Coffee heat rising

Banking

Crabby as a cat…

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Grrrrrrrr! This is one of those can’t touch it without causing it to go T-W-A-A-A–N-G!-!-! days.

Mostly I’ve been too damn lazy to touch anything, thank God. Didn’t make it out for the wee-hours doggy-walk: sucked in to the hilariously lurid news reporting on our national politics. Sat glued to the digital screen until it was way too hot to take the dogs (or me) outside.

This: it’s just too good. Too, too, TOO good:

Uh huh… 😀 Our role model

Except really, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Not a chance!

And how lovely: if enough weren’t enough, my touchpad has stopped working. I’ll have to go get the mouse, put in new batteries, and find something that it can squirchle around on. Never. A. Fuckin’. Dull. Moment.

Naturally, that thing doesn’t work, either. So….I guess I’m without a computer just now.

Well…nooo…lookee here. Now the damn touchpad lash-up is working. Sort of. In a half-assed way. Better than not at all. I guess.

Oh, god!!!! I have SO had it!

After diddling the entire morning away, I decided I should shift around and get something done. How’s about I deposit this stack of checks from Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff?

It’s a task I tend to put off until the stack gets so high it can no longer be ignored. I hate depositing checks electronically. It is a ditzy hassle, every damn inch of the damn way.

So I ditz around and ditz around and ditz around: scan the checks, crop the checks, store the checks to disk as jpegs under distinctive filenames, make a record of each check and its amount and where it comes from so as to be able to explain to WonderAccountant what on earth those random cryptic figures represent and then upload the front of each check and upload the back of each check and print out the receipt and staple each check to its receipt and file it away in a CE Desk file folder and what a gigantic fuckin PITA!!!!!!!!!

Almost as much of a PITA as driving through the wackshit traffic to the credit union, halfway to San Diego, and depositing them in person.

Today I got the best of both fucking experiences.

When I uploaded the first check to the credit union’s site, I got back a message reminding me that it’s a crime to deposit the same check twice, and no, they would not accept any more checks from me.

WTF?

No, it was NOT a duplicate check! The thing had been sitting on my desk for the past two weeks, waiting for the whole pile to accrue. If I’d already deposited it…well, cf “print out the receipt and staple etc. etc. et-endless-cetera”!

Furious, I now gathered the mound of checks and set out through the murderous heat, humidity, and traffic for the credit union. There, hearing this story, the teller remarked, “Oh, yeah. That happens…sometimes it thinks checks are duplicates.”

Oh, thank you so much. I just LOVE having my time wasted and my patience tried!

So, after this, to cut down on the aggravation factor I guess I’ll just have to drive all incoming paper checks up to the credit union in person. What a fuckin’ waste of gasoline and time!! About the best I can do to ameliorate that is plan to coordinate with Costco trips, and do my Costco shopping in the store up on the I-17, which is not my least favorite outlet, but still is far from my favorite.

Pisseth me off.

But I was already crabby, for reasons that are unclear. The weather, I expect. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s allergenic as hell. My ears are plugged like drums, I can’t sing without choking on gook in my throat, and believe me, nothing constructive is getting done.

About all I’m good for is watching our Honored Leader twist in the breeze.

Speaking of the which, it looks like a helluva storm is blowing in…here as it is blowing into Washington. Towering clouds all around, closing in from every direction.

I give up. I’m going to take a nap.

Why I Bank at a Credit Union…

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A fine Day from Hell in every way: at five in the morning, temp on the back porch in the 90s and air so thick you need a spoon to breathe it. It rained during the night, so that did cool things off. But. Ugh.

First order of the day’s business, once business establishments opened, was to run up to the credit union and try to find out why all my accounts are scrambled.

Ugh, indeed!

You’ll recall that to reset my grip on the finances, I decided to use Costco cash cards and my existing credit union cookie-jar accounts to create an “envelope method” approach to budgeting. Purchases at Costco would stop when the current cash-card was used up ($300, though I may drop that to $200). And (as usual) set-asides for 2019 taxes & insurance, for incoming Medicare and Medigap reimbursements, and for an emergency fund would be doled out, monthly, among three credit-union savings accounts.

