A family, the Livesay family, lives in Haiti doing mission work. They have a very nice blog, which I check out occasionally. They recently spent some time in the U.S., and one of the kids apparently said something like, In Haiti they ask you for money, but in America they just take it from you. (I think the context was that the dog had cost more to spay than it was supposed to, but of course when you go pick up your spayed dog, you have to give the vet whatever he asks for. It's a form of ransom, actually . . . )
I've remembered this comment and repeated it to my husband a few time since then. In America, they definitely just take it from you. And it's gotten worse.
We are not good with money, neither of us. Recently, just as an example, I forgot to deposit my husband's paycheck for one day. Just one lousy day. I figure this one lapse cost us about $150.
Three checks didn't go through because they went through on the day I was supposed to deposit the check. Five years ago, this would have cost us about $60. Our bank used to go ahead and put checks through as long as it didn't happen too often, and they'd charge us $20 for each check.
Now, they charge $28 for each check, and they return them. And the checks don't go through a second time for free any more, either. One check went back to the person we wrote it to, someone who doesn't use one of those ReDeposit Check places. (It happened to be a check to the church, which was embarrassing for Fred.)
The other two checks were written to places that do use ReDep places, and both those checks went through a second time and cleared, but with a $30 fee on one and a $35 fee on the other.
That means the whole incident cost us a grand total of $149 in fees, up from $60 just a few years ago. Just because I forgot for one day.
That means that for people like us, people who operate close to zero in the checking account, to make the money work out, at least one of us has to make money the absolute number one priority in our lives at all times.
That means that I can't get distracted because the kids need to be driven somewhere extra, or the cat is sick, or I got busy cleaning the rugs or mowing the grass and my priorities changed. My priorities can't change. I would have to be focused every single day, in every single thing we do, on making the money work, in order to insure that I would never ever make those little slip-ups that now cost $150 or more.
I can't do it.
Years ago, when I had my first real job, my employers used to think it was funny that my paychecks took so long to clear. We never spent anything, so I never got around to depositing my paychecks. We were living, briefly, with my husband's mother. No house payment. No utilities. No kids. One paycheck went through after having gotten lost in the bushes outside the house for a while. I finally found it and deposited it, although it was smeared with mud. My boss enjoyed that one.
Now, we need the money to support all these kids and pets we've accumulated, but I never learned to organize the money any better than I did back then. It's not a good combination.
My forgetting to deposit that paycheck has convinced Fred that his new system for money management is a good one. When he gets a paycheck, he likes to go immediately to the bank and cash the whole thing. (He especially enjoys it when they ask him for two forms of ID and he tells them he only has one. They give him the money anyway.)
Then he goes over to our bank and deposits the cash. It's easier to remember a wad of cash in your pocket than a piece of paper.
And we try to pay whatever we can in cash, so we don't mess up the checkbook.
I got a new cell phone recently. We needed to pay our cell phone bill as we were getting the new phone, but we had to go somewhere else, make the payment, and come back to get the phone, because the cell phone place did not take cash for payments. I don't know what we'll do if cash goes the way of the dinosaur. It's going to cost us a fortune.
