me at a vulnerable time. Congrats!

“I would give 13 1/2 people my $0.02 on why they should buy your book for their kids!” – Bryan K.

There are a couple of reasons why Bryan wins here. First, he’s helping the cause of talking about the book (hint, hint for the rest of you). Also, he’s not excluding anyone. Even ½ people deserve to read a good book now and then. Well done Bryan!

To the winners go the spoils! Tera and Bryan, send me your address and I will send you a crisp new copy of The Epic Tales of a Misfit Hero. 


And to the rest of you, thanks so much for participating. I had a blast! Let’s go live it up. We’ve just discovered that we really only need $.27 – and there should be no shortage of ideas now.