These accounts have always existed. You can make as many savings accounts as you choose at my credit union, plus your checking account. So I’ve always had an account called “Emergency Savings,” one called “Mayo” (for the medical reimbursements), and one called “T&I” (for tax & insurance).

At the time I make this decision, I figure I’ll live on my 401(k)’s Required Minimum Drawdown (or try to), and transfer all the Social Security payments into “Emergency Savings,” an account whose balance had dwindled to a little over five dollars. To accomplish this, I get on the phone and talk with a credit union’s CSR. I ask this person how I can arrange to auto-transfer the gummint’s monthly electronic deposits from checking to the account branded “emergency savings.”  SS payments come in unpredictably, roughly depending on what cycle the bureaucrats use to send them to you. Mine arrive sometime between the first and about the 12th of the month. I explain that I’d like this money set aside to build an emergency fund and I’d like not to have to do that manually whenever the SSA gets around to sending the money. She says she will make it so.

Good. Days go by.

Now I do some more budgeteering — and I realize that there’s no way I can possibly live on the RMD alone. While I probably can avoid suctioning up all the SS income, I’m going to need at least $500 a month of it. Probably more. When I go online to arrange an automatic transfer of $530/month, I’m astonished to discover the “Mayo” savings account has disappeared, and the chunk of dough set aside in there to pay the Mayo’s next bill has disappeared with it.

The money to cover medical bills has been moved over into my regular savings account (which I’d dubbed “Emergency Savings,” but which has been renamed “Share Savings”).

When I go to double-check the scheduled transfer of the SS funds, I can find exactly no trace of it.

So. You know better. I know better. We all know better: Never do your banking over the phone.

This meant I had to drive to the credit union, collar a manager or assistant manager, and find out WTF is going on.

  1. What happened to the scheduled transfer of the monthly Social Security deposit into Emergency Savings?
  2. If it didn’t get arranged, why not?
  3. If it did get arranged, why doesn’t it show as a scheduled transfer? Where did the transfer that was supposedly arranged go? Is that monthly deposit going to disappear into limbo?
  4. If it did not get arranged, can we arrange it? Can we be certain that we’re not duplicating a scheduled transfer that doesn’t show even though it  supposedly was made?
  5. Can we arrange an auto transfer on the 20th of each month from Emergency Savings (holding the SS deposits) to checking, enough to make ends meet?

Oh, those lucky people! We need to start a U-Tube Video series: Here She Comes Again!

So I get up there and discover…

  1. If a scheduled transfer was made from the CU’s environs instead of by you, you can’t see it in the online “scheduled transfer” function. (Naturally! Why did I ask?)
  2. He doesn’t have a clue what happened to the “Mayo” savings account.
  3. He suggests it would be simpler to transfer the difference between the total SS monthly deposit and the amount I need  into the “Emergency Savings” account. Keep whatever is needed in checking and transfer the rest to the savings account.
  4. He will rename “Emergency Savings” as “Mayo,” leaving the amount for the medical bills in that account rather than transferring them around.
  5. And he will create a new “Emergency Savings” account to hold a little over half of incoming Social Security deposits, leaving the rest in checking to cover cash flow. We hope.

Sounds OK, right? He says what I see at home is different from what he says on his monitor. He suggests I send him a screenshot, after I get back to the Funny Farm, so we can check that all this is working.

And so, off I go to retrace the 8.2 miles of my steps back to the house: it required driving 16.4 miles and about 90 minutes of my time to accomplish this.

A check-up revealed that we had it almost right. We ended up with…

  • a checking account  (Balance: one year’s worth of RMD plus a few bucks)
  • a savings account (“Emergency Savings, 00.” Unfunded)
  • a savings account, (“Taxes & Insurance, 60.” $8408)
  • a savings account (“Taxes and Insurance, 61.”  $538.95)

So what has happened is that the set-aside account to cover medical bills was redundantly named “taxes and insurance” rather than “Mayo.” But at least we have an account into which to stash Medigap and Medicare payments.

