Once you really get into the idea of saving money and paying off your debts, something miraculous tends to happen. You really start to *enjoy* it.
There can be something immensely satisfying about balancing your check book and seeing everything line up perfectly. There can be something rewarding about properly budgeting your money and knowing that each debtor has been paid in full and on time. It’s a source from which you can draw a great deal of pride. So, imagine the horror you might feel if that pride and security were shattered by the almost zombie-like resurrection of ancient charges that you *thought* were put to bed years ago?
That’s exactly what has been happening to some consumers lately, and it serves as a grim reminder for the rest of us that we need to be especially diligent with every single charge or debit that is placed on our accounts. After all, a debit for $1.00 is perfectly fine when we have $100.00 in our accounts – we’ve only lost $1.00. However, if that same $1.00 charge were to hit when we had only $0.99 in our account, then it would be a disaster – we’d lose a lot more than $1.00, we’d lose large overdraft fees with little recourse to getting them back.
In Seattle recently, a number of borrowers were faced with this harsh fact. It seem that, overnight, they were hit by a number of accrued charges from the last two years, all stemming from a particular restaurant. The restaurant, it seems, was a place that they had visited many times over the past two years, never realizing that the debits were not properly going through. When, after two years, all the debits were run through at once, many people were shocked. They hadn’t noticed what was happening, and suddenly they were hit with a huge lump sum that in many cases riddled their accounts with overdraft fees and put them firmly into the negative. More than anything, this emphasizes the importance of periodically balancing all of your accounts to make sure that your debits and expenditures match your receipts.
In many cases, however, the customers hit by these charges (especially those whose debit cards rather than credit cards were hit) claim that they made the payments all along, and are in fact being erroneously double-charged. This demonstrates another important lesson: have some type of record-keeping system in place to monitor what you’ve paid, even if it’s something as seemingly insignificant as a trip to a fast food restaurant. In the end, if you’re able to point back at that log and show proof that you’re innocent of erroneous charges, then it might just be the difference between a healthy account and one brought to ruin by simple error.
The bottom line is that your credit rating and the status of your bank accounts are central to the quality of your life. The whole reason you want to get out of debt is so that you can improve your standing in life. Therefore, every risk that you take with your accounts is a risk that you’re taking with your life!
Why take such a risk? Adopt the healthy practice of monitoring your purchases and keeping neat records of your account activity going back at least a few years. It may seem overkill now, but it could save you some major headaches in the future, and is an excellent way to increase your overall money-consciousness to boot.
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