I was denied claim because I have too many receipts to track and fax in. Sheer laziness and confusion on my part. I had quite a lot to send in all at once. I thought they would still approve the claim because I was still receiving messages to send my paperwork in. Well, they didn’t. They deactivated my card instead!

I am looking at other bills related to my teeth that my dental insurance won’t cover, so now I have past due balances and I have to fax in an Explanation of Benefits to get reimbursed. But I am worried it’s not going to work.

So I call and I find out that they are going to approve my denied claim for my major surgery in March. (It was over $3K.) What a relief! I thought I was going to have to pay out $4K in cash and wait for reimbursement on all of it.

Next time, I will try not to be so lazy with the receipts. (I generated 5 in the span of two weeks and I don’t fax them in till I get the emails requesting them. They got lost in the shuffle and I started to forget which was which.)

It’s not that crazy, but annoying more than anything else. I have to figure stuff out now on how to pay for the replacement crowns since Medical FSA is nearly tapped out.

I’m not kidding. Everyone who is tracking their money ought to have a software program to look at their accounts. Unless you are an anal retentive accountant who keeps old school ledgers, I doubt you balance your accounts by hand and keep it up to date all the time.

I have got a serious cautionary tale for you. Full windmilling arms and all. This Chicken Little has a true story to tell.

Once upon a time, (this past March) Chicken Little got a bonus. (hooray!)

Chicken Little’s old miserable place of employment did not take a 401k contribution from her bonus check or give a corporate match. (boo!)

But her new merry place of employment is generous and takes a contribution and offers the corporate match. (yay!)

Chicken Little, being the diligent little scratcher, runs home with her paystub and enters in all the numbers from her bonus paycheck into Quicken.

A few days later, Chicken Little’s 401k plan administrator buys new mutual fund shares with the fresh influx of cash. (mmmm, tasty!)

While her new shares start to grow and grow, Chicken Little minds her own business. A few weeks later, Chicken Little decides to check her garden of 401k money and opens her 401k account to key in her bonus check transactions.

As she inputs data into Quicken and sees there is a problem. (oh no!)

For some reason, there is a cash balance in her 401k account. (how strange!)

Chicken Little, being a wee ditzy, decides to let it slide. (silly!)

She lets is slide for weeks and weeks. Many paychecks come through (yay!) and she creates her 401k mutual fund transactions and still there is a mysterious cash balance. (weird!)

Eventually Chicken Little calls the 401k company and complains. (cue scary music)

The friendly agent (surprise!) takes the information and promises to investigate.

Two long, agonizing weeks pass, and Chicken Little’s desk phone rings at work. (hello?)

It’s the 401k company! (wow!) They have investigated the purchases around the time of the bonus check and indeed, they only received X amount of money. (boo!)

Fear not though, the friendly agent has a plan. (yay!) He recommends calling the payroll department and asking them about their transfer of funds.(yay!)

So Chicken Little contacts payroll and the friendly lady says bring your paystub down and we’ll investigate!(yay!)

Chicken Little is still on pins and needles waiting for the friendly payroll lady, but at least she has her Quicken to tell her when her accounts are not balancing properly and there is a ~$70.00 shortfall of money in her 401k account, which throws off her net worth reporting on her blog. (boo!)

I know. Very silly. But it’s true. I never would have caught the error if Quicken’s running account balance hadn’t been thrown off week after week by a suspiciously familiar amount of money. (It just so happens to be the amount of corporate matching I got last year on each check.) After about 2 months I decided there was definitely something wrong and not just me messing up my data entry.

So far so good. There is an acknowledged discrepancy from my paystub and what was received by the 401k firm. I still have to follow up with the payroll department. I hope they compensate me at the current rate of shares for the lost investment, but I will be happy if they just make sure I get the money that’s missing.

Go get a personal finance software program like Quicken or MS Money. I don’t think YNAB is good enough. Budgeting isn’t enough here. Neither is something like Yodlee which lets you view your balances all at once.

You really should have something that shows you transfers between accounts to ensure they actually balance out. If I couldn’t see that there was a balancing/reconciliation problem between my paycheck deposit into my checking account and my 401K account, I could have lost ~$70.00 for good. As it is, I have a chance at recovering it. That’s a pair of cheap tickets to the opera, or else a single really good seat for one!

Nina has a thought-provoking post at Queercents about the Big Money Fight.

Many years ago when I was in college, I was dating my cousin’s best friend. He was Korean-American too and the second son of his family. He was double majoring in Finance and Electrical Engineering. ‘Round about graduation time, we had the talk about getting serious.

His parents weren’t very well off and they were asking him to co-sign their mortgage once he got a good consulting job. I knew he was financing almost all of his Ivy League education himself, about $30-50K in loans. He was never clear on the total with me. I had about $20K myself in loans after graduation, so we were looking at $50K to overcome right off the bat if we stayed together.