Gaaaahhhhhh! So I had to get on the email, send him the desired secreenshot, and ask him to rename account 61 in such a way that I can distinguish it from the real tax-&-insurance “envelope” at a glance.

Jeez.

Long as I’m wrestling with money online, I decide to check to see how much AMEX thinks I owe it as of this minute, to be sure it jibes with the $130 I believe I’ve charged up.

Well. No. AMEX’s website says I owe that fine outfit $682!!!!!!

WTF??????? Have they not received the seven-something I sent them when the last statement came in?

Go back to the credit union’s site and find that they have indeed paid last month’s bill, as directed. AMEX should have received the money on or about the 5th…four days ago.

Get a chat rep online at the AMEX site. After endless waiting and screwing around with typing out the question and explaining that it was paid electronically and should have been received, I learned that yea verily it had been received. It would take another 24 to 48 hours  before that fact registered on their website.

Ducky.

Q. So, I ask: how much have I charged up on the card in the current billing cycle — that is, how much do you see owing right now?

A. About $126.

That’s four bucks less than my records say I’ve charged — probably because this card applies an automatic cash kickback to eligible transactions. But at least their conception of reality is now close to my conception of reality.

What a bitch of a morning! And early afternoon.

Coulda been worse, though. Just imagine if all those cookie-jar shenanigans had been happening at, say, Wells Fargo.

Needing to pick up some one-pound bags of chlorine shock treatment this morning, I serendipitously discovered a Leslie’s about six blocks from the campus (where the CU office resides). And even more serendipitously, right next door to the thing was a Fry’s grocery store….where I could buy another breakfast melon, some grapes, and a few tomatoes to restock the larder.

And at the Leslie’s, I discovered that eight pounds worth of shock treatment in bags costs about $14 less than the same amount of the same stuff dispensed in bulk. Jeez. Such a deal.

 

 

When Electronic Payment…Isn’t!

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Yesterday I discovered something that I had NO IDEA even existed. Did you realize that under some circumstances, when you set up an electronic payment through your credit union’s or bank’s BillPay function, the bank may send a check — that’s right, a paper check — instead of direct-depositing the payment electronically?

WHY one would want a function like this escapes comprehension. If you wanted to pay your bills with checks that take eight to ten days(!!) to be delivered, you’d get out your checkbook, write a check, tuck it in an envelope, address and stamp the envelope, and drop the thing in the mail. It defeats the whole purpose of electronic BillPay.

Oh, well. There it is.

And there it was, lurking in my credit union’s online pages.

So now I go to deposit a slew of checks others have mailed to me. By serendipity, I happen to glance at the list of creditors that I routinely pay online and notice  SIXTEEN-HUNDRED DOLLARS outstanding to Visa. Not only that, but last month’s bill, which should have been paid days ago, has not been paid, and Visa wants me to pony up $25 right this minute to avoid a late charge.

I call the credit union’s Visa vendor and ask WTF. The very charming young recent college graduate who answers the phone cannot figure it out, any better than I can, but she urges me to pay the twenty-five bucks. She says it can take eight to ten days for an e-payment to arrive. This, I reflect, seems to defeat another purpose: the purpose of specifying the date on which the bill is to be paid. In this case, I had set the electronic payment to hit Visa’s vaults a couple days before the due date.

We both study the system, but neither of us is really getting a grip on what is going on there and why Visa hasn’t been paid. She remarks that a check was sent. I say no check was sent: I arranged to pay electronically, as I always do. She says sometimes the CU will send a check instead of an electronic payment, and it says right there on the page that it takes eight to ten days to deliver a check. I say I never heard of such a thing, and what would cause them to do that? Neither of us can figure out what would trigger such a procedure. She seems to think it happens at random.

Holy mackerel!!! think I.

I jump into a pair of shoes, grab the car keys and a printout, and FLY out the door, headed for the credit union.

There I encounter yet another excellent young person. One thing you have to say about banking with a credit union: you DO get great customer service. And you get to meet quite a few admirable young men and women.

