After managing to avoid a huge crisis I’m feeling incredibly lucky.
Last night while Fil was getting ready for bed she realized that we had yet to send out the payment for my credit card bill. I knew that the bill was always due on the 13th so I immediately began to panic (thinking that it was already the 12th). This was a huge scare because we’d been hit with past due and overdraft fees way too many times (we paid a bill 13 minutes past the payment posting deadline and they hit us with way too many fees, so Fil yelled at them and they withdrew the charges) and it’s no fun.
I scrambled all day trying to figure out what the hold up was with my pay check. I’m probably getting it in the mail today, so paying my credit card bill with our checking account was a no go. So I begged my dad to loan me the $15 and paid with my bank account under his name.
A crisis avoided, for sure. Especially since it turns out the bill was due today, the 12th, not tomorrow, the 13th.
Whew.
It brings a huge issue into focus for me.
When I was paid twice a month (and given money by the parents twice a month) we planned bills in two runs – at the beginning of the month we paid everything up to the 15th. After the 15th everything else got paid. It was easier because bills due at later dates were already taken care of when their due dates came up. We never really worried about being late on our bills, only a few times were we shocked by a bill’s due date (like the first time our electric bill was due right after the 15th and we had to drive it to the utilities drop box…) and only late once.
It’s a relief to get back to the way things were when Fil was working. She was paid weekly, as well, and our mind set was to take things as they came rather than horde bills and watch the sums pile up. Nothing creates anxiety like lingering cable and credit card bills. I like going back to the way things were, but it’s a stranger to us, since it’s been a year since we’ve lived like that.
But that takes a lot of adjusting. We’ve been living in this two-week-at-a-time mind frame for almost a year now that it’s hard to change the way we do things. I know we’ll be able to do this, pay our bills and be okay, but it makes me worried that once we make this adjustment, are we going to have to, once again, redefine the way we handle our finances when I leave NYL at the end of August?
Who can say.
(Pee Ess. I found one sure way to keep me up in the morning and that is free games online.. at least the ones that have made it through the ridiculously strict web nanny programme. Mmm, word vine.)
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