I was totally freaked out about his co-signing a mortgage. To me, that represented a huge obstacle to our future together and obtaining our own mortgage. I couldn’t get why his older brother couldn’t be the co-signer since culturally, it’s his responsibility. Oh boy was this fight a huge mess. All I saw was the amount of money. $50K for student loans, saving another $10-20K to get married, another $20-40K for a downpayment on a house. It was a completely crazy sum of money to me and honestly, it still is. But now I can see it more in manageable chunks, but back in the day, there was no way. In hindsight, I can only picture it as a surmountable goal because my own loans are gone now.

Of course, in the end, money wasn’t the only reason why we broke up, but I think if I had seen more of a light at the end of the tunnel for overcoming our student loans and financial goals, I think it might have worked out better than it did. I was ok with ending it because I pictured a lifetime of financial strain.

Anyhow. That’s my big money fight story. I have nothing to offer you but entertainment. Every couple is different. Every couple has issues.

1) I found the missing iPod Nano. It was in a purse I use only during the summer. I wanted to take that a barbecue yesterday and found the Nano in it. Dead battery though. I won’t sell it since I think I might be riding the bus more frequently now that I know a couple of useful routes to ride.

2) I am the blogger for whom Clever Dude moved a motorcycle. The unexpected nature of the transfer is costing me quite a bit, but in the end, it’s better to do it. I’m still in the process of moving it officially, so I will eventually put a tally out there of the interstate transfer expenses, but not for a while yet. (She is a cute little bike, isn’t she?) The title is clean and I visit the DMV this week to take the written exam for my permit.

3) I got the papers for tuition reimbursement and the official word that it will be part of my next paycheck disbursement in two weeks. THANK GOD. That’s nearly $3K I can shave off my credit card balances very quickly!

4) Medical FSA. I think this is going to need a separate post, but I got drama going on with that one too. I’ll know better in a week how it’s going to play out, but I thought I’d mention it now so I wouldn’t forget about it later.

Money for the rest of us has Festival of Frugality #80 available now.

Yours truly is featured in the second section, Food Posts, with the Happy Cake post.

Other posts that caught my eye:

Nina via Queercents on Generation Plastic and using cash over cards.

Steve Faber on buying home insurance. Great advice.

Free Geekery on 22 Things you can get for free. This might be my new favorite place to find a good deal.

Trent at The Simple Dollar on the Bulk Buying Debate. It’s simple for me. I live in a studio. No serious bulk buying for me!

83 Uses for a penny.

How to stop receiving credit card offers. Or do what I do, have a low FICO score.

Free Money Finance on renting fake wedding cakes. I love it! The stock cake designs are even reusable! But by far were the awesome cuppy cakes my cousin had. I sat at a table of cousins and we had a strategy for trying every flavor by quartering all the cupcakes we got in the three flavors offered. (I seem to be cake obsessed lately. Might be time for some Cake Love.)

In fairness, I give you this article on where to find the cleanest water at North Bend Middle School in Oregon. (Which is near Mt. Bachelor, a brutal place to ski in deep powder if you are a novice like me. I wrenched my knee there many years ago.)

Heh heh… Makes me laugh, but this is pretty disgusting. I’ll never drink out of the fountains at work again. I’ll take my corporate schwag hot/cold 20 oz travel cup to the kitchen first.

Tap water you bottle yourself. Couldn’t be cheaper than that.

I was at a barbecue on Sunday. I found myself drinking water all afternoon in the heat and not wanting much beer at all. Water really is best.

*sigh* Jericho Hill, one of the list mods at Get Rich Slowly forums went to the happy hour we had last night. I extended an invitation when I saw he was from DC. My bad.

He is a prime Casey Serin Hater, so he brought me up to date on Mr. Serin’s sad travails.

And all I could do is pray that God would not kill me for my schadenfreude.

JH then told me to visit caseypedia.com, the wiki for the Casey Haters. I fear I am one and will have to join this elite club of people who pay their bills on time and have integrity.

Big Hunt was pretty good and very uncrowded, which is unusual for them on a summer Thursday night, but I misread their website. Wings are Tuesday nights, and beers are a dollar off on Thursdays. I think that last fact is why our check was pretty decent. My contribution was $18.00 for 2 beers and appetizers. I took the bus and metro, so that was about $4.50 round trip and I got to drive one of the bloggers home the rest of the way from the bus. So about $22.50 for the evening, which is certainly a lot less than dinner out the night before. (Outback steak and margarita which ended up being crazy expensive, $30+.)

In attendance:
Mike from Clever Dude Personal Finance
Nick from Punny Money
JerichoHill, moderator of the Get Rich Slowly Forums
HC from One Big Mortar Board
James from Dual Income No Kids
Penny Nickel from Money & Values

Our guest of honor, SingleMa, was sick and couldn’t attend. But now I have her number and can drunk dial her if she misses the next one!!

