This has less to do with money than it does with following up on something from awhile back.  (But there is money stuff at the end, so it’s not a total wash of a post.)

My regular readers might recall that my SUPER AWESOME AMAZING INCREDIBLE FRIENDS got me a Mom’s Escape Day package at a local spa last fall.   At the time I was stressed out because I was trying to homeschool my two older boys while trying to keep Susanna, who was three, and Luke, who was not quite two, from destroying the house.  All of this in and around my other commitments, and I was, to be be blunt, losing my ever-loving mind.   So they chipped in and got me this wonderful awesome package.  I was floored and very touched.

However, I put off using it.  For one thing, it arrived when I was still quite obese, and I decided to make it an added incentive to hit the 180-pound mark, which is why it was discussed here.  I did hit that mark, but still put it off, citing time and childcare constraints.  Those were true, but plain old Being A Big Chicken played a role there too.   I’ve never been to a spa before, and my self-image isn’t that great even now. The idea of nudity, however, chaste, in front of a stranger is very awkward.

But I was resolved not to let such a thoughtful gesture go to waste, so I finally called and set up to go in yesterday while Mom watched Susanna and Luke.   I found the place okay, arrived on time, and as far as I could tell didn’t commit any terribly horrendous faux pas.  By that token alone, I call it a victory for me, but I as an added bonus, the facial was heavenly and the massage was excellent too.   So in case I didn’t express my thanks enough when this gift arrived, let me take this moment to say how much I appreciate what you all did for me one more time.  You are the most amazing friends ever!

I did check my balance today.  Yep…still $37!   Oh, but I can knock corn chips off my shopping list!  One of the families coming over tomorrow is going to bring them.   I’m doing good today: the beans are soaking for the chili, the check for Trunk or Treat tonight is turned in.  The kids’ costumes are mostly assembled, and I’m doing final-touch stuff now.    Candy is already bought, so aside from Corn Dogs At Sonic tonight, I don’t think I have anything left to buy.   So I’m doing good.

Whenever you discuss money in Christian circles, you’re going to hear ‘God will Provide’.  I mean, it’s just a given, you need to go in right away and accept it.  You also need to prepare to be told that if you give, God gives back, suggesting that the way to …. sort of buy favor (?) is to tithe properly, I guess?    I know that’s not really the spirit of the thing; it’s a matter of demonstrating trust and the various rewards that come of putting your trust where it counts, and that’s not something I would ever argue with.  But just in terms of practical conversational expectations, you’re going to hear or be told those things.  God will Provide, and If You Tithe, You Will Be Rewarded.   Bring up money in any Christian environment and wait for it, and then say ‘There it is.’, because it will always be there.

Non-Christians and Anti-Christians would be dismissive here, and I can’t say I blame them.  It’s yet another religious convention that just seems to get thrown around casually, and often the ‘proof’ of the situation doesn’t really match up to what is sort of promised there.   When we’re low on money and things are tight, it’s far more likely that something will go WRONG than that something will go magically right.   I have several friends — and have experienced it myself firsthand — who find themselves living hand-to-mouth as it is, just about the time when their accounts are at their most barren, the washing machine decides to die, the heater goes out in the dead of winter, and the car breaks down out of nowhere.   You’re struggling to pay the bills ANYWAY, and then this big financial disaster strikes.  How is that God taking care of you?   God is GOD… shouldn’t you be driving a miraculously breakdown-free car?  Shouldn’t your Water Heater defy all known laws of physics and chemistry and somehow last for two hundred years without any maintenance?  I mean, come on…

Christians will tell you that those are the times when they realize how dependent they are on God.   And somehow we always get through.  Someone steps up with a spare car to lend or give, someone else offers us the use of their washer and dryer until ours get fixed, some family member or other invites you in to stay until the water heater issue is resolved.  Stuff like that.  Oh, but that sort of thing happens for EVERYONE, as long as you’re a nice person and have friends.   And sometimes that sort of thing doesn’t happen, and you’re left to struggle without the benefit of whatever broke.  Christians say this is a lesson in appreciating what we have.  Non-Christians roll their eyes and walk away at that point.  Whatever.