I explain the whole rigamarole again. New CSR agrees that the payment got made by check. She suggests that if Visa tries to gouge me for a late payment, I should come back, in person (ah, yes: another 40-minute drive!!), remind them of this side show, and they will forgive the gouge.

Just what I need to do with my time.

So I drive through the rush-hour traffic back to the Funny Farm, still puzzled. WHY would the CU randomly decide to write a check for an electronic payment? I most certainly DID NOT ask to have that happen. Making it happen requires a three-step hoop jump, and each step is very obscure.

First, you have to go to the section of your account — three pages into the website — to find the list of payments scheduled for the near future.

Next, you have to click on the yellow-pencil icon beside a current payment-in-waiting to allow yourself to “edit” the payment.

Then, you have to select “pay with check,” in the slot next to “type,” five lines down.

No way could you accidentally do this with a slip of the fingers. So I’m DEAD SURE whatever happened here was not a senior moment.

Whatever did happen, it surpasses annoying. It cost an hour or more of my time, driving through the homicidal rush-hour traffic to get not very much done. It may cost me a late-payment gouge and a ding on my credit report. And it got me freaking upset, no doubt pushing up the blood pressure. Again.

What is do be done about it? That also escapes me. If the CU can randomly decide, out of the blue, to convert an electronic payment to a snail-mail check payment, then that means I either have to schedule EVERY payment about 10 days in advance of the due date (which I can’t really afford to do: that will drain my checking account into the overdraft range before long), or else go online within a few days of EVERY scheduled payment to be sure it’s going to reach the creditor on time.

One thing’s for sure: I’m not giving Visa $25 out of this month’s living expenses as “protection” money against an unfair gouge. So that pretty much guarantees having to schlep back up to the credit union in another couple weeks. I’ll deal with that when it happens.

But it doesn’t make me happy…

How Bank Transfers Really Work

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The first thing you need to know about a bank wire transfer is that it is a safe, credible, and efficient way of instantly transferring money from point A to point B. For many folks, wire transfers are the first choice for making international payments. It is quite fascinating how bank transfers work. Typically, a wire transfer sends money from one credit union to another, or one bank to another using the Fedwire network or the SWIFT network.

The Fedwire network was previously the Federal Reserve Wire Network. It is a funds transfer system from the US Federal Reserve that allows electronic funds transfers between thousands of banks. The SWIFT network is otherwise known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It is a payment network with 10,000 financial institutions across over 200 countries. Most SWIFT members are comprised of banks and financial institutions. All SWIFT members must have a valid Banking License.

Quick and Easy Ways to Send Money: Wire Transfers

Typically, a bank wire transfer is one that takes place between banks. Other money transfer methods are also possible, including alternative electronic payments options or money transfer services. For the most part, any funds that are sent from one bank to another are completed within 1-2 business days. In the United States, it is possible to receive money on the same day. All forms of international money transfers take a little longer to complete. There is usually no hold on any money that is deposited into an account via a wire transfer.

The funds move rapidly from one bank to the next, and the recipient will have instant access to the money. Of course, it depends when the wire transfer is submitted. It is possible that a few hours may go by before the receiving bank displays the proceeds from a wire transfer in the recipient’s bank account. If any delays take place, a simple call to the bank can resolve queries about wire transfers.

No Anonymous Wire Transfers in the US and Other Developed Nations

Getting started with a wire transfer requires the submission of specific instructions to the sending bank. This includes the amount that you would like to send, and all details of the recipient’s bank account. Nowadays, wire transfer services can be completed online, but many banks still require authorized signatures and paperwork.

As a recipient of a wire transfer, it is imperative that you provide the sender with accurate details for the transfer. The average fee for receiving an incoming wire is $10, while the average fee for sending a wire transfer is $40. Whenever credit cards are used for wire transfer services, there are additional fees tacked on at a higher rate.

The most cost-effective way to send a wire transfer is directly from a checking account. All wire transfers must be fully regulated, verified, and authorized by the sending and receiving bank. Both parties must have a bank account for a wire transfer to take place. Both parties must have a verifiable address, telephone number and ID.

