I am so DONE of BofA.

So, I posted the other day about how I overdrew my checking account. Anyway, my $100 autotransfer from my ING account posted yesterday, so I was positive again. I needed cash for lunch, so I went to the bank. I took out some cash, and I asked the teller (my friend, L) if there was going to be any overdraft charges, because I was unsure of the timing of the transactions. She said that there were no charges, because my account never went negative. GREAT! Nothing to worry about, right?

Anyway, later that afternoon, I went for a snack run and I used my debit card, because I wanted the cash on hand for lunch. I have money; there's no problem.

Today, I get in to work and check my email, and there's my daily balance email. -$32! What the hell?? So, I logged in to online banking, and sure enough, there were two $35 overdraft fees from yesterday. And looking at my balance over time on the website, my account never went negative! So, I printed out the transaction listing and such and marched down to the bank, fuming.

I went to the teller (my friend, B) who I hope to god can tell me what's going on, so I don't have to deal with the stupid bosses (E & D). Anyway, B tells me that I'm going to have to talk to E to figure this out. GROAN!

I show E my printout and ask her what's up. She says "Have you overdrawn your account before?" What the hell does that have to do with today? Yes. I have, but not for a long time. I've been good. She looks at my sheet and says "Here, your balance is negative." She's pointing at a transaction for -$5.30. I point out that she's looking at the transaction amount and show her the balance column. By now, we've made it back to her desk, and she looks more at the sheet. And says, "Oh I see what's going on."

She tells me nothing. Anyway, this is getting long. She looks me up in the computer, and she can't find anything that's not on the paper I have. Meanwhile, my friend, L, come out, because she recognized my voice. And the two of them look through the computer. Then, the big boss (D) comes out and joins us. Oh my god! All I want to know is what's going on with my account!

L explains that I was there yesterday and she said that there was money there. And D says, "No, you can't do that. You NEVER tell a customer their balance." WTF? Why not? Her explanation is that there could be pending transactions that aren't on the screeen, and L says that the screen on my computer is the same screen that we're looking at now. And that's the balance she told me. And D, reiterates that there could be outstanding transactions that don't show up. UGH.

All the while about ever 5 minutes, E or D ask me, "Do you write things down?" Um. Yes. IF I KNEW WHY I HAD THESE FEES, I WOULD NOT BE AT THIS SHITTY BANK!

Anyway, the long and the short of it is this. When you use your debit card, the bank puts the money on hold. If you keep taking out money, the holds queue up. Well, all my transactions from the weekend, queued up BEFORE my auto-transfer for Monday. So, Monday NIGHT (why they clear at night and not in the morning is beyond me) when they cleared, I was overdrawn for that INSTANT between the transactions. Thus, fees were assessed. HOWEVER, fees take two days or so to appear! So, L didn't see any fees when I asked her yesterday.

So, I'll admit that according to these backasswards rules, the overdrafts are my fault, and I'll accept any fees. I just wanted to go to the bank to figure out what happened, because I never saw an actual negative balance.

Anyway, then a huge argument between L and D erupted. L said that they should credit the fees, because it was her fault that I used my debit card yesterday, because she told me that I had money (because the computer told her I did). D said that she's not responsible, and I have to pay the fees. Anyway, I was so pissed at the end of this, I just gathered up the papers and said that I had to get back to work. I was so tired of being talked down to and yelled around. D says to me that she'll put $35 in my account. And I said "Thanks, that'll put me positive today, but I'm still going to get fees for yesterday's transactions that are now overdrawn because of today's fees." And I just stormed out. I told my teller friend, B, that I was **this close** to closing my account and that I hated BofA and that the only reason that I still had it was because the bank is in the hospital and it's convenient. She smiled and said that she understood.

So, I get back to lab, and I check my balance again online. And there's a $70 "counter credit", which I think is from when E tried to refund the fees in the beginning that didn't work. I grab my phone to text L and ask what's up. And there's a text from her saying that D put $70 in my account. I thank her, and she replies that she cried and pleaded with her and that's why. God, I love her.

Anyway, over the course of the day I started looking around for new banks. I talked to coworkers and friends online. I still haven't made up my mind completely OTHER than, I don't want any BofA accounts any more. NOT because of them charging fees that I "deserve", but because of their shitty/non-existent customer service. I'm not stupid, and I don't like people treating me like I am. Even L told me later that she didn't even understand what was going on in my account, and she said that E and D talk to all the customers like that. WTF? How do these people stay in business?

