Murmuring All The Way To The Bank

So, I got an email from a big bank with which I have a credit card telling me that I’d missed a payment. I figured it was a phishing scam because I knew I hadn’t missed a payment. I had my bank statement that showed me a scan of the cashed check. Then, early this morning, I got a robo-call from the same bank. I’d missed a payment. And in the mail, I got friendly letter about my missed payment.

I opened my bill. Sure enough, they credited a check for $50 to the account, which was shy of the full payment, so they hit me for $39.00 in a service charge for a late payment.

But I had a picture of a $200.00 check being credited to that account. Then I remembered. I have two cards with that bank. I sent two payments, one for each card, in the same envelope. I included the stubs for each, and diligently wrote my account number on each check in the memo slot. Clearly what they’d done is mix the payments up and credited them to the wrong accounts.

So, I called the bank and used the “get past voicemail key” to finally talk to someone. After being on hold for a short time, a very nice woman answered. I explained the problem. She checked both accounts, saw a massive credit on one, the past due notice on the other, and made it right. She shifted the credit from the one to the other, refunded that $39.00 service fee and even kicked me back $69.00 in finance charges. I hadn’t even asked for that, and she just did it. Woohoo, made my day.

But then I got to thinking. As much as I liked getting that $69.00 back, this very nice woman was the first person I’d spoken to about my problem. She gave me something I’d not asked for. Granted, she did me a favor but should she have? I mean, didn’t that $69.00 belong to the bank? Didn’t she just pull some profit out of the basket that goes out to the stockholders?

This is what I ended up thinking: money doesn’t seem to have that much value anymore. Of course, to all of us who are spending it on groceries, and from whose pockets it’s fleeing, we get it. We have to deal out the cash. But when it’s just numbers on a screen, it doesn’t feel real. It’s easy to forget and give away. It’s something we don’t have to deal with now, but later. Another day.

And that comes down to the core of the problem with the economy. Our economy is run almost completely on credit. We mortgage our futures for things we want today. Sure, buying a house is doing that, but when most folks do it they buy what they can afford and have an asset that will be with them over the course of the loan. On the other hand, lots of folks buy ephemeral things on credit, racking up real debt and interest and late fees on a sushi dinner and drinks that doesn’t stay with you for more than a couple days.

I have been as bad as anyone else—which is why I’ve got credit cards that need paying off—but two years of no contracts really kicked me over into an austerity program that continues. If I want something, or anticipate needing something, I set money aside for it. I don’t want to be racking up a balance for things that aren’t going to last. And I’m sure not going to pay for services I don’t use.

A good friend of mine just did the unthinkable. She cut off her cable television. She looked at her cell phone plan and cut the minutes back because she wasn’t using all the ones she paid for anyway. I suspect all of us can find places where we spend far more than we need to, and spend it just because we’ve not taken the time to look at these things and fix them. And while a savings of $5 a month might not seem worth the hour on the phone you’ll spend getting that savings, over the course of the year that’s $60. I’ll take that as an hourly rate for listening to muzak. (But only as a limited, part-time job.)

While the outrages of the big banks and the keystone-cops approach of regulators annoy us all, the only way out of the crisis is for the rest of us to refuse to play the game. If banks make big profits off credit cards, let’s stop using them except in emergencies, or when we can pay them off very quickly. Let’s save up for big purchases (I’ve already set money aside for the possible purchase of an iPad, for example). Before you purchase something you want, ask yourself if you need it. If the answer is “No,” but you’re willing to accept the consequences of your purchase, go ahead.

Spend responsibly and we might actually get out of the financial mess!