The Aerie

Panic!

I was taking a casserole out of the oven yesterday when it hit me...

"Two days from now I'll be in the air."

It's not the aeriality that scares me, it's the preparations. For instance, where is my passport? I think I know, but when I'm at home I forget to double-check, so everytime I'm at work I panic: will I find it at home? Then I go home and forget to look.

Yesterday was a good example of what I face. Yesterday I finally got paid: yay! Good thing, yes. But that was just one more thing I had to do between leaving work at 4:30 and the bank closing at 5:00 p.m. I already had an errand on my plate: stopping by my ex-bookkeeper to pick up my files, and in fact I was driving over there when I learned that the check had arrived.

So I changed course, drove home, picked up the check, the endorsement stamp, and the deposit book. Kissed the wife and kids, drove over to the bank. Got there at 4:59:59 - endorsed, recorded, deposited... great! Now when that clears I'll have money!

Hopped back in the car, drove to the accountant's. Grabbed the box of papers, hopped back in the car, and since I was downtown I drove to the Post Office to check the PO box. I know, after the last time why would I ever look in there again? But there was no IRS letter this time, just the signed contract for my training course in London.

So that was home, bank, accountant, and Post Office, all in an hour. Returned home to tend the kids, as the spouse was now gone to a meeting, and undertook my financial preparations since there is now money in the bank.

Spent the evening and the money working on our finances, wrapping up around midnight. Just got the basics covered - paying us, for example, so that we can pay down our bounced-check fees.

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I also took a look at the mystery insurance payments buried in our remodeling loan, and this morning I called the State Attorney General's office. This is nuts. According to the woman my wife spoke to at the credit union, we did not sign up for this insurance, and the officer who worked on our loan had no clue. We added it up today, and in nine months we paid $1,800 for this crap. Worse, we didn't pay it; no, the insidious thing is that we didn't pay anything: instead, every month the credit union would enlarge our debt by $150 or so (the amount declined as the balance declined).

These loan-increases were buried in the loan total: we'd make our payment, the principal would drop. Then at the beginning of the next month, before our payment, the principal would be HIGHER than it had been at the end of the prior month, but we'd pay our loan and the total would drop correspondingly. So the onus was on us (hah!) to notice the increase in the principal from one month to the next.

I know what they were doing, of course - they were counting on us refinancing before we noticed. Right? You remodel the house, you take out a big loan, then you refinance that amount back into the mortgage. And if along the way you pay $1800 for something you didn't ask for, well, it's up to you to notice...

When I spoke to the woman at the credit union I asked for her last name. She didn't want to give it to me. "What is this for?" she asked. "It's for the complaint I'm filing with the State Attorney General's office, there's a line here for the contact at the organization." Heh, it was almost worth all this bother to listen to her veins ice up over the telephone. "Don't you think that's an overreaction? We're refunding the money to your principal."

"And if I stole $150 from the credit union for several months, and you caught me, you'd be content if I merely returned the money?"

I could hear the telephone's handset making that crackly sound that plastic makes when it's plunged into liquid nitrogen...

Yeah, it's a crime when an individual does it to a bank, but when a bank does it to an individual it's an innocent mistake...

Posted by Albatross at March 22, 2007 10:34 AM | TrackBack