Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Just as promised, they sent it to arrive 7-10 days after the event. I have a nice shiny $289.00 check burning a hole in my pocket. YAY!

I hate that there isn’t a convenient bank on my new commute, i.e. inside the building or around the corner. I guess I’ve been spoiled. There’s always been a easy place to do my banking the last 4 offices I’ve worked.

I could have done PayPal, but I didn’t want to pay the fee. Besides, I would have had to wait to transfer money out to my bank and then write a check from one account to another. By getting a check and putting it into my primary checking account, I get to make a transfer online from my checking account to my credit card (same bank). I just have to get the deposit in there.

I suppose I could have done it on Monday night, but it was raining cats and dogs and I didn’t want to leave the car in the dark and step around a ton of puddles. There is a particularly bad one in front the ATM I usually visit. Someone even lays down a board to step on.

I think I’m planning on hoarding cash for a bit since the construction starts later this week and should take about 10 days to complete.

Oh dear. I still write paper checks for my HOA fee. I like to have an imaged copy of it, but I suppose I can get away from paper checks now primarily because of my sheer laziness outweighs the check writing. I have no impetus for ordering new checks. I don’t need to express myself with angels, butterflies, or Garfield.

I can’t believe my sloth will be the final undoing of paper checks in my life.

As I peruse the payees in my paper register, (Only to keep track of what I wrote, otherwise, it’s Quicken all the way) I see that I paid off my back taxes, my student loans, my car loan. I see the escrow money for my condo, the check for my motorcycle. All of it logged in my checkbook for the last four years.

Not being able to send a check whenever I want will make me nuts.

My solution? Get rid of my Wachovia checking account and open one somewhere else and get some new checks. Crazy. I know. The link is to an older post when I first thought of doing this.

Fundamentally, I’m really ticked off at Wachovia for charging me for my Quicken download. I was very certain over the last month NOT to do a Quicken download, but they charged me anyway! So screw them! I’m closing that account.

I went into a bank this afternoon after a dental appointment. I am happy to report a new checking account. I will have to get it ready with Direct Deposit, etc, but it will be worth it to get away from Wachovia. I decided to go with a box of checks anyway for the peace of mind I will have. At least the bank officer was kind enough to let me request what will go on the check. First initial last name only, no phone number and no apartment number.

There is still much that needs to be done before I can terminate my relationship with Wachovia completely, but let that be a lesson to Wachovia, don’t be stupid and just eat the cost of doing business!

There’s a new graph available now.

A small improvement. I thought I had adjusted my car asset down last month, but I see that I didn’t so I did that this month. My car is depreciating so I knocked it down a bit. I don’t actually think I could get $5K for it on the open market, but it’s moves. I’m still struggling with keeping it. My boss got a vintage Alfa Romeo recently. It’s red and zippy. The engine still has a carburetor on it so it’s got a really throaty purr and an actual throttle. There is something fun about an Italian convertible on a sunny day. We make a point of taking it to lunch when the weather is nice.

But I digress.

The 401k milestone posts are all after the May month closed, so that position is much better than what you see on the graph notes. I like seeing that my retirement accounts have risen about $10K in 5 months. Regular automated savings is the key right there. I think I only put in an additional $900.00 to my IRA account, so all of the rise is from my 401k contribution and good performance.

The credit card balances are kind of thrown off due to funky things I did pulling in the payment to my credit card account. It’ll all settle out by the end of the month. The good news on that is that I did get a notification about my Oracle DBA course which will allow me to get reimbursed finally. I hope that money goes through by the end of the month.

I think that I should do something to split out my cash position. There is a difference in savings vs liquid cash. I’m not doing very well saving on the side. Oops. I think that my Save-O-Meter actually needs changing again in a downward movement. I withdrew a lot of cash to cover the overdraft in my checking account. meh.

I figured out the problem of the returned check fee on my credit card account.

I pulled money into my credit card account for a payment, rather than push out from the checking account. Therein is the problem. In my haste, apparently, I picked the wrong account. I really hate paying on the credit card company’s website. I have no idea why I changed my pattern, other than the fact that I was going on vacation and possibly thought this was the most efficient way to cover the payment. I could have waited a week but didn’t.

Either way, the double whammy of fees is about $79.00, $40 from the bank for insufficient funds and $39 from the credit card company for the returned check. Hopefully there won’t be additional fallout from the overdraft on the checking account. (It’s one I am about to close permanently.)

The plan is to transfer money into the checking account and then once the overdraft is covered, close the damned thing, have a check or ACH transfer to my current account and close it permanently.