But it all does come down to attitude, see…  From a Christian’s perspective, the world belongs to God and we really don’t DESERVE any good thing from it just because we happen to have turned up here.  Certainly existing at all ought to be gift enough, and when you throw in that whole Christ-dying-on-the-cross thing, it’s pretty ridiculous for any Christian to think God OWES them anything just because they ‘didn’t ask to be born’.   Therefore, if circumstances find us in abject poverty, struggling for our every meal, the fact that we can find a bridge to sleep under on a rainy night is technically a gift to be appreciated.   Admittedly, few among us could honestly say we take that attitude, but it’s the attitude we’re MEANT to take, and we certainly try to at least pay it lip service, right?   That’s why a financial crisis like a broken water heater shouldn’t be a crisis in the first place… Who are we to demand hot water to begin with?  Isn’t the fact that we have running water at all enough?

And that’s why the Someone Stepping In To Help might just be the rewards of Being A Good Friend To Other People for non-Christians, but it’s a gift from God to Christians.  Because EVERYTHING is a Gift from God.  And if the car gift breaks down, then at least the roof gift is still holding up.  And if the water heater gift is going bad, hey, the Internet gift is still awfully amazing.

I feel like I’m doing that Louis CK bit again.   Well, anyway…

The point is, sometimes those little miraculous gifts, the ones that actually suggest there is Someone Looking Out For You (besides Bill O’Reilly), do actually happen.   Today I was informed that some dishware Mom asked me to list on eBay for her sold, and the money came in.   The total sale?  $120, round about.   That has NEVER happened for us before; we’re lucky to get $20-$50.   Mom’s deal is that if I do the listings, she’ll do the mailing and give me half of the take.  That’s incredibly generous, since, you know, they’re HER dishes… but she considers the freedom from hassling with that part of things worth it, and she wants to do this for me.   Who am I to argue?  I need the money!

So I now have another $60 in savings today.  That brings my savings balance to an all-time, non-paycheck-housing high of $127.   I’m 1/10th of my way to my Emergency fund!

But more to the point — and more importantly for the moment — if my $37 Checking balance is not enough to get us through (and I’m still going to try to make it work if I can), I now have some padding to work with without delving into the $67 I am deteremined not to touch.  Someone is looking out for me, and I have a pretty good idea who.

Also, Luke’s birthday card from Andy’s parents arrived today.  This was weird, because it was sent on the 22nd, according to the postmark.  It’s only coming from central Iowa, so why it took a WEEK to get here, I have no idea.  But anyway…  They sent him a $50 check, and I am seriously considering just putting it into his account and calling it good.  The check is made out to Andy, but since it’s intended for Luke I think I’ll just transfer the money into Luke’s account and leave it at that.  He has plenty of toys, enough clothes right now, and Dave Ramsey has me all enchanted with interest rates accumulating over time.   If I make a regular practice of halving Christmas and Birthday money and putting half in the kids’ bank accounts, by the time they’re in college they’ll have a decent amount to work with.  I know my parents did something like that, and that’s why I had something like $800 to spend on my honeymoon even after I graduated from college.

So today was a day of little windfalls.  Little gifts I didn’t expect, but very much appreciate, both on my own behalf and on Luke’s.  We’re going to make it through October one way or another here.

Okay.. I just checked the account.  With about ten days left to the pay period, we are down to a working total of $37.   Granted, that is not including the $67 that is currently snuggled up in our Savings account, but for the sake of, you know, not being ridiculous about this, I’m going to pretend that money isn’t there.  So.  $37… to last a family of six for ten days.