Unfortunately, it's the end of the month, so I can't change anything until after I'm sure that I get paid my direct deposit. But come September, I'm so breaking up with BofA.

Anyone have any suggestions? It seems from talking to people I know that ING and Wachovia are pretty good.

Monday Blahs

UGH. I was so bad. Every morning, BofA emails me my checking account balance. I set that up years ago to help me keep track of what's going on with my money (or rather, when I get low on funds). On Friday, I had about $160. Today, I have -$12!

What went wrong? Well, I had preordered House Season 5 from Amazon when I noticed it was at $0.025/min. And I COMPLETELY FORGOT about it. I spent money on things at Target and Best Buy over the weekend, and on Sunday, I still had money. But Amazon charged me for House today, and my $100 auto-transfer from savings hadn't come in yet.

Grr. This was completely avoidable, and I feel so stupid. I haven't overdrawn my account in a long time. I think I need to stop preordering things.

New Goals

I finally got off my ass tonight after work to sit down and work on my finances. As depressing as it is, it does feel good to reassess the situation and get some goals in place for the next 9 months.

First off, my Quicken file for my checking account does not match what BofA says online that my balance should be. I have no idea what's missing, but there's money there. Luckily, I took out $275 cash from my checking account back when that whole debit card drama was going on. This was supposed to be cash for visiting a friend of mine in the city (who was there on a business trip), but those plans fell through (kinda luckily). So, I've been using that cash for just about all my purchases for the past couple of weeks. I do plan to print out my transactions since my last statement and double check the Quicken tomorrow.

Basically, I revamped my goals for the next 9 months tonight. There are now two sets of goals (short term and mid term). Short term goals are for the end of this year: getting my savings accounts beefed up and paying down credit cards and loans. The mid term goals are paying off my taxes (both state and Federal) before April 15, 2010. I'm well on my way for the state taxes. Federal is going to take a lot out of me to get it done, but I know that I can do it. The big pull on the Federal taxes is going to be filing my 2009 return as soon as I can. If I'm going to get a refund, all of that will go to paying down my 2008 balance. But, I was able to get myself onto a payment plan, so I'm hoping that will get all this finished sooner.

Of course, the MAJOR goal here would be to live within my $100 per week without using any credit cards and still working towards these new goals. I'm sure that it'll be tough, but I'm used to tough. Really, I just need to get off my ass and motivate myself actually to do this. I think I can.

The new rule of DVDs (a work in progress)

So, I posted last week about my purchase of Eureka DVDs. I shared my wonderful purchase and my idea of limiting myself to $1/episode for DVDs with a friend of mine. He teased me, of course, for being silly, and then I showed him my spreadsheet for calculating the cost per episode. He LOVED the idea. But suggested an improvement.

He asked me what the cost of my new DVDs was per minute. After a quick update of the spreadsheet, I was able to tell him that for both DVD sets together, it was 2.3 cents/minute. VERY reasonable.

This conversation lead to the new DVD rule. I can only let myself buy TV Show DVDs if the cost per minute is less than or equal to 3 cents/minute. I think that this is a very reasonable rule. A season of about 24 hour-long episodes for a cost of about $25 is a good guideline.

I have already figured out that this rule will not be able to movies on DVD. It's too difficult to find 90 minute movies for $2.70. But, with Netflix, I've found my impulses to buy movies has been greatly diminished.

We'll just have to see how well this rule works. But so far so good. I just realized this morning that I could preorder House Season 5 on Amazon for 2.5 cents/minute. So, I'm going to spring on that right now. But as with everything, I'm going to have to have some enforced moderation.

Fun for Cheap

Yesterday, SS4BC and I went with my friends J&L to Six Flags. OMG! So. Much. Fun! But, amusement parks are known for sucking the money out of your in exchange for said fun. However, I think the way that we handled it was perfect.

We got discount park tickets through L's work ($25 each). Parking was $15. We rented and shared a large all-day locker ($16). We managed to get a large, good lunch for about $15/person. Plus, instead of getting lots of drinks all day long, we splurged for the souvenir cup ($13), but it came with free refills all day! So that $13 covered all the drinks for the rest of the day for all four of us. And that's all it was for spending for me. L got a snack at the end of the day and shared. And for some reason, adrenaline or excitement or the heat (who knows?), none of us were hungry for dinner.

So, total cost for me at one day of awesomeness: $51 (Plus, an extra $28.75 for me, because I paid for SS4BC's ticket and parking for her birthday)

Seriously, not bad. We would have paid around that much per person just for tickets at the gate!

