Freezing in NH

I’ve been reading through some older posts on personal finance blogs and came across one from Nina at Sitting Pretty on Expense Reimbursement 

I spent quite a bit of time looking around online to see if any of the finance sites had calculated personal costs the average business traveler might incur by fronting money for business travel. And there wasn’t anything written about it. Am I the only one thinking about this?

I think her point about how expensive it might be if you get behind on submitting reports is valid, but I’m guessing that most people who worry about personal finance are going to try to get them in within a reasonable amount of time. 

I did some recent travel on business, and submitted the report about a week after I got back.  I could have done it the day after, but I was lazy and trying to catch up on other things.  I’ve signed up for direct deposit of the reimbursement checks, and if you fill the form out exactly correctly, scan your receipts (if you fax things and they’re blurry, someone has to call you to get the details), my company is pretty good about getting you your money in 7-10 business days.  In my case that was before the credit card bill was due.  So I didn’t have to carry a balance or spend any of my money, and thanks to Discover’s current promotion for 5% back on travel expenses, I’m getting a couple of $25 Borders gift cards out of the whole thing.  I could have taken the cash, but since I spend a lot of money on books anyway, $25 in gift cards made more sense than $20 in cash.  

So for me it was a win/win situation.  Someone else paid for me to fly somewhere warm, and I got free books.  I can submit virtually all of my expenses (tickets, hotel, meals, rental car) and I get to swim in the pool in the evenings.  I’m sure I’d hate it if I had to do it all the time (lots of wasted time in airports) but once a year it’s pretty nice.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 9:20 am and is filed under work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.