Beware the Pitfalls of Being Eager in Your Payments
After spending the morning doing a bit of organizing around the house, I thought I’d check out my finances and see if there was anything I could organize there. I saw I had $550 in my chequing account, which surprised me, but I remembered I hadn’t paid one of my credit cards yet, so I thought that must have been it. I also realized I hadn’t yet withdrawn my Money Jar money, so I pulled out a pad of paper & pen, and did some math to figure out how much of the $200 I hadn’t spent yet. Number in hand, I transfered that amount to my other account and was about to log out when a thought struck me:
My car payment!
That’s $519, and it comes out on the 8th. Oh crap! *smacks head against keyboard of computer*
I had taken out enough money to put me below the $519 amount, and I didn’t have enough room on my line of credit to top the chequing account back up. Double crap. So I went over to my TV savings fund and pulled the money out of there. No problemo, since there’s no way I’m going to be buying a new TV any time soon, and I figured the money could be put to better use.
Phew, crisis averted.
Then I looked over at my line of credit, and saw that I was $33.17 over the limit. Thankfully my bank doesn’t charge me for going over on that account, but still, I found it strange that: a) I’d gone over, and b) that the bank let me go over. I clicked over to the account to see what was going on, and saw that a cheque I’d written last week to cover my rent increase next month went through. (I had to update my deposit amount.) Dang it! And the pisser of this one is the fact the top-up wasn’t due till Feb. 1! (I found the paper work again this morning when I was organizing the pile of papers on my desk.) Son of a #$%%^#!
Have any of you ever gotten eager in your finances and then had to scramble to cover them?