The downside of living in a region of the country where the park isn't open year round (curse you WINTER!) is that it's PACKED as all hell in the Summer. And Six Flags capitalizes on this by offering "Flash Passes". For a tiny fee of $159, you and a friend can skip ahead to the front of the lines for the big roller coasters at scheduled times. If money were no object (dare to dream), I would have been on that like screams on a little girl, but I was totally okay NOT spending an extra $159 to wait in line for about an hour. Really, on one line was totally horrible in the grand scheme of things. And judging by the facts that (1) I can't talk today, (2) my face is sunburned, and (3) I'm totally sore, I'd say that we had an awesome time!

Now to relax today enjoying a lazy day with SS4BC and recuperate from all that fun.

UGH. Procrastination SUX!

It's the 11th. August has totally been a huge suck on the motivation department, and I was late paying bills this month. Along with that, I have yet to balance my checkbook or enter any of said bills into my Quicken. I'm sitting here tonight sweating on my couch with the Quicken open on my PC, but I have yet to do it.

What's dragging me down? Why can't I just do it? I think that part of me is worried about what the balance will be at the end. But I really shouldn't.

UGH. I need to find some motivation. I'm dying to turn on the air conditioning, but I don't think I should.

It's just too damn hot!!

Another bit of retarded banking, but hopefully the last of it.

I was in a foul mood yesterday anyway, so I went down to the bank to try yet again to change the PIN on my new debit card that I didn't want anyway.

I told my friend that works at the bank that I wanted to change my PIN, and she had me take a seat and wait for someone to help me. Luckily, D (the overall bank manager) was back from vacation, so she helped me instead of E (who is just a useless sack of hair). Anyway, D sat me down and cooed over how cool my new card looked, and I made a point of telling her that my friend made me get a new card. Well, D did the EXACT same thing that E did on Friday with the computer. And she said, "There. That should do it."

I tried my PIN with my friend the teller. Nope. New PIN didn't work... AGAIN! So, D tells me that I can change my PIN at the ATM! She waits in line with me for a few minutes, and then lets me loose when she's tired of waiting. After the three people in front of me in line finished their business, I walked up to the ATM, and 30 seconds later, I had changed my own PIN!

WTF? What's the point of even having people working in the bank? And you're seriously telling me that I could have done that myself all along WITHOUT all the retarded drama!

Thank you Bank of America for your EXCELLENT customer service! (please note the sarcasm)

Okay. So, I caved.

Mother nature had it in for me today. It is so frakking hot today; I feel like I'm going to die.

Everything was fine at work and in the car on the way home. Of course, those places have air conditioning. I got home and opened the door of my apartment to be hit with balls deep heat, right in the face. I looked at the thermostat... 90oF! And that's a minimum, because the little red needle was pegged all the way up! I laid down on the bed for a while in front of the fan, but that didn't help. So, I tried my old college remedy for when we had that heat wave/black out and the temps were over 110oF in the shade. I took a hot shower, which (in theory) would cool me off when I got out of the steam by evaporating the water off my body. Well, it worked... for about five minutes. Then, I was just sweaty again.

So, I did what I had sworn never to do. I turned on the central air conditioning. I closed the windows and made sure that the vents were uncovered (meaning, I had to move my bed). I positioned my two window fans over the vents in the living room to help move the cooler air around more. But damn! It is just too damn hot!

I'm hoping that this doesn't kill my electric bill for August, and I'm hoping that this doesn't become a regular thing. My plan is to run the air conditioning just long enough to get the heat out of here and have it cooler outside. Then, I can go back to normal box-fan only mode at night. But I'm worried that the heat will just continue, and I'll have to run the a/c all the time so the cat won't melt to death during the day.

Swagbucks + Amazon.com = AWESOME!

A while back, SS4BC suggested to me that I sign up for Swagbucks. Basically, you get swagbucks randomly for searching the internet using their search engine, and then, you can trade in your swagbucks for prizes. The awesomest prize on there is a $5 Amazon.com gift card.

So, I had decided that I was going to save up my swagbucks for LOST Season 5. Well, then I got sucked into Eureka, and I realized that I had enough swagbucks for $30 in Amazon gift cards. This, coupled with the fact that (a) LOST Season 5 doesn't come out until December, (b) I have had a craving for new DVDs, and (c) I would buy Eureka DVDs anyway, I decided to spend my first gift cards on Eureka DVDs.

