Don’t Count Your Money Until it’s “There”

This is a story of the troubles that ensue when you live paycheck to paycheck and your paycheck is late.

My husband has been at the same job for 15 years and has without fail, been paid on time via direct deposit.  Paid on time and in full every 15th and last day of the month for the past 15 YEARS!   And even-though, with all my technophobia (my budget is still on paper), I have had such faith in the timely paycheck deposits that I automated ALL of our payments, bills, investments.  The mortgage is automated for the 1st and most of the rest of the bills (car insurance, car, electric, phone, credit cards…) are all set up to be paid on the 15th.

This was all going along swimmingly, until this Monday, March the 15th.

I had a feeling something was amiss on Saturday when the paycheck wasn’t listed in “pending”  on the banks website.  If payday falls on a Monday it ALWAYS has been deposited after midnight on Friday night, although it won’t actually “clear” until Monday.  I really felt uncomfortable on Sunday morning when it still wasn’t there.  I stayed up Sunday night into the wee hours of Monday morning because the knot in my stomach was getting larger by the minute and was hoping against hope it was going to go in there.

I had 16 scheduled payments automated to come out of that checking account on Monday the 15th.

I freaked, it wasn’t there Monday morning by 7am.  I scrambled to every website where a payment was scheduled to be made, canceling the payment, hoping it would cancel this late in the game.   Trying to remember 16 logins and passwords and clumsily navigating websites I hadn’t visited in months.  One website was “Experiencing Technical Difficulties” – “Try Back Later”, *sigh*.  I was picturing an endless, disgusting cascade of bounced checks. 16 Bounced checks would = $576 in NSF Fees!!! I eventually figured out how to, and did cancel all the payments.

I called the bank.  “No, we see no incoming deposits”.  CRAP, the Ides of March got us.

As a SAHM, I say all the time, “I work, I just don’t get paid.”  Apparently now, my husband does too.

He gets to work Monday morning, with the office all abuzz and comes to find, “a glitch with the payroll company and the problem will be resolved and deposits will be made by end of business.”  And it was, at around 3pm the deposit went in the bank.  Magically, it bypassed “pending deposits” and went straight to “available balance.”  He was paid in full and on time (it was the 15th).

Now I had to login back in to 16 different websites and redo the payments.

The bills and payments were in no danger of being late, but I liked paying them early and the money left over on the 16th was “uncommitted money”.  Our milk money, if you will.   I never doubted it would be more than 2 days or so that he would get paid, but the drama of having A LOT of money set to come out of an account where there was NO MONEY was too much stress to bear.

I’ve UN-automated all our payments.  No more “scheduling payments” or “automated bill pay”.  We’re going old school.  Well, I’m not going to write actual paper checks or anything that crazy, but I will pay each bill individually after I make sure the paycheck is in the bank.

We can’t afford to take the chance…

Share This:

 

Living Paycheck to Paycheck? – Start saving NOW for Christmas.

It’s snowing AGAIN right now and I have major winter fatigue!  Over 75 inches of snow this winter ALREADY in the Philly suburbs and it is only mid-February.  Visions of daffodils are dancing in my head.  I can’t wait to leave this winter behind and never see a another snowflake.  But when money is tight you really need to plan ahead.  Way ahead.

When living paycheck to paycheck any deviation in your bills can send you scrambling back to using credit cards.  For us, Christmas is one of those cases.  We don’t go crazy at Christmas buying gifts for our three kids and family members, but the cost is definitely greater than our monthly discretionary income at this point.   It would be the perfect set-up for a another failed attempt to get out of debt.

To avoid the squeeze I know is coming this December I decided to start a “Christmas Fund”.   My husband gets paid bi-monthly and we are putting $20 a paycheck away now –  so come Christmas we will not have to resort to credit cards to pay for it.

I’m putting this money in a sub-account at ING Direct .  I have enough faith in my budget for the first time ever that I know I will not need to raid this account.  But if you don’t trust yourself yet, many Credit Unions offer “Holiday Accounts” or “Christmas Club” accounts where they offer “bonus rates” with no penalties on withdrawals IF you don’t touch the money until November.   Even Kmart and Sears got in on the act last year with 3% BONUS rates on gift cards.

I’m hoping this plan will mean a less stressful holiday season.  The alternative is to pretend Christmas isn’t coming this year and AGAIN be faced credit card bills in January.

NOT "brought to you by Chase" this year!

Share This:

 

Sometimes I feed the dogs cat food.

In keeping with my last post I want to write about the reality of the money situation as well.  Here’s a little nugget of honesty,  when it’s three days before payday and the checking account has $2.06 in it and the dogs run out of dog food, I feed them cat food.  I give the kids a mixture a half-juice and half-water and tell them it’s healthier that way.   At dinner when we sit down to eat and the napkins/paper towels are used up – we use baby bibs as our “wiping rags”.  We’re so green.

That’s what happens when you stop using credit cards to bridge the paycheck  gap.  None of it is hurting anyone but it sucks.  We live in a snotty high income area and I often wonder how all these other people are making it.   Are they surviving on credit or have they just managed their money so much better than we have?  I told you before our net worth is $112,000 and that is true.  (We have 401k savings, we have 529 college funds for the kids and we put $100,000 down on our house (got really lucky and sold our old house at the height of the housing boom) but we can only put $8 of gas in the car!?!)

How come I’m eating Oodles of Noodles like I’m living in a dorm the day before payday?

Crappy choices.  Spending more a month than we take in month and using credit cards for the difference.   Cutting up the credit cards was tough, they were such a crutch but it was necessary if we are going to ever get out the paycheck to paycheck cycle.  So yeah, sometimes the dogs will have to eat cat food.