Once that’s done and all my moving around of accounts is done for a few months, I want to open a Bank of America checking account and get away from Wachovia and their stupid online banking fees. And now a new rule: PUSH OUT FROM THE CHECKING ACCOUNT. NEVER PULL IN TO THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT.

ps- Don’t even ask me about my 401k account. There’s something fishy going on there, but I’ll explain it later when the plan administrator gets back to me. Perhaps I have done something wrong with Quicken to show a cash balance that shouldn’t exist.

Trudy’s in Austin has some amazing food.

I was out in the field camping this past weekend. It was fabulously rainy. I don’t think I ever dried out. Many thanks to SFOrdinaryGirl for her guest post while I was gone.

Anyhow, it was a good thing not to rent a car this weekend. Finding a ride in and out of the airport last minute worked for me so I basically spent about $500.00 for this trip for food, airfare, gas and camping fees. Luckily, I did not buy any new camping gear. I would like to get a new headlamp, but I was able to rescue mine and fit it with a green lens once I lost the clear one. I decided I really hated to spend another $40 for a new Petzl Zipka light.

I have a strange returned check fee on my credit card account. I am wondering what that is about. I’ll have to fix that later tonight when I get home. Troubles me that I have this fee on there since I have been juggling funds with my new ING Direct Electric Orange account and getting the direct deposit set up. Frustrating.

I was trying to be very conscientious but I guess I should have waited a week to pay my credit card. I like to send in my payment as close to the closing date as possible so that it lowers the interest charge calculation. Per the billing method, it’s best to send in the payment early to reduce the daily balance all month long, vs waiting till the payment due date. I figure I save about $100.00 a year in interest by doing that. (I am one of those evil debt balance carriers that credit card companies love, but I’m trying.)

Yes indeedy. I did it.

I am cheesed off with Wachovia for charging me to download from within Quicken, but not so cheesed off as to kill that account. I really do feel more comfortable with a brick and mortar bank locally. So this means my Philadelphia based checking bank is going the way of the dinosaur. I feel so bad because I opened that account in 2003 at the bank branch I used to go when I was a little kid with my piggy bank. I still think of it as my bank, even today, though I don’t even take cash out of their ATM’s when I go home. Screw the sentimentality, let’s talk brass tacks on why I chose ING.

1) I already have a relationship with them: I really didn’t want to go through the annoyance of learning a new GUI with Virtual Bank or NetBank. It was extremely easy for me as an existing account holder to click a few clicks and open a checking account.

2) It’s paying 4.00% APY: My old checking account paid no interest at all and was free with direct deposit. Seems to me, for the $1000+ deposits I would make there for my fixed expenses, I might as well earn some interest on the float while the funds were still in the account.

3) It uses Quicken! Sounds crazy, since all banks pretty much have an interface with Quicken. But for some reason my old bank in PA was really behind the times on this and did not integrate well with it. I had to get crazy stuff set up by calling a rep, etc. It was phenomenally stupid, so I didn’t bother with transaction download. Because this is a low-traffic account for fixed expenses. I could pretty much balance it once or twice a month with Quicken’s reconcile feature and it would work just fine.

4) My girlfriend did it first: One of my local friends was asking me about it. I told her I really didn’t know much about it, but then she decided to do it because of Reason #2. She seems pretty happy with it and has no serious complaints other than the fact the ATM card hasn’t arrived yet. But for me, I won’t even use the ATM card since I have my local brick-and-mortar bank which is convenient enough to home and office.

5) I think there is a hard credit pull: There is an overdraft protection feature that offers you X dollars of credit. I am pretty certain this means they’ve done a hard credit inquiry. Yes, I realize this possibility may drop my credit score, but I don’t really care since I haven’t opened a credit account since June 2006 and have no plans to open another for any reason whatsoever in the next 2 years. EDIT: Per Reader Dave, there is no hard credit pull, via the ING FAQ. THANKS DAVE!!

I haven’t done anything yet with it. I am in the process of transferring over my direct deposit from work. I did set up some of my regular outgoing expenses and that was fairly easy. I don’t like going entirely paperless, but I don’t think this transition will kill me, and perhaps it will help me tame “the paper tiger” around the house. I keep too much paper crap and it’s bugging me. I actually spent some time de-cluttering the mess on my desk and I am happier as I write this post.

PS - I just noticed that the DST change has effected the posting of my posts since March 11th. I just added an hour to the time on this post to reflect the accurate time.

1) The commenters saying online bill payment is the way to go are absolutely correct. However, there is a small catch at the moment with doing this. I’m shopping for a different checking account in VA. I am royally irritated with Wachovia for charging Quicken users from avoiding the Wachovia website. While I have been training myself to download directly from the bank’s website, I don’t like it. I’m actually looking at Bank of America once more. Many years ago in California and Maryland, I banked with BofA. I found their online payment site very easy to use and convenient. Who knows when I’ll get around to do doing this, but I will soon, hopefully.