And I plan to have two other families over for Chili on Saturday.  I’m good. >_<

Now, as crisis-worthy as that sounds, the truth is that I’m not really worried.  The bills are all paid, and the larders are all stocked.  There are a couple of small things I could stand to get, but I think I can actually bring us in under $37 if I’m just really careful.   $15 of that needs to go Trunk or Treat on Friday, so I need to keep THAT in mind, but the things I think I might need before next week include things like:

• 1 16-slice pack of cheese
• 2 gallons of milk
• 2 boxes of cornbread mix
• 1 bag of corn chips
• 1 bag of pretzels
• 1 bag of apples

All of that can probably be bought for around $10.  I think I have $10 in cash here, so that’s not an issue, and I guess I can scrounge around for change and see where that gets me, too.   My only real concern is Friday night, since we’ll be going to Main Street to trick-or-treat from 3-5, and then need to be at church by 6:00 for Trunk or Treat.  That doesn’t leave much time to throw together a home-cooked meal, so I’d planned to go out.   I don’t know where I can go to get the family fed for less than $22, although I understand Sonic is having some kind of special that night.  50-cent Corn Dogs.  That might be worth going for.  Not the healthiest meal in the world, granted, but it’s better than letting the kids dine on nothing but their candy all night.

No more NSF fees for me, though.  That IS a nice feeling, knowing where we stand and what we can and can’t do.  There’s been a comedy clip circulating on the Internet of Louis CK on Conan O’Brien entitled “Everything’s Amazing, and No One’s Happy.”  In it, Louis points out the way things used to be, notably that at the end of the month, when you ran out of money, you said, “Well, I guess I can’t do any more stuff now.”   I find myself looking at my balance and thimking, “Well, I guess I can’t do any more stuff now.” and feeling kind of amused by that.  In a way, it’s almost sort of FREEING.

It’s funny, too… I felt that way about not eating on my Down Days after awhile too.  It was nice to not worry about what I was going to eat, because I already knew!    I guess there’s Freed0m To and Freedom From, right?

Well, I did pretty well.  Luke’s birthday gifts cost me about $40, and included a little soccer set, two wooden puzzles, two new books, a game, and toy train.   I’m very pleased by this, because that really was a pretty conservative birthday for ME, spendingwise, and yet Luke was very happy with what he got.   At three, of course, he doesn’t exactly have aspirations of Nintendo DSes and Wii games or anything, which definitely makes the going there much easier.. But in the past this wouldn’t have mattered that much to me.  This actually gave me a chance to examine how I handle gift-buying, too, which was sort of educational.

My tendency when buying gifts is to fill categories.   And to some extent I think that’s natural.  Each kid gets a game, a book, a movie, a toy, whatever.   Keeps things equitable, and presumably sort of ‘covers’ the field of Childhood Needs At Each Stage, or whatever.  A lot of this is illusionary, I realize; children develop just fine without The Latest Thing, and for generations have gotten by with a couple of wooden blocks and the occasional doll without suffering major developmental problems…  But I guess as a parent, there’s sort of a drive to feel you’re Doing What You Can for your children, and somehow this approach makes me feel I’m doing that.

The problem is, though, that as I have done this, I have prioritized my approach such that the categories rank supreme and the cost ranks…negligably.  I mean, I don’t go for The Most Expensive of whatever it is; in fact, I have often completely disregarded price entirely.  I am aware that kids have no concept of what things cost, so my concern is often less that we spend equally on each child than that each child has the same QUANTITY of presents, and that the presents are kind of …size-equal.   If Susie’s dollhouse costs less than Zack’s Bakugan Battle Set, that’s fine.. as long as they both get ‘toy’ gifts that are about equivalent in Kid-value.

As a result, though, I have often spent more than I needed to.  For one thing, every kid in the house does not NEED a new game, new movie, new whatever just because one other kid got one.  I have been known to buy a movie for a child who didn’t want one just so that they had A Movie.   That’s probably not terribly smart.   For another, because I AM more ‘kid-value’ conscious than I am money-conscious, I have probably overspent on this gift or that one when I could have stood to be more conservative.

