I stopped subscribing to the local newspaper back in June. I missed the Sunday newspaper at first. There used to be a lot to read in the Sunday paper, plus all the coupons and sales flyers were fun to sort through. But now I don’t even miss that.
I get my news on the TV late news and on the internet throughout the day. I don’t even miss the newspaper anymore.
Last week the price of gas was dropping and I was just getting comfortable with my budget. Then when I went to the Thornton’s this morning to buy gas I saw that the price has gone up over 20 cents a gallon. What caused this sudden jump? Why are we having to pay so much for gas again?
My bank has a collections department that calls and hounds you to death if your checking account gets overdrawn. I told the guy that I’m working with a bank clerk to get the problem straight but that’s not good enough for them. They are sticking overdraft charges on my account every three days that it shows overdrawn. It’s $25 each three days. Holy crap. That can’t be legal can it? This overdraft isn’t even my fault and now they want to hit me with almost $300 in fees. I don’t know how this will ever work out.
Another big problem with my bank has popped. I had a big fight with them about a year ago and pretty much stopped going there other than letting my minimum balance sit in my checking account so it sat there for free.
Well, I had an urgent need to raise some cash and there wasn’t enough in that account without making an additional deposit. I dug out an old money order and all the loose cash I could find to make a deposit, which they took without issue. So I wrote a check against my balance and expected to leave about $50 in the account.
That was two weeks and not a peep from my bank about any issues, but when I logged in to my online account to verify that the check cleared, I was horrified to find a negative balance on the account. Evidently, the bank returned the money order for some reason and has been charging me for overdraft fees for 2 weeks. I have a huge negative balance and am totally freaked out.
I can’t imagine why the money order would be returned and charged back to my account. That makes no sense to me at all. I thought a money order was the same as cash. WTF?
If you don’t have your own Uncle Jay, you can borrow the Uncle Jay from the Chicago Tribune. He’s a great guy! He takes all the news and breaks it down to a very basic level and makes it entertaining, too. If you don’t understand today’s news, let Uncle Jay explain it to you. Every Monday there is a 3 minute video published, ‘”Helping Small Minds Understand Big News!”