How to Tell Your Spouse You Lost $70,000
I forgot to claim stock options. They expired. Did I have to tell my husband?
This is a story about the last time I lost $70,000. It’s a hilarious tale: I forgot to claim some stock options. They expired. One day I had $70,000 waiting to be claimed, and then, about a month later, when I realized I had forgotten to click the “exercise trade” button on my computer—poof!—the opportunity was gone. It’s hard to describe the feeling exactly. I imagine you could replicate the effects by lying on the ground and having a friend drop a bowling ball on your abdomen from atop a stepladder. There’s a little shock, some confusion, pain, nausea, and a profound wish that this had happened to somebody else. For a while, it hurts to breathe.
The closest memory I could associate it with was when, as a young girl, I tried to make Jell-O in a mold like the picture on the package. I had told — maybe “boasted to” is the more accurate term — my whole family that I would make dessert that night. I didn’t wait long enough (the irony), and when I turned the Jell-O mold over, my family waiting expectantly at the table, the not-quite-set dessert slithered in a single blob out of the mold, off the plate, down the draining board, into the sink, and down the drain.
