A Balancing Act...

...or should I say Balancing Accomplishment, or better yet Balancing Milestone - I balanced my checkbook today. Actually, I started on it a few days ago. I sat down then for about 3 or 4 hours with it and started to rewrite the whole thing. Why? Well, it seems that when I was in Tucson it did not get filled in as it should have. I sat down with it again today and was busy with it for 6 1/2 hours nonstop except once or twice to answer the phone. When I was done it was off by $75.93. I found that one tonight after about another 1/2 hour. We paid a bill twice, my wife by check and me by EFT but it only got entered once. It is amazing I found. While in Tucson I kept details of all the bills I paid by EFT, I sent emails to my wife and called her with the info to input into the checkbook. I kept the details in a file called 'bills' on my thumb drive. Wouldn't you know that when I looked for that folder tonight it was not there. Beats me how it disappeared but I was miffed. Luckily I also had a folder for my ATT bills and the only one in there was the one that was paid twice. So when I looked at that file, there it was, the extra payment. Sometimes dumb luck hits us on the head.

I have to tell you that when I arrived home to find only a couple of grand in the checkbook - when I knew it should have contained at least about $9 0r 10 thousand dollars - I was pissed and I let everyone know it. People three or four blocks away probably heard me. Besides that there was another thing to be p-o'd about. I had opened a new account in December (the one in question) because another account had not balanced correctly and was off in our favor by about 2 or 3 grand. We knew the money in there was legitimately ours because we sought of stash money in the account sometimes by not writing in deposits. Leaves us a windfall if there is ever an emergency. The thing is we just lost track of the right balance and had let it go that way over a year. So I stopped using that account for a couple of months to be certain every check had cleared. I opened a new one to use while it was in essence shut down. The new one was only opened in December 2008, and it was already fouled up big time by the end of my 4 months in Tucson. What a mess; but it got taken care of after about 10 or 11 hours of work at it.

It sure pays to stay on top of things like that, and my wife and I plan to do so from now on. Really folks, all kidding aside, my wife is usually better at this than am I, by a long shot.

Oh, before I forget, lest you think I am rolling in dough - I am not. Most of the money in the newest account is either owed to my government credit card account for my trip, or is money I have on the side for a car. It will soon be time to sell the 1996 Ford Taurus and get a new one. We bought the Taurus new way back in 1996 or maybe it was late 95 (whenever the new cars are out which I think is in the actual year prior to the model year for at least a few months). So I guess we have had it at least 13 years, maybe 14 years. Yes we tend to hang onto our cars for quite the long while before we get another. It took forever to save the approximate 8 grand I have set aside for a down payment and if I can convince my wife to cough up her money from her private account (imagine a husband having a private account - yeah right) then maybe we can buy a new one outright. One can hope.

All the best,
Glenn B