DIE, YOU SCUM

Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme. And I know everyone else in the country is going through the same thing that we are, so it hardly seems worth even mentioning it.

But that's the problem. No one even mentions it, because it's become so commonplace. So, they keep getting away with murder.

I'm referring to the people with control over our money.

The credit card scams where they post your payment the day after they receive it and then charge you late fees and overlimit charges.

The banks that give everyone "complimentary" overdraft protection, thereby getting around the laws that govern how much interest they can charge on loans--because if, for example, you use your overdraft protection just once and then put the money right back in there, the $28.00 fee still goes through, adding up to massive percent annual interest, if you were to look at it that way.

Or the fact that our value is now being judged by our credit scores, and even if you do something that seems totally unrelated to credit--like apply for a job--they can and will check your credit record and base decisions on it.

Doctor's offices, too, who assume that we will make appointments for whatever they tell us to, because we have insurance. Well, our insurance, doesn't cover everything, and I want to know if I'm going to owe a thirty-to-fifty dollar co-pay, or how much our dental insurance will cover on fillings and how much I'll have to cough up, before I determine when to make the appointment for (they look at me like I'm nuts when I try to find out how much I'll actually have to pay at an appointment--doesn't anyone else ASK this stuff?).

We have learned the hard way to NOT make the thirty-dollar co-pay that the doctor's office asks for, when we take our kids in for "well checks." The reason is that well checks are covered at 100% by our insurance. If you call the insurance company, they will tell you this. However, it never shows up on the information the doctor has, so the doctor always asks me for the thirty-dollar co-pay (which we do indeed owe for "sick visits.")

If I go ahead and do what the doctor's office suggests--pay the thirty dollars, because it shows up on their records that we will owe it, and then if we don't really owe it, we'll have a credit with them--then we'll never get it back. Because, the insurance company does not want to pay that thirty dollars. And they will not pay it to the doctor's office without pressure. We usually have to call about four times to get it to go through (three months later). It's insane. We call, they say, Yes, that's covered, I'll put it through again. We get a letter saying that it was refused. Repeat three times.

Today I'm irate because of our house payment. I tried to make it online, because I'd put it off until the last possible day. But it wouldn't go through online, because I had not "filled in all required fields." It was not possible to fill in all required fields, because the field they said I hadn't filled in was the one where I specify the date for each month's transaction, and I was only doing one month. The only option it gave me was "select date." There were no dates provided to select from, because they only provide that option if you are setting up recurring payments. But it wouldn't go through without a selected date, although I had no dates to select from.

I called customer service and reported all this. The girl on the phone took my information, told me that the payment would be processed today and that the money would come out of our account some time after midnight, and then mentioned that the total would be for the amount due plus the twelve dollar phone payment fee.

(Pulling out hair.) I didn't want to make a phone payment. I tried to make an online payment, which is free. Why should I pay an extra twelve dollars because THEIR system didn't work? Twelve dollars is not nothing. I can get my favorite Caesar salad and tea at our local deli almost twice for twelve dollars. Why, oh why, do these places act as if it's nothing?

In Haiti, there are a bunch of half-finished houses, because people pay as they go. You save up for a lot. Then you save up for a wall. Then a room. Then you live in the room while you gradually, over years, finish building your house. It makes more and more sense to me.

I just want to grow sweet potatoes in our back yard and trade them for shoes. I could understand transactions like that.