I am an accountant - since I was 12. A few years ago I found the columnar book I used when I was in college to keep track of the cash I spent while in college. (Never a boring thing - I found out which was the first Broadway show husband and I saw together as we each paid for ourselves - something which greatly upset my mom - and I had my ticket purchase recorded in the book, what a nice memory from such a dreary thing). And yes, I used to always have cash I spent which did not make it into the book - adjustments the end of every week. I keep our records on Quickbooks so everything is accounted for and my arithmetic is doublechecked by the computer. We pay every bill in full - every month. No part payments on credit cards. I am sooo careful!
This has been a busy tax season for me - not exactly so much from the actual tax return preparation but on a personal level lots of things have gone wrong and we were busy trying to do things. I spent last weekend through Monday night finishing up our personal return and our business return. We mailed out our personal return Monday at the post office and picked up the mail in our post office box and then returned home so I could finish the business return.
In the mail at the box was a letter from our bank to my husband. I almost set it aside as I figured it was something about his IRA account. I am so glad that I did not. I opened the envelope and glanced in just to check what it was ----- A BOUNCED CHECK NOTICE??? How could that be? Impossible!
We normally deposit money we receive in our savings account and then once a week I transfer money to our checking account to cover the upcoming bills plus a cushion for anything which might arise during the week.
However, we had needed a lot of money in our checking account all at once and it had to come from husband’s IRA. We had a huge credit card bill due to my new eyeglasses, husband’s teeth, and regular expenses, plus our real estate tax was due and so on. That money had to go directly into our checking account and it did - or so I thought.
As I started pulling out papers in the office to see what could have happened - Did we forget to make the deposit? Did the bank make a mistake? I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. In addition to this check certainly more checks must have also bounced - with a fee of $34 per check this could cost us real money - plus it was the large credit card payment - there would be interest and fees there also as well as on the other end of whatever else had bounced. My head was swimming. I kept hoping it was a bank error as then there would be no bank fees from then and apology letters to where the checks had bounced and reimbursement for the costs resulting from same (or so I hoped). I found the deposit slip and found it is was my error - out of force of habit I had deposited the check to our savings account!!!
I sat down to call the bank - I could barely see the phone pad to dial and could not see the deposit. Husband offered “Do you want to go to the bank to deal with this?” I looked at the clock - only 3:30 - we went to the bank.
One of the higher level tellers who knows me said hello and came over and asked how they could help. I managed to get out that I had deposited the money in the wrong account. He nicely told me that all I would need to do is transfer the money from one account to the other. I sort of sputtered out that no, I needed to see one of the platform (desk) people as checks were bouncing.
Luckily the person we spoke with was a woman I had worked with before for other more normal matters. She also tried to calm me down. She pulled up our account - two other checks had come through before a later transfer I had made into the checking - and they had both been paid despite the lack of money in the account as they were small amounts - but of course they each had a $34 charge. Finding this out I felt a bit better - I had envisioned maybe 10 checks bouncing and the work that would be needed to be done, as well as the expense, as well as needing to transfer money to cover the cost of the fees on the checks.
She transferred the money to our checking account for us. She then checked and since we have not had any other bounced checks or such in the last 2 years (on her records - maybe 35 years for us and then the checks bounced because my pay check bounced) she could reverse up to 3 fees for us - just the number of fees we had. Oh, I was feeling a bit better. We thanked her and headed home.
I then telephoned the credit card company. I explained to the employee what had happened. I think she could hear the panic in my voice as she was very reassuring. She, of course, saw on our record what had happened and asked if I wanted her to debit our checking account to pay the bill. I thanked her and said that I was going to ask if she could do that. It was done and the payment was made. I was very lucky. I mail the payments at least a week before payment is due. This payment was due on the day this was happening. I checked with her and this counted as paid in full, on time - no interest due! I asked her what the bounced check fee was - $25. I was about to ask if she could waive it, when she said that she was going to check to see if she could. Again, since we pay in full every month with no prior problems or fees, she was able to waive the fee. I thanked her. (I was going to fill in the survey that was suppose to follow and compliment her profusely, but it never came on the line and I hung up.)
I started to breathe normally again.
Then I remembered that we had also received a letter from our RV insurance company asking again for the premium payment - per the transaction listing from the bank this was one of the checks paid without funds. Panic started again. Was this just a question of the second bill and our payment crossing in the mail or had it actually bounced. I telephoned the insurance company and it was just a case of paperwork crossing in the mail - thank goodness. The ability to breathe returned to me again.
I looked husband in the eye over the desks and told him that he could yell at me all he wanted to about this - “tomorrow” - I could not deal with it that day as we still had the business return to finish and send out the next day. He is not a yeller, but sometimes out of frustration yells, and I could see this being one of those times. He calmly said that he was not going to yell, but thinks it would be a good idea for him to check things as we go along and that I should do the same for him as he is forgetting things and getting confused. I told him this was fine with me as I keep trying to get him more involved in our money management (we are the opposite of the normal “husband deals with the money and the wife has no idea about it”) and it would be fine with me.
The corporation return went out on Tuesday on time. Finished - except for all the catching up.
Important to note is the fact that I was able to get all the fees waives as it was a one time occurrence. My hard work at keeping all our bills paid timely and in full paid off again in this situation. It was obvious that it was some sort of one time unusual problem and not us bouncing checks at random.
The fact that it was dealt with immediately also helped as there was no time for additional charges to occur - if I had called the credit card company the next day, my payment would be late and I would either be asking for the interest payment to also be waived or paying the interest - on our largest credit card bill in years.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
It should be obvious after the above that my thought is that it is very important to make payments on time and in full - or at least the entire amount of the minimum amount due or more. When one has a good record with the various companies one does business with (and yes, your personal finances are doing business with the various companies you deal with) it is recognized when help is needed.
In addition, hopefully you have all filed your income tax returns if you are in the U.S. or at the very least have filed an extension. Start working to make next year’s return easier to do. At the very least set up a folder or large envelope and drop bills which will be deductible next year into it. Drop income items into it also. Put a large X or * next to expenses paid by check or credit card payments which pay same if they are tax deductible. A program such as Quickbooks or Quicken or a simpler program can be a big help if you use it. A spread sheet that you make up in Excel or similar can also help. I personally do not keep anything in “the cloud” and want my data here in the house, but if that is what you prefer that can help you also. (“The cloud” is actually just someone else’s hard drive and since it on the Internet it can be, and most of them have been, hacked.)
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