All you other bums who said yes and didn’t show up, I mock thee. Too bad work sucks and you had to stay late. It was a good time. Expect another one in August. Next time I’ll break out a different, but very snappy hat.

PS- I added a some links to my blogroll of attendees. For some reason, I thought all you guys had been added already. So if you are a DC PF blogger and haven’t been added, you will definitely be added to my blogroll if you turn out for a happy hour! (Because I’m a lush and I love drinkers! Just kidding. Teetotalers are ok too and I can find a more restauranty location instead of a bar for next time. It’s just harder to predict a crowd of bloggers and planning stinks if we have to have headcount and sit down reservations.)

A new exhibit of his papers in Jerusalem.

More prosaic documents on display show Newton keeping track of his income and expenses while a scholar at Cambridge.

Fancy that. A student mindful of his money.

If you didn’t know. He was also Warden of The Mint and engaged with finding counterfeiters, often wearing disguises to gather evidence.

Sometimes I don’t know why The Consumerist doesn’t tell their readers to STFU. There is a story about a poorly made birthday cake for a three-year old.

Ok. Take a step back. Remember the post a few days ago about children’s birthday parties? Well, I do. KIDS ARE JUST HAPPY YOU ARE LETTING THEM EAT SUGAR.

There are so many things about The Consumerist post and its comments that bother me but I am deleting everything I wrote in my first draft and I’m just going to tell you to make your own cake from cake mix. It will be a much happier cake that way.

Cake mix is 2 dollars. At most, add 3 eggs and some oil or applesauce. It’s another $4 for two colors of frosting. For about $8 you can bake a cake at home. I admit, I don’t do this. But I am a cake snob. (Just click these bakery links and you’ll see what I think is a cake. I’ve had cakes from all three before and OMG are they frickin’ amazing.)

Time for some bakery confessions. I worked at a really nice gourmet bakery/deli in high school. Most likely your cake was made by the bakers a day ahead for you to pick it up. So your cake, by the time you serve it, will be approximately 36-48 hours old. Bakers usually work a$$ early in the morning because they fire up the ovens early and turn them off by noon. They may decorate them the same day, or not. Our cakes were gourmet and delicious stuff. No one **ever** complained about their freshness. (And trust me, they complained about a lot.) The one cake that was hard to deal with on timing and freshness was the flourless chocolate cake which had chantilly cream for frosting. Basically fresh whipped cream is unstable with crazy chemicals to prevent separation, so after even 72 hours in our own case, it didn’t look so hot. (We sold by the slice so we always had cakes on display.)

I tell you this because this means there is little excuse to bake a cake a few days early if you want to save some money. A cake you made 1 or 2 days beforehand will be fresh or fresh enough, just like a cake from a store. So don’t fret over it being made the same day as your party. That is a stupid obsession.

Cheap tip for decorating a cake:

Get some plastic figurines from the toy store and squish them into the frosting

Ok, I admit. They’re not food grade plastic. But get festive and don’t be such a pill for food safety. Have some fun for pete’s sake! And God forbid you use a recalled Thomas the Tank Engine toy! (Oh wait. Those are wood anyway. Stick with plastic toys you can wash off.)

The best wedding topper I ever saw was at the wedding of some goofy friends of mine. (I should know, I’m the one who brought the cake out.) The groom’s brother is a total Star Wars nut, the kind who keeps his stuff in the original package. In honor of the wedding, he sacrificed a Han Solo and Princess Leia to be the cake topper. Sure we had to squish them into the frosting up to their knees, but it was totally awesome to watch the bride and groom lick them clean for the cameras. Four years later, it’s one of our best memories of the wedding.

Want to get really crazy for an older child’s birthday? Like really-really crazy?

Make your own ice cream with liquid nitrogen!!

Ok, I’m not an expert at this and you definitely have to practice some safety here with the nitrogen, but basically you put some heavy whipping cream and a little vanilla into a bucket that can handle cold temperatures. Dump in some liquid nitrogen and stir, stir, stir till the cream starts freezing. I am sure this will work well for you inside an air-conditioned house. We did this at the above mentioned wedding, outdoors in 90+ degree summer Texas heat. It stayed a little melty the whole time. But everyone loved the novelty of it.

Enough of my ranting. As you may have noticed, I overuse ‘OK’. Sue me. I doubt you’ll win.

ps- I know you are asking how to buy liquid nitrogen. In my case, my friends ordered an enormous tank from a place like Airgas because we had about 200 people to serve and had no idea how much we needed. For a kid’s party, estimating down, I’d say you only need as much as a 20lb propane tank’s sized amount. (I don’t even know what size they sell it in.) I would say don’t let every kid mix their own. Make it in large batches, allowing kids to have a chance to stir, and serve it. They will get tired of stirring, so this shouldn’t be a problem. Anyone have any further advice? (Because I know Donna Jean has bought some before.)