I found myself contemplating movies today…  Luke really doesn’t have any that ‘belong’ to him, aside from the Baby Einstein videos that have been passed down to him from his older siblings.   The thing is, not only has he more or less outgrown them now, he never really showed that much interest in them in the first place.  He also has never shown interest in any OTHER DVD we own, really.  As long as Nick Jr. is accessible, he’s all good.   That being the case, why would I blow $15-$20 on a video for him?  Especially when you consider that the only TV in the house right now that is even capable of PLAYING a DVD is the one in the living room, and that one is usually being used by someone else.

So I decided to be smart and dispense with the video.  I did get a game, because we really have no games that are age-appropriate for Luke and I know THAT, at least, he would love.  That took me forever, though; I wandered back and forth along the games wall for twenty minutes, checking out all of the games for that age group.  I finally settled on a Cranium game called Puppy Pals Bingo, which teaches colors and shapes and also cost only $10.   Most of the others cost $15 and up, so I felt like that was a good choice.

I also got him a couple of books, because he loves those and so many of the ones we have now are falling apart from years of use.  There I went ahead and splurged some, because I wanted a Fisher-Price book.  The two we’ve had before now have been big hits and much loved by all the kids, and are therefore loved to pieces, literally.   So even though it cost $9, I knew it would be worth having.

The train was from the Dollar Section, a Susanna choice that we both knew he would love.  I also got him a $10 soccer set that included a foam soccer ball and a little plastic goal.  It was off-brand and totally cheesy, but every single week we go to soccer practice and soccer games for his siblings, and Luke desperately wants to participate.    That set was a big hit, and he spent the evening kicking the foam ball into the goal over and over again.  Totally worth it.

Christmas is coming, and I’m going to have to seriously evaluate how I buy gifts for people this year, and try to balance conservative spending with my need for the kids to feel they had a good Christmas.  I realize that this is the challenge EVERYONE faces, but until now I never gave the conservative spending side of it that much thought. :/

Actually, for once, we’re doing semi-okay, given that the month ends on Saturday.   Well, okay..fiscally for ME, it ends next week on Thursday, but still.  I did the grocery shopping today, using a meal plan, and I think I did pretty good.  All of the supplies I need to finish the kids’ Halloween Costumes are bought, the candy and stuff for Trunk or Treat have been paid for, and I really just have groceries and Luke’s Birthday to think about.

All of the bills have come out now, and we have about $150 left.   Not great, but the last grocery trip bought enough food to get us through probably until Payday, so I think we’re fine.  With that much I can get Zack a new pair of shoes (which he very much needs), and buy Luke a cake and a modest supply of presents, and we should be good to go.  We have so many toys as it is that he really doesn’t NEED much, and the family already showered him with new clothes during the Family Party.   So we’re all good.

OH!  Did I mention that we now have money in SAVINGS?!    We do!  We got a check from our mortgage company for the overage in our escrow account, and I deposited it in Savings today.  That was sort of fun!  The check was for less than $70, but still… it’s a start, right?  Right.  So.

On our way!

The Dave Ramsey Bible Study resumed at church today.  (It had started, run for about two weeks, and then had to go on haitus to make way for — ha ha — this year’s Stewardship campaign.)   Since it’s been about four weeks since we met, most of what went on was just recapping what we’d learned and discussing it in small groups.   It was nice, actually, because we were sitting with Cheri and Chris, good friends of mine who struggle just as much with money as we do.  They have six kids, though, so they have a bit more of an excuse than we do.

At one point in the discussion, the question was, “Do you value relationships over money? What would your friends and family say about you in this respect?”