I traded in my swagbucks for gift cards, and I discovered the downside of buying things this way (for me anyway). The conversion from swagbucks to gift cards is soooooo sloooowwwwwww, which makes the whole instant gratification of internet shopping kind of a moot point. BUT, this is good for me, because it gave me a week or so (6-10 business days, officially) to mull over my plans and decide if this is really the way to go.

Anyway, there are three Eureka sets currently available on Amazon. I was all set to buy some when over the course of about 12 hours, one went up in price by about $10! I was pissed. (Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for two gift cards to clear.) Tonight, on a whim, I decided to look again. And lo and behold, it's back down to $14.49 (instead of $25). So, I caved. I bought DVDs.

So, here's how it breaks down...

Eureka Season 1: $25.99
Eureka Season 3: $14.49
Shipping: $0.00 (YAY!)
TOTAL: $40.48
Gift Cards: $20.00
Total Paid: $20.48

I'm perfectly okay with this. Between the two sets of DVDs, there are 21 episodes. This works out to paying $0.98 per episode. I will definitely get $0.98 of enjoyment from the DVDs. If I was paying to download per episode, websites (or iTunes) would charge roughly $2 or $3 per episode. Not that I would actually pay that much, but I'm sure that people do.

Anyway, back in the day (ie. four months ago), I would have become obsessed with the show, and just bought all the DVDs at whatever Amazon price they were at the moment without gift cards, and I probably would have paid extra for the two-day shipping (an extra $12; I looked it up just now). So, I just saved myself $67 over the "me" of the past.

Now, I can relax, my need for DVDs satiated. I know that I'll buy season 2 at some point, but it was the most expensive of the three sets of DVDs. But I know now that I can wait until I have more swag bucks and gift cards.

So, yes, thank you SS4BC for the inspiration, swagbucks for the gift cards, and Amazon for working with swagbucks!

Still more retarded banking drama.

Yesterday, I got my new debit card in the mail. YAY!

So, today, I went down to the bank to get them to change my PIN number. I walk in and tell the teller that I want to change my PIN number. And my friend (not the teller helping me) says, "Oh, E will have to help you with that."

Instantly, I groan in my head, because E is the same chick that screwed up this whole debit card thing last week. I didn't have high hopes for this working, but seriously, how hard could it be to change a PIN?

Anyway, I sit down with E, and she starts doing things on the computer. She has me enter my desired PIN and confirm my desired PIN. Everything seems okay. I see the pop up on her screen that says "New PIN accepted". Cool. She clicks "OK", and an error message pops up. "That's odd," she says. And she does the exact same set of key strokes and menu options as the first time. I reenter and rereenter my new PIN. She clicks OK, and again, error message.

"Well, let's just go see if this worked," she says. And we walk back out to the teller line. She has me swipe my card and use the new PIN. NOPE. Doesn't work. So, we go back to her desk in the back, and she does the same things again. Finally, she calls the help desk, and she walks the person through what she did (I guess since she gave the person on the phone her IP address that the help desk person could see what was happening on E's computer screen), which means that I have to enter the PIN AGAIN. She gets the error again. And now, E is convinced that the type of card that I signed up for (that I didn't really want anyway) doesn't exist any more. But I tell her that it MUST exist, because I got the card in the mail YESTERDAY.

Now, it's been about 20 minutes, and E is confused as to why my card isn't appearing in her book of cards. So she looks it up online, which takes her several tries to find the right website. My confidence in my bank has plummeted to ZERO at this point. The person on the phone (yes, she's still on the phone) has no idea what's happening (so much for the help desk). And E tells me that I may just have to use the PIN assigned by the bank. WTF?? If I cared to use the assigned PIN, I wouldn't have come in to request to change it!

So, she asks the person on the phone if it's a problem that my account was opened in a different state. I never got exactly what the answer was, but I did get the impression that that wasn't the problem. Anyway, after about 30 minutes in the back room at the bank, the consensus between E and the help desk was that I had to use my card with the assigned PIN a few times and then come back to the bank to try to change the PIN again.

OH MY GOD! What the hell is wrong with these people? First, you tell me I can keep my same card number. Then you tell me I can't because you accidentally canceled my debit card. I have to live for a week with no debit card, and now you're telling me that I can't change my PIN until I use my card! FUCK YOU BANK!

I know for a fact that a friend of mine (married to my friend that works a this shitty bank) changed the PIN on his new debit card before he even got the PIN that was assigned by the bank! How is this possible?

