cross border shopping

This weekend, I booked us in to a nice hotel in Syracuse and went away with E and my dad just to get away. We left directly from E's Spanish class on Saturday morning and made fantastic time even with a lunch stop at an Olive Garden along the way.

We shopped a little and relaxed a little. I didn't think we spent too much until we returned last night. Dad added up our receipts on the way back and the total of all our stuff came to about $250. Our 24 hour limit only allowed us $50 each. When I honestly shared our total of $250 to the customs officer, he wrote as our yellow ticket to go in and pay the taxes.

Once inside, the other guy, just doing his job (I know and can't fault them for it), indicated that once you go over your $50 limit, you forfeit your entire limit. This is only true for the 24 hour limit and not the 48 hour or the week. Wish I'd known that ahead of time. So that's why I'm posting it here for those of you like me who don't know about losing your 24 hour exemption if you go over it.