I actually hadn’t heard this part of the video series, if it was a question Dave addressed directly.  Honestly, I could see the DR ‘Right Answer’ going either way.  He talks against emotional spending, after all, and it’s probably not inappropriate to warn against basing all of your monetary decisions on the emotional connections you have to those around you.  As with the Public vs. Private School issue discussed in the comments awhile back, there’s a point at which you have to accept that you have to show your love for your children in some way that doesn’t involve buying them a $5,000 mechanical pony.

But the followup question there suggested that, in fact, Dave does feel we should rank our relationships above our finances.  And I certainly can testify firsthand as to why that would be necessary.  I suspect that if Andy hadn’t spent the past ten years mishandling our money and making it abundantly clear that he blamed me for it, our marriage would not be what it is now.   When it comes to romantic relationships, I think I’ve discovered that my number one need is to feel that the object of my affection believes his life is better for having me in it, and Andy certainly has never sent that message on any level.   Instead, I’ve been told that I’m mostly just a distressing burden.

To Andy’s credit, during the group discussion he did say that yes, he had ranked money above relationships for a long time.    Yeah.  Just a little.

As for me, I tend to rank relationships above money… but I rank a lot of things above money, including my own capricious whims a lot of the time.  So that doesn’t make me a better person, and I guess to be completely fair Andy’s need to feel Just A Little Bit Persecuted found pretty fertile soil in me.  The issue, I guess, isn’t that I’m not a spendthrift and he isn’t justified in feeling he had to police me some, but rather that the way he chose to police me wasn’t fair or respectful.   He should have discussed the situation with me as an equal instead of acting like I was a spoiled child who needed to be disciplined whenever she was ‘bad’.

For me, though, even under the present circumstances, my judgment calls fall toward relationships.   Susanna, for example, has been going through a period where she’s annoyed with the fact that she’s a girl.   I can’t really blame her, either; at four years old, being a girl means she has to have her hair brushed, while her brothers run around sporting maintenance-free buzz cuts.  She has to wear dresses to church while her brothers lounge in the pews wearing comfortable slacks.   She notices this stuff, and doesn’t like it…  And I am often little help, as I feel as she does about a lot of that.  I’ve always been sort of a tomboy.

But I don’t want her to hate her own femininity, so I decided to do what I could to turn Being a Girl into a positive thing.  I sat her down and asked her if she would go out with me sometime for a Girls Only Breakfast.  We would get dressed up, do our nails, go shopping, have a fancy meal together, and no boys would be allowed because we’d only do GIRL things.  Susanna’s desire to be included in the boys’ affairs is trumped only by her desire to be the center of either parent’s attention, so this was JUST FINE BY HER.  In fact, from the moment I mentioned it, she has talked about little else.

I made the mistake of offhandedly suggesting we do this ‘on a Saturday’, which led Susanna to pinpoint yesterday as THE DAY.  This would have been fine, if I hadn’t spent last week wrestling with money..  At this point we really don’t need to be dropping anything extra on something like THAT, certainly.   I really struggled with the question of whether to put her off on this, but it was SO important to her that I couldn’t bring myself to do that.  Instead, I just tried to be smart about it; I visited websites of the girlier restaurants downtown, scoped out about how much certain things would cost and made a plan for myself about how much to spend, and tried to be conservative about it.

As it turned out, I wouldn’t have traded yesterday morning for anything.  Susanna was so genuinely excited about the whole thing.  She let me do her hair, paint her nails, do her ‘makeup’ (face powder and lip gloss, mostly), and then she was sweetly cheerful and chattery through the meal at the restaurant.   I had a fruit plate, she had french toast.  She poured my tea for me, and drank chocolate milk from a stemmed goblet.  She was very polite to our waitress and charmed the whole place.   Afterward we went shopping on Historic Main and I got her a caramel apple for $4.25.  It was, again, much more than something like that ever needs to cost, but she was SO EXCITED about it that it was worth it to me.

