…Grind it up!
This whole accursed business of the college district’s having exposed everyone’s personal finance information to the effing Internet will not go away! Every time I turn around, here’s some new hassle to deal with.
Shut down, per the advice of the credit union’s assistant branch manager, the bank accounts; started new ones. Totalleeeee confused Fidelity, which direct-deposits funds to my cause. A couple hours of figuring out, untangling, explaining, fixing, reinstating follows. Nothing better to do with my time, eh?
Shovel out the office. Find box after box after box after freaking BOX of old checks.
Do I think they’re negotiable? Of course not. Do they look negotiable? Well, sure. Am I going to throw them in the recycling or trash? Don’t think so.
Grind up box after box after freaking BOX of checks, some of them ordered quite recently. Feels like money itself going into the shredder. Annoyed. Pissed. Wanna bite!
Dump three bins of shreddings into the recycling.
Not done: find more old junk that should’ve been dealt with…
• unasked-for credit cards from lenders;
• unasked-for negotiable checks from credit-card merchants;
• plastic, piles of plastic.
Grind up pieces of plastic. How much time is going into this fun experience, anyway?
Financial manager’s admin sends a six-page form to print out, fill out, sign, scan, and send back. Realize she has the wrong auto-transfer and is about to redirect it to…what? If to anywhere, to the wrong account. Argha.
Become confused. Call credit union, get doughty assistant manager on the phone. She becomes confused. We study the online records. We think we have it figured out.
Call financial advisor; explain. Financial advisor explains to admin. We decide nothing will do but what I have to traipse to their office tomorrow after the doctor’s appointment. Bleyagh. Remember to toss the “MCCD Flap” (aptly named) file into the car.
Hook self up to effing blood pressure machine. Systolic: not through the stratosphere, exactly, but reflective of stress. How am I gonna convince this new cardiologist that these spikes are the result of insane fucking pointless goddamn annoying inflicted-on-me-i-didn’t-do-anything-to-bring-this-on stress and not the normal goddamn state of affairs??? Well…except insane goddamn annoying stress IS the normal goddamn state of affairs.
If it looks negotiable, grind it up. Grind it all up!
Just sit and breathe and contemplate the vastness of the universe, and all
will be well.
And let me know 1] if you can do it and 2]if you could –did it work?
Goodness knows the end of 2013 for you must mean 2014 will be a good year.
I’m with ya…”if it was easy anybody could do it”…. Couple of things…First I have always been very paranoid about identity theft even before it became fashionable. And your experience is just adding fuel to the fire….One of my BEST Xmas gifts was a brand new paper shredder from Staples …on deal….with rebate…etc….This thing works like a dream and I have commenced shredding business paperwork, income taxes and receipts…. from the 80’s and 90’s. You’d be surprised at the prices of things…I actually pay less for my landline now than in the 90’s and my electric bills were about the same….the unit cost has went up but our consumption has plummetted. This Energy Star stuff may actually work. As for the shredding…it continues at a measured pace…I then take the shreddings and burn them in the woodstoves for heat….recently an Arctic Blast gaves us temps near 0 with windchills near -10….With these precautions I still don’t feel entirely safe….