The magi revisited

Tom Purcell
Published: December 4, 2008

Two maxed-out credit cards and a checking account with only $632. There was nothing Sabrina could do but plop onto her designer couch and cry.

Christmas was a week away and Sabrina didn’t have enough money to buy a gift for her husband Beckett.

Unable to keep up with their house payments after their no-money-down, interest-only, balloon mortgage reset, the two were on track to lose their 5,500-square-foot dream home.

With the young couple’s credit rating in the tank, it would be impossible for Sabrina to borrow to buy the gift she wanted to get for Beckett: hair implants! How she detested his male-pattern baldness!

Beckett, meanwhile, was desperate to scrape $20,000 together to buy Sabrina saline implants. It annoyed him that his wife was so skinny. He dreamed of sending her to the same surgeon who had worked on Pamela Anderson.

Sure, Beckett still had his job as an investment manager at a large New York bank, despite several risky investments that lost his bank millions. But with his giant annual bonus in jeopardy, how would he pay for Sabrina’s gift?

For the first time in their young married life, Sabrina and Beckett were unable to spend freely.

But then Sabrina got an idea. Maybe there was something she could do to resolve her problem. If she traded in her Bentley for a Lexus she could reduce her high lease payments and with the monthly savings pay for Beckett’s hair job on the installment plan!

While Beckett was out of town for the week at a luxury spa to discuss its financial crisis, Sabrina visited the Lexus dealer. Giving up her Bentley was one of the hardest decisions she ever made.
Beckett was unusually happy when he returned on Christmas Eve. She hugged Beckett and told him how she sacrificed to buy him his gift.

Beckett began laughing.

“What is so funny?” said Sabrina.

“You didn’t need to get rid of the Bentley,” he said. “The government bailed out my bank last week to keep us from further damaging the economy. My bonus was half as big this year, but I got one.

“If we play it right our mortgage lender might be forced to give us much more favorable terms — he might even be forced to eat thousands in equity we never really did have!”

Suddenly, Sabrina noticed something different about her husband’s male-pattern baldness: It was gone!

“What happened to your hair?” she said.

“After the conference, I flew to Beverly Hills to have my hair implants done,” he said. “I even have enough left over to get you the implants that will make you look like Pamela Anderson!”

Sabrina and Beckett embraced. They laughed at all the unnecessary trouble Sabrina had gone through the previous week. It was a Merry Christmas after all.

Tom Purcell is a nationally syndicated humor columnist.E-mail him at