That afternoon, I took all of the kids to Six Flags for a ‘last hurrah’ before the park’s season ends.  We have season passes, so the trip didn’t really cost anything besides gas, but we did need to eat there and that wasn’t cheap.  However, again, the money was less important to me than making sure the kids had a good Saturday.  That logic can be taken too far, I know, but it’s still important.

The issue before me now is Luke’s birthday, which falls next Tuesday.  He is turning three, so we can get by without doing a TON, but I don’t want to not do ANYTHING.  I just don’t know how much we can afford to do.  I’ll have a better idea when the mortgage and stuff hits and Ic an see what we have left.

Okay…if there’s one thing checking my bank balance every day has taught me, it’s that lag times are sort of annoying.  I paid our mortgage this month using the lender’s online bill-pay, which was, admittedly, convenient… however, it’s now been about three days since I did it and my bank has not been notified.   This doesn’t matter much either way; I paid it early, and it’s not due until the 1st, and I already have enough of a grip on my account now that I know the money is there and will continue to be there no matter what. I would just feel better if the account reflected the debit NOW, so I could more definitely assess my current situation and figure out what it means for the rest of the month.

I have three big bills coming out right now.  I have the Mortgage, obviously, the electric bill and the Car Insurance.  It looks like the electric and car insurance bills have hit, fortunately, so that’s sort of a relief, but I really don’t like the lag time here.  It’s frustrating.

That said, I spent part of last night setting up my bank’s BillPay system.  Up until now, whenever I’ve paid bills online, I’ve done it at each individual payee’s website.  This is handy because I can see EXACTLY what I owe at any given time, but A) not every payee I pay out to has this option, and B) doing it this way still forces me to remember to pay…something I will probably be better about in the future, but forgetting something is still a danger.   Going through my bank to do it instead might be better because A) all of my payees are listed there, reminding me they need to be paid, and B) the lag time, ideally, would be far less since my bank is the one handling the withdrawal.

So we’ll see.  It was really easy to set up, so that was good.  Now I just need that first paycheck in November to come in so I can crack my knuckles and really get started.

I guess that’s sort of a silly title, since I’ve never actually set down Phases for this thing.  Until Mel asked, I hadn’t even set down a plan!

So here’s the the plan, complete with phases, as far as my current intentions go:

Phase 1:  Set down a budget and a plan for paying bills on time each month.

Which means I need to:

1. Sort out, again, what bills we have going out and when they’re due.
2. Track our income, now that the paycheck values have changed.
3. Figure out what bills we currently have that can be paid online, etc.
4. Decide which bills can be paid on the first paycheck and which need to be paid out of the second.
5. Establish a plan for handling ‘incidental’ monthly expenses like birthdays, non-monthly bills, extracurricular expenses, etc.
6. Establish a plan for saving something, somehow.

See how that falls as #6?  Meh.

Phase 2: Carry out the plan for November, 2009.  See how it works.

Phase 3: Evaluate, make revisions, etc.

The goal here is to get to the point where A) we actually have savings and B) we never have to borrow anything from my parents EVER AGAIN. >_<  I love my parents, and I am infinitely grateful for the help they’ve given me over the past few months, but I really, really, REALLY, really hate borrowing from people.  Or even accepting gifts, as the case may be.  My parents have been very generous about the help they’ve provided, but seriously… I hate that we needed that help.  It should never have been that way.

Anyway… so I have now completed Phase 1.  Here’s what I’ve got:

• Monthly, we pay out for the Mortgage, Water, Electricity, Natural Gas, School Tuition, Offering at Church, Life insurance, Phone/Internet/TV, Cell Phones, and Weight Watchers Online.  We also have a gas card for which we pay the balance off each month, and my cashed-out Whole Life policy that I pay back into.    I have now split these into two lists, according to which paycheck they come out of:
  • First Paycheck:
    1. School Tuition
    2. Whole Life payback
    3. Phone/Internet/TV
    4. Cell Phones
    5. Electric
    6. Natural Gas
    7. Life Insurance
    8. 1/2 of Offering to Church
    9. QuikTrip
  • Second Paycheck:
    1. Mortgage (following month)
    2. 1/2 of Offering to Church
    3. Water
• With the money we have left after those are paid, we can afford $300/paycheck toward food and household incidentals.
• I’ve also budgeted to grant Andy $40/paycheck for his own use, for lunches or whatever.   Any tutoring money he makes is also his to do with as he pleases.

