The Red Camera That Put Me In The Red

We’ve all heard the expression about the straw that broke the camels back.  Obviously, a piece of straw is very light, but if you keep piling straw onto a camel, it will eventually be more than he can carry.

I can pinpoint the event that really gave me my wake up call and sent me into the most stressful month I can remember.

In September, my daughter was about to celebrate her birthday.  I was struggling to pay the bills, so I was worrying about every dollar.  She really wanted a red Kodak digital camera.  I waited until her actual birthday to buy it, which was on a Friday (my payday).  I had to work night shift on Thursday night, so I went right after work in the morning.  I went straight to Wal-Mart after work, since it was the only place in town that’s open at 7 AM that might possibly have the camera she wanted.  I called my banks automated service before going into the store to check my account balance and it sounded pretty good.  I figured I’d use my debit card and pay for the camera out of my checking account and avoid adding any charges to a credit card.

Somewhere in the middle of my poor record keeping and my lack of sleep from night shift, I had failed to realize I had mailed my mortgage payment in a few days earlier and failed to subtract it from my balance.

I got home and decided to submit 3 credit card payments that were going to be due that week, still thinking I had enough to cover them.

When the mortgage payment got to the bank later that day, the bank honored my check since I have an account with overdraft protection.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that check put my balance in the negative and they charged me $15.00 for an overdraft fee.

When I finally realized my mistake, I started doing the math and determined that not only did I have those three credit card payments scheduled, but we also had two checks that hadn’t cleared the bank yet.  One was only for $17.00 (a check our daughter took to school to order a school t-shirt) and another loan payment.  I checked my credit card accounts to see if I could take a cash advance on one of my cards.  I know that’s what people refer to as robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I was desperate.  I did have an account with $200.00 available for a cash advance.  With that $200.00 and the money in my wallet, I’d have enough to cover the three credit cards and the $17.00 t-shirt check, but not the loan payment.  All I could do is hope that payment was the last to arrive at the bank and I’d only have one other $15.00 overdraft fee.

Do you think I could get that lucky?  NO!  The next day the loan payment got there first and brought my balance down to almost nothing again.  Then one of the credit card payments went through and took me into the red again and got me charged an additional $15.00 fee.  I thought about going online to see if I could stop the other payments, but then realized the credit card companies would each charge me a $39.00 late fee and most likely raise my interest rates if I missed the payment deadline.  At that point, I realized I was better off paying the $15.00 overdraft fee, since the bank was still honoring the payments.

Next the check for the t-shirt went through and yet another $15.00 was added, making it a $32.00 shirt.

Then the last credit card payment got to the bank and IT WAS REJECTED!  They also added the fifth $15.00 fee of the week.  Apparently, in the fine print of the overdraft account, it says it’s up to the bank whether they honor the payments with overdraft protection and I guess four was enough for them- I don’t blame them.

I wish I HAD charged that camera to my credit card now!  My bank account would have looked a lot better without those $65.00 in fees, plus I was now in default on a credit card.

You’ll see it gets worse, when I post my next article “The Effects Of The Missed Payment”.