2) I cannot wait for bonus season to get here. (Nevermind, since drafting this post, I got paid the bonus today rather than on the regular paycheck cycle! Whee! Kick up your heels and do a happy dance!)

3) I ate at one of my favorite restaurants that carries Old Dominion Root Beer. I completely forgot and broke Lent by having a soda. The restaurant is the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington’s Westover neighborhood. They freeze the glass so cold, that the soda freezes in the glass. It’s AMAZING. There’s no ice at all in the cup so they serve you a full pint, just like they would with a beer. (of which they have many, a bit like the Brick.)

4) My homeowner’s insurance is due. It’s $55 more than last year because I filed a claim, but I can still pay it in one lump sum, which is good.

5) I liquidated some of my emergency fund for some car repairs and to finish paying off one of my credit cards because the balance is less than $500.00 now. I am down to two cards, one of which is 0% till June.

Normally I leave my outgoing mail next to the front door so I don’t forget to take it on my way out. Last month, I had two checks ready to pay off a credit card and my HOA fee. Unfortunately, it seems that I never mailed them. I had to pay a late fee for last month’s HOA fee when I wrote a check for two months. (The credit card payment is a non-issue because it was an extra payment so no late fee was incurred there.)

I knew something fishy was going on. I just haven’t had a lot of interest in paying attention to matters lately. I saw the checks had never cleared via Quicken and I began to wonder if I had mailed them out. While rummaging around the mess of papers that is my glob of taxes for 2006, I found the envelopes.

I already voided them out in Quicken, but i’m wondering if i can still send the credit card payment and then slip in a new HOA slip for April into the second envelopes so that I don’t waste the checks, nor the stamps.

Don’t break your patterns. Keep your routines. Place your mail by the door like you always do. Avoid those late fees. But stop biting your fingernails.

Sorry for the late post today. I suspect posting will be light for most of the rest of this month. Work is going wonderfully well, there’s just a lot of it! Spring is here and the warm weather beckons for time away from the computer.

This post started as a comment at Boston Gal’s blog.

I keep two checking accounts. I split them up and do direct deposit at work. I first set them up like this after calculating my fixed payments every month. I leave about a $50.00-200.00 cushion every month so I don’t over draw the account. That was serious problem I had before. I did it twice this year out of sheer ditziness. Now that I am more watchful again (goes in phases), it hasn’t happened since. Part of the reason I overdrew it is that this account is out of state and I can’t just run over there with cash if I think I’m going to run out. The flipside is that I’m spoiled and used to call my parents to put money in it if I was falling short. I don’t do that anymore because I don’t need it. (That’s what it means to grow up. TCB.)

The second account is for discretionary spending. I haven’t overdrawn this one in a while either. I pull out an extra savings amount from here because when I set up the amounts for direct deposit, I did not include an extra amount to save. After I got serious about having an emergency fund, there wasn’t room to pull it from the first account, so I pull it from here. It helps that I got a raise around the same time. This account is in a local bank so if I do see it falling low, I can run over there and make a deposit from the home piggy bank.

I tend to use my debit card as a credit card account and try to withdraw everything electronically, instead of as cash. I simply do a poor job of tracking cash spending. Everything is set up in Quicken, and the cash account is miserable for record keeping. I usually dump any discrepancies into the Dining category since frequently I spend cash as lunch money.

Cash to me is monopoly money. I cannot hang on to it. Because I’m spending a dollar here and there for a soda or vending machine snack, I think I waste more, and eat more junk food/calories than I should. Since I am frequently without any cash, I feel like a mooch when I have to bum $5 off a co-worker or friend for this or that. I realize that we can’t be entirely cash-less, but till my car starts doling out money like an ATM, it’s just not convenient for me to divert 1 or 2 miles on my commute to get cash from any bank or ATM. (Have you seen DC in rush hour traffic? It’s horrible!) Therefore I never have any.

This week I had some cash (group farewell lunch at work, put on my card and everyone paid me back) and I noticed I am shameless with it. Madelines and tea for a snack in lieu of dinner, coffee, soda, vending machine snack. HORRIBLE. I wouldn’t eat those things if I didn’t have cash. (Well maybe the tea and Madelines because I really had to eat.)

I wrote a description of myself as ’struggling with finances’ and I think I’m still doing that. I’m not starving. I’ve got a retirement plan set up. I try to save. But I am still trying to curb my spending and get myself where I need to be. I wonder when I’m going to really freak out and realize I need to change everything. While I don’t want to actually experience it, I need to figure out what that is.

Wow. I’ve really wandered off. That’s what I get for writing posts late at night in sleep deprivation. But I guess that’s the thought I want to leave you with today. What would it take to really get you to radically change your spending habits to be more frugal? I haven’t been out of work in a year and I wonder why my frugal habits from unemployment didn’t last long into my current employment.