My goal right now is to just pay off each bill cluster ON PAYDAY.  We do not have an interest-bearing checking account anyway, so there’s no point in waiting.   Doing it that way will make me far less likely to miss something.

At the end of all of this, we should have about $428 left over.   That’s the money that pays for non-monthly bills and birthday expenses and whatnot.  Most months we only have about $250-$300 worth of that to worry about, and often less, but December (Christmas) obviously represents a huge chunk of expense, and May, when we pay for school registration, car insurance and a bunch of other stuff that just happens to fall in 0ne month, we end up needing over $1,000.

In the past, as I mentioned, I would keep a running total in Checking to accommodate this, but I’ve wised up now.  At the end of each pay period, I’m going to put whatever we haven’t used into Savings.  That way it’s just out of the way, and ideally earning some interest.  And when we need it, we can just transfer it back.

The only problem I now face is the need for that Emergency Fund.  For the third time, let me reiterate that I do think that that’s important, and I think what I’ll do is open a separate account, preferably interest-bearing, and put my tutoring money into it.  Right now that’s only about $100/mo, but that combined with the $100/mo Andy’s school is putting into his HPA should be enough to help out if one of the kids gets hurt or someone gets really sick.  Hopefully that won’t happen, but I feel better having that money set aside just in case.

So that’s probably due to be some facet of a phase here.  Maybe I’ll make it Phase 4, or something.  Or just a goal.

OMG, I stole $300!

Remember how I said I’d missed an AT&T bill in September, and now owed $300?  The actual total is something like $307-something, but regardless…  They were threatening to disconnect our service if the amount wasn’t paid in full by the 27th.  Not good.

I was so distressed by this news that I ran out as soon as I saw the notice and deposited my paychecks at the ATM.   See, at the time, it was only about 6:00 a.m., and I had come downstairs to deal with some of this before the kids woke up.   Ergo: the bank proper wasn’t open and the ATM was all that was available to me.  But I needed to feel I had done something right then and there, so that’s what I did.

‘Course, when I got back and sat down to pay the bill itself, Andy reminded me that checks deposited at the ATM usually take two or three days to hit.  So I fretted for a minute, then realized that AT&T will let me just schedule a payment.  I set the payment up to go through on the 20th — Tuesday — because that would be two business days after the deposit and also Payday, so even the checks didn’t go through, we’d be covered until they did.  All good.

On Tuesday night, I was talking with other Moms at Susie’s soccer practice, and one of them mentioned that she was using UVerse, but they used Vonage instead of the Uverse phone, since it was cheaper.  Cheaper is definitely a good thing in my book, so I looked into it today.  I wanted to compare the costs between Vonage and Uverse, so I logged into our AT&T account to see if I could find a breakdown of what we’re currently paying for each component of our package.

What I saw instead was that my account still reports that I owe $307.   NOT GOOD.  When I saw that I went right to my bank account to check, and sure enough… the 20th went by, and no withdrawal from AT&T.  Again: Not Good.   And there was plenty of money in the account that day, too, so there was no reason for it not to come out.  I was very perplexed.

So I called AT&T and went through the usual 300+ steps required to get myself to the point where I was talking to someone.  (Can I just say that AT&T is hopelessly convoluted?  Yeesh!)   The first thing she did was to inform me that if I wished to pay my bill over the phone, there would be a $5.00 charge, but if I would like to pay it online, this fee woudl be waived.

