Do you know why I can’t be a rich person? No, it’s not because I keep buying stupid handbags (although that doesn’t help). It really has very little to do with income or spending - I could make a lot more money and/or spend a lot less money, and I still couldn’t be a rich person. And this is why.
I have two checking accounts in two different banks - a smallish community bank and a credit union. The credit union account is really both a savings and checking account. It earns a little bit of interest, and it’s where I save money for short- and medium-term goals; things like travel and holidays. My emergency fund money is also in that account.
I keep a very simple tally - on paper, mind you - of money in and out of the credit union account, categorized by type of expense or fund (travel, holiday, emergency) for which deposits are intended. Every so often, I reconcile my total with the actual account balance to make sure that I have the money that I think I have.
This is all fine. Where it gets complicated is electronic transfers between the accounts.
I have a Visa card, which is my only credit card, from the credit union. I normally pay the bill for that Visa card, on the rare occasions when I actually use it, from my primary checking account, which is how I pay all my bills. However, I used the card for some holiday shopping and rather than pay the bill from the primary checking account and then transfer funds from the credit union, as I normally do and definitely will do again for reasons that will be clear in just a moment, I decided to pay it directly from the credit union share draft account that holds my holiday short-term savings. The money intended for holiday shopping goes directly toward the credit card that I used to make the purchases. Eliminate the middleman. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Except that I made this payment on November 8 and on November 17, it still does not appear in my payment history, although it is showing clearly as a debit to the share draft.
I don’t usually use the banking app for the credit union, because I don’t pay bills from that account, and so I had been hesitant to pay a bill using this untried app. Rather than pay the entire balance as I normally would (it was about $470 or so), I made a $100 payment. Even as I sent that payment, I thought that the test payment amount should have been $10, not $100, because who am I, Oprah? Anyway, just to be sure, I checked for this payment every day for several days, and when it didn’t appear in my credit card transaction list, I realized to my dismay (dismay defined as 20 percent “what happened to my money?” and 80 percent “Oh my God, I have to CALL SOMEONE?”) that I had no choice except to call the credit union to figure out where it had gone. The money came out of one place but didn’t go into the other, so where was it? That was my question for the member services representative who answered my call today.
Long story short (yeah I know, too late) the representative also saw the payment on the outgoing side but not the incoming side. He and I agreed that this was very weird, very weird indeed. He suggested that the whole mess was kind of my fault because I made the payment using the bill pay application and not the credit card application (although there is absolutely nothing on the bill pay application site that tells customers not to use that application to pay credit union Visa bills). Then he said that I could wait a few days to see what happens, or stop the payment for a mere $30, or 30 percent of the amount in question.
Lol! After firmly but politely disabusing him of the silly idea that I should pay for the credit union’s mistake (remember - it was a payment from the credit union to the credit union) I decided to wait until Monday, and see what happens. No big deal, right? Easy come easy go. A hundred here, a hundred there - whatever. What's a single Benjamin in the fast paced world of high finance?
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Sometimes, I tell myself that I long for the days of Friday-is-payday, so you go to the bank and deposit your check, you take out some cash so you have some walking around money, and then you write checks for all of your other bills. It was a simpler time. And it actually sucked. Imagine having to stand in line at a Center City Philadelphia bank at lunchtime on a Friday, you and every other schmoe who just got paid, because direct deposit didn’t exist. Credit cards existed, of course, but they were not as easy to obtain as they are today. We even had ATMs, but they weren’t on every corner and in every grocery store like they are now. And the check-writing. My God, the check-writing. I hate writing checks SO MUCH. Just thinking about having to open all of those envelopes, dig through the inserts to find the bill, write the checks, address and stamp the envelopes, and then get them to the mailbox or the post office - it just doesn’t bear thinking about. So no, I do not long for those days, not one bit.
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The payment finally posted, ending a few days of minor stress and worry. I think I’ll go back to my old way of doing things, when I’d just spend the holiday or travel funds as appropriate, and then reimburse my checking account by writing an actual check from the credit union share draft account.
And that is why I cannot be rich. I can earn money, save money, and save money, but I don't want to track the flow of cash through the electronic ether of the American banking system. I don't want to balance my books. I can't manage this level of administrative complexity. I need to keep it simple.
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