So, I'm going to use my card a couple of times this weekend WITH the assigned PIN, and then I'm going to the bank first thing on Monday and trying to change my PIN again. If they can't do it, I'm going to fucking close my accounts there. What the hell? Banking should NOT be so damn retarded!

At long last!

Finally, after eons a week of waiting, I have my new debit card. All that's left is go to the bank tomorrow and change my PIN.

Grr. There has just been way too much stress and drama surrounding my bank account this week. It's been exhausting, and I'm so glad that it's almost over.

Pimping My Brother

At last!

I've been telling my brother that he needs to share his writing with the world. He's just told me that he's started up his very own blog: Ephram delMoniq: a creative blog with a dark imagination.

Personally, I'm really looking forward to reading and rereading his stuff. So, feel free to check him out. I'm sure that he'd appreciate the readers.

Retarded banking update

So, I get a little thing in the mail today from the bank. I always get nervous when I get mail from the bank. I open it up and it's a notice of my NEW PIN NUMBER! Frak! That's something that I never even considered. Of course, thinking about it now, it makes sense: new card = new PIN. But seriously? I can't learn a new PIN number. I'm going to have to go the bank when I get this stupid new card and get them to change my PIN number. But seriously. I'm so annoyed by all this completely unnecessary drama just because I wanted my friend to just shut the hell up about changing my card.

UGH.

Banking Retardedness

I don't know how I end up in these situations, but I do (too frequently for my taste). So, a friend of mine works at my bank, which just happens to be in the building where I work. She's also the wife of a buddy of mine with whom I work, so we all carpool (which is great, because parking is ridiculously expensive). Anyway, I like to get cash at the tellers in the bank instead of the ATM, because the ATM is retarded, and I hate using $20 bills to buy lunch from the carts at work. Lately, every time I go in to get money, she's needling me to convert my account to this special type of account that will let the bank give to a charity of my choice (of course she's pushing the HRC on me, but it's probably what I would choose for myself anyway).

Well, the other day, she was super annoying and persistent about it. So, to get her to shut the fuck up about it, I said sure do it. Thinking that she could just do it right there at the teller window and it wouldn't take long (that's the impression she gave, anyway). Well, she sends me to the back to deal with someone else (which I HATE). And I give her my info and tell her what I "want". Then my friend comes back in the back and sees that this other woman is having a problem with it. So, she says that they have all my info and I can go back to work.

A few hours later, I get a text that basically says "Don't hate me". UGH. Turns out, that the other woman was retarded, and my friend promised me something that they couldn't do (keep my same debit card number). So, she canceled my debit card and issued me a new one. Ordinarily, NOT a huge problem, but annoying. However, I had been in the process of making plans with a friend of mine from thousands of miles away to meet up after work in the city. Hmm....can't buy train tickets without my debit card! Turns out that plans with my other friend fell through.

But seriously! You can't just cancel someone's debit card without their permission! So, until I get the new card in the mail, I have to be cash only. It's not that bad, but I don't like the thought of NOT having the card, just in case. It's just extra maddening, because this is all for something that I didn't even really want. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving to charity, and the HRC is a great cause. But this is way too much stress and hassle that I didn't want.

Hopefully, my new debit card will be here soon.

I've been a bad boy.

I should feel bad, and I kinda do. But I didn't realize it was the end of the month until Friday. I did realize that I got paid (thank goodness for emails from the bank when I get direct deposits). This reminded me to go get a money order for rent. I bad been thinking of trying the bill pay thing, but I didn't want to risk it cutting it this close. Anyway, I ended up watching Heroes on Hulu (the episodes expired on Aug 1, so I had to finish the season) and chatting online with friends. So, no bills got paid. Saturday, I went to work, and then I had dinner and Lost night with friends. I got home too late to worry about the bills. So today, I had to go to work again, but I took all my bill stuff with me so I could pay them and mail them and not have to worry about it. Well, as I was leaving work this afternoon, I realized that I left all the bill stuff in my desk and didn't pay a goddammed thing! UGH.

I've not been this late with my bills in a long time. So, I'm going to have to remember to pay them all in the morning with my coffee at work. I've just been feeling so lost and weird all week, so I'm not entirely surprised that the end of month caught me by surprise. But damn. I was trying to be so good.

To top this off, I had plans to write several new blog posts about things that have been going on, but I never actually got around to it. I'm not exactly tired tonight, so I may try to get some things written out tonight. But ugh. I'm annoyed with myself.