Anonymous banking is impossible in developed countries like the United States, so all money that moves around is traceable every step of the way. Safety and security are always high on the agenda when sending money to a recipient. IDs must be verified and account numbers checked for accuracy.

Debits, Credits and FX Options

When you are ready to send money abroad, it’s important to understand how international wire payments work. The first bank will debit the sender’s account by the amount which he/she is sending. That same bank will then credit the recipient’s bank account by the same amount. The receiving bank will then credit the recipient’s account with the amount of the wire transfer. In the above example both banks have an agreement in place between them. This makes it easier for them to debit/credit accordingly.

Sometimes, there is no existing agreement between banks and they will have to use a fourth party to broker the agreement. The more middlemen there are, the greater the complexity. Besides SWIFT, there are other payment services such as FPS, Chaps, and Fedwire. The costs of transferring money with different services will vary dramatically. Various Forex exchange services make it much more affordable to transfer money quickly from sender to recipient. It behooves clients to research all options for the best deals.

Wire Transfers Are Reliable Ways to Send and Receive Money

Note that a bank will not process a wire transfer unless the sender has the funds available. In this vein, receiving a wire transfer is usually safe. Once money has been transferred, it is near impossible for the sender to withdraw the wire request. It is in this interim period of transfers being made and funds actually available that fraudsters ply their craft.

Always wait for funds to clear before goods or services are provided, or receipts of payment are made. Besides for bank wire transfers, there are several other forms of money transfer that take place including automated clearing house transfers (ACH), money transfer services, and various third-party providers.

Getting Paid Across the Ocean

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Take a fan and blow it across the Pacific???

A client and I are having a dickens of a time getting money — not much of it, we might add — transferred from the People’s Republic of China to the U.S. of A.

Her university’s accounts payable folks decided they would transfer the $300 owing to me for editing a fairly abstruse article direct from their coffers in Beijing to my coffers in lovely uptown Phoenix. Accordingly, a factotum in their business office asked for my credit union’s ABA SWIFT number.

I call the credit union and ask our factotum, “What is your SWIFT number?”

She says, “It’s the same as the routing number.”

I copy and paste the credit union’s routing number into my statement. Send it off.

Week or so later, client says the university is unable to make the transfer: the SWIFT number is wrong.

Copy, paste, send again.

Now along comes another squawk, this one from an admin from the university’s business office. SWIFT number is wrong. They have one more chance to deposit; if that doesn’t work, they can’t pay.

Lovely. I try to email a query to the credit union, but it won’t go through.

So I abdicate this morning’s networking meeting and drive to the credit union. Explain this to the teller. She hasn’t a clue.

It takes the manager to figure out the problem: the credit union doesn’t have a SWIFT number. A SWIFT number is not the same as a routing number. I point out that his employer’s phone rep said otherwise. He said “we try to train them not to say that.” I said they should try again. 😀

He says the sender needs to use a facilitating bank, which is a large multinational bank such as Wells Fargo, to get the transfer into a smaller financial institution such as a credit union. I say it’s a university in China! He says he’s pretty sure they’ll be doing business with a multinational bank.

So traipsed home after a visit to the Costco in those parts and the Walmart Neighborhood grocery store in my parts, sat down, and sent off an email explaining this. Suggested if they found this impossible, they could just send the money by PayPal.

So far, nothing back from China…but it’s probably been night-time all day here. By tomorrow, I expect, we’ll hear the next act in that drama.

Change of Banking Institution…ABORT! ABORT!

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Okay, so I get this bright idea.

WHEREAS my otherwise excellent credit union is a 40-minute round-trip from the Funny Farm; and

WHEREAS my pretend-employer, a certain Vast Community College District, waited eight (8) months to let us know it had released all of our personal information (including our names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, bank routing numbers, bank account numbers, employment histories going back to our first jobs, and every single college-level course we have taken from freshman year all the way through the Ph.D.) to hackers who put said information up on the Internet for sale to the highest bidder; and

WHEREAS I don’t trust the bastards to direct-deposit to my NEW! checking account without forking the relevant data over to their crook friends;

WHEREAS the last time I tried to deposit checks electronically it took 40 minutes to upload a $20 check from Medicare and I gave up after an hour of trying to upload the community college’s piddling $350 paycheck; and

WHEREAS at $60/hour I can NOT afford that kind of opportunity cost,

THEREFORE I decided to move my checking account from its present home in a local credit union, whose nearest branch is on the way to nothing anyone in their right mind would choose to visit unless they were employed by the Great Desert University, to another local credit union that has a branch right in the middle of my beaten path.