This was NOT what I needed to hear just then.   I got snippy with her and informed her that there would be no $5.00 charge for anything, no matter how this went down.  I had attempted to pay my bill online, and it hadn’t WORKED, which is why I was calling in the first place.   So as far as I’m concerned, there will be no $5.00 fee.  No.

Suffice it to say, my approach there didn’t exactly foster a productive conversation for a few minutes.  But eventually she was made to understand that what I needed was for her to look at the account and see what happened and why the payment didn’t go through.  This she attempted to do, disclaiming repeatedly that she might not be able to tell, because that information is not available to her, etc. etc.  I told her to just look, or pass me off to someone to whom that information would BE available.  Sheesh.

She looked, and told me that no… the bill HAD been paid.  The balance showing on my account page was out of date.   She was seeing a balance of zero, and showed me where to go on the website to see for myself that it had gone through.  Sure enough, there it was… a payment on 10/20/09 for $307-whatever.

Well, that’s great and all, but why wasn’t that showing up at my bank?!

I happened to have clicked the transaction ID on the page, which produced a pop-up with details about the transaction.  I noticed that the account number cited (well, what I could see of it, anyway, which amounted to the last few numbers) ended in a number that is different from mine.  I began to realize what happened… I had put in the wrong bank account number, and the $300 had come out of someone else’s account entirely.

Whoops.

I thanked the AT&T lady and told her I needed to go and call my bank.  But as I hung up, it occurred to me that it was possible I might just know who has that account.  The account I’m using at the bank is the same account I’ve had since I was young, so all of the members of my family have bank accounts with numbers right around mine.  I called my Mom to ask her which of us had an account that ended in this number.  She said, “That’s mine.”

She had me log into her account to check, and sure enough… $307-something was taken out of her account on 10/20. Mystery solved.

I was mortified.  I apologized profusely and asked Mom if I was able to transfer money into her account.  She laughed and told me not to worry about it, and then hung up.

Wow… I stole $300 from my Mom.

And now I can pay my Insurance bill.   Wow.

I woke up this morning in a full-on anxiety attack over money.   I’ve been dallying with this stuff for three days now, but I haven’t made any appreciable headway.  This cannot continue.

So…today my goal is to sort out November once and for all.   Like I said…I felt that my last attempt at this failed somewhat because it turned our money spending into a big long projected outlook.  I think this is valuable in its way, because that way we took into account incidental spending per month (quarterly bills, biyearly bills, birthdays, seasonal costs, etc.), but it left me feeling like I couldn’t really save anything because every penny we don’t save now will be needed later, and so on and so on.  What I really should be doing is viewing each month as a unit and banking anything we don’t spend into savings.   That way we get a little interest, and it’s still there when we need it later.  This current approach is just way too stressful.

So I did two things today.  I familiarized myself with my bank’s online banking interface and I went to each of our various payees and tried to sort out their online bill paying systems.  I also went through and made sure that every one of them knows not to send E-mail to the one account we have that is defunct now.  This was big, because our gas bill and our AT&T bills were both being sent to that address, and that’s why I missed paying them.  Not good.

Next is the budget, in which I sit down and determine which bills come out of which paycheck.  I did call church today and ask Michelle to change our withdrawal date on Tuition from the 5th (before Payday) to the 7th (after Payday), to divide up our biggest expenses.  Otherwise, between the mortgage and tuition, the second paycheck only had $198 left afterward, and $100 of that goes to church.  $98 is not easy to eat on for two weeks when you’re a family of six, let me tell you.  It’s conceivable that we’d have money left over from earlier in the month, yes, but I still felt better with it more spread out.

So that’s done, and I feel good about it.  Now I just need to get the insurance bill paid.  We used to pay $350 every six months on the van, but now we pay $450 because I had an accident.  Great.  I have no idea where I’m going to scrounge up that kind of money, unless we just don’t do ANYTHING for Luke’s 3rd birthday next week, and we barely do anything for Halloween.

I hate this stuff sometimes.