Oh, how grand (thought I) it would be to have an account at the Desert Schools Credit Union, where I could deposit the endless flow of stupid goddamn paper checks as I’m running my regular errands.

Sounds almost reasonable, doesn’t it?

heh heh heh heh heh…. It does, if you’re not living in a Monty Python Show.

You will recall that because of the community-college-district fiasco referenced above (second WHEREAS), I had to put a freeze on all three credit bureau accounts.

Now, you know and I know that to open a bank account these days, you have to subject yourself to a full-blown credit check. Right? For the prospective banker to accomplish this, he/she/it has to be able to access your accounts at one or more (preferably all three) credit bureaus. This makes a certain twisted, Big-Brotherish sense, right?

So, I go over to the Desert Schools Credit Union, explain the deal, and remark that if they want to proceed with this, I’ll need to go home and remove all the freezes on the three credit bureau files. I ask if this is REALLY necessary, though I believe I know the answer.

But apparently they don’t.

In Trip to the Credit Union the First, an exceptionally gorgeous CSR (o god, black curly hair and sapphire blue eyes and the sweetest manly smile: hevvin help us!) says ohhhhhhhh NO problem. No, we don’t need to do a full credit search. All that needs to happen is you give us a phone number where we can reach you and if we can confirm that then we can move ahead.

But alas, His Gorgeousness is not a permanent employee of the branch but is only standing in because the regular dude in that office is out sick. He says I should come back with the amount I would like to deposit in cash and checks and see a young woman we shall call Ms. Greene. On this particular day, I have not shown up with either money nor checks, but these are easy to marshal.

The next day I present myself to Ms. Greene with $3,000 worth of undepositable checks and cash rebates from the Costco Amex. She says that since I don’t have a cell phone, she must call my land line at home to confirm I’m who I say I am.

Reflecting silently on the idiocy of this (THINK about it! 😀 ), I say fine. She says “Call me this afternoon at your convenience and I’ll call you back.”

I do call her; reach her voicemail; she doesn’t call back until after 5:00 p.m., and, she informs me, she has the following day off. Will I come in the day after that (today, Wednesday)? I say OK, and find a place to hide the cash and checks.

Today I show up there and, after another 20- or 30-minute wait, once again she claims her computer doesn’t work. I point out that this is probably because the credit bureaus have a freeze on my (totally unasked-for) accounts. She says she will talk to her manager.

Another 15- or 20-minute wait ensues, during which I am painfully conscious that the bank probably has a camera staring at me, since we are supposed to not be bothered that privacy is a thing of the past.

Finally she drags back into her office, looking like a whipped puppy. Now she says that because I have a freeze on all three credit bureau files, they can’t do anything until I unfreeze them. She looks so woebegone that I refrain from remarking that I’ve now been told not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES that it’s unnecessary for me to do this.

Time to cut my losses.

I drive to my existing credit union, 20 minutes up the freeway, and deposit the cash and checks I’ve been dragging around for the past week or 10 days. I ask the teller if she could please remark to management about the despair caused to at least one customer by the stubbbornness of their online check deposit software. She cheerfully says she’ll pass that report on to the IT department.

Really.

By the time the third meeting with the Desert Schools Credit Union people was wrapping up, I realized none of them could tell their bung from a hole in the ground. Ms. Greene seriously thought I was going to traipse back to her precincts for the FOURTH time, sit around for 20 minutes for the FOURTH time, and take  a FOURTH chance that maybe she could manage to figure out how to open an account for me.

’Bye!

Sometimes other people’s incompetence makes mine look good.

😆