broke AND deaf!

I just had to throw this one out there based on some of my Facebook feedback!!

I don’t try to hide it, I admit it, I’m deaf, well half-deaf really in one ear – the right one.  It can work to my advantage when I’m driving in a car with a “Chatty Cathy” who just wants to talk.  Truth be told, I really can’t hear what she is saying!! lol  With the windows open or the radio on, I do believe I become all-deaf which is perfectly fine because “Chatty Cathy” will most likely repeat the story 4 more times throughout the day!  Again, not complaining just trying to set the “mood…”

I decided to visit my new grandson the other night.  I just can’t get enough of that little bugger!!  I admit I’m not a dog lover, but I don’t dislike dogs either.  I entered their house and Deuce, a black lab (I think) who has been my son’s pet for many years greeted me like he always does, jumping and wanting attention.  So as to not “leave him out” I pet him and moved on to our little guy.  Deuce settled in on the floor not far from where I was holding the baby.  I began to hear Deuce “panting heavily.”  Of course I didn’t want to upset or alarm the new mom, so I didn’t say anything at first.  Finally I asked if Deuce was OK.  She looked at me as if I had two heads and said yes, of course.  OK little mama I was just asking!  The sound kept getting louder and again I asked if the dog was going to be OK and suggested that maybe he had to go out.

Since she had been in labor over 24 hours a few days earlier, all I could think was that she was losing her hearing now too, even though I never heard of hearing loss due to heavy labor!  God bless this girl - I never heard her say a bad word about anyone but I thought maybe she was getting a little testy!!  In her politeness, she got up and let the dog out, who only barked to come back in.  He plopped himself this time on the kitchen, hardwood floor.  Oh for goodness sakes!!  The breathing was getting louder and louder.  I thought I was going to have to call doggie 911.  I was trying to be a “nice” mother-in-law but I just had to ask again “do you hear that dog breathing?”  And again she said, “no, not really.” 

My heart was palpitating!  How was I going to rescue this dog from having a heart attack while visiting a newborn and his mom who was still sore from having a baby?!  Suddenly we heard a very faint but steady beep which made this polite new mom begin to laugh her butt off.  What the heck was that sound and why was she laughing.  Here I was trying to be nice and she was getting all ignorant or crazy or something.  “It was the dryer,” she said!  What?  The noise you heard, the heavy breathing, it was the dryer!  Well at least she does my son’s laundry! lol

Are YOU talking to ME?

I finally locate a BP Gas Station just in the nick of time too!  My gas tank was flashing and it was reading 10 miles to empty!!  When you are in the Season of BROKE that happens quite frequently!  Luckily I spotted a BP just nine miles down the road – today was turning into a good day after all.  $3.45 per gallon – not so bad if you are paying cash.  The credit price was about $3.65 per gallon - I may be BROKE but I am not stupid!

OH NO! I started to panic.  What was a gift card considered?  Cash, right?  One would think so but how was I going to relate that message to the gas guy who obviously spoke little to no English. 

For some odd reason my gas tank is on the passengers side of my car.  For an even odder reason, gas guys can’t seem to find their way to the driver’s side of the car where my window is down to ask how they could help me.  So I am forced, every time, to put the passenger’s window down and request my gas.  This time though, (who knows why!!!) this guy decides to stand by my back passenger window and “peek” his head around to just inside my car.  That’s where the confusion began!!  I admit he had no idea that was my “bad ear” and I couldn’t hear very well out of it.

“I have a gas card,” I said.  He mumbled – I didn’t know what he was saying.  In fact, I looked all around the gas station thinking he might have been talking to someone else!  “I paid cash for this card, so it’s cash right?”  He mumbled some more, still not making eye contact with me.  “You are not going to charge me the credit card price right?”  Now I am frantically pointing out the words “gift card” on my card.  Keep in mind that I am only seeing about 1/16^th of his face.  Why he was “hiding” behind my car I will never know.  Am I that intimidating?? lol - He startled the heck out of me when he reached in and grabbed the card, pointed to the dollar amount on the card and mumbled something that sounded like $25 dollars?? All of it?  Since I don’t speak “mumble” I had no idea that he was asking me if I wanted to use the whole $25 amount at that time!  He should have just said that from the start when he properly approached me on the driver’s side of the car!!

I can’t be sure, but I think I made him nervous because he handed me back the card with the receipt and scurried off inside the gas guy building like it was on fire!!

If, by now, if you are agreeing with just some of this craziness, wait until tomorrow when you hear…Relatives say the dumbest things!!  Oh this is going to be a good one for sure!!  Smile at everyone you see today.  It will give them food for thought and may even give you a reason to comment on my blog!!

Did I mention that I can’t make this stuff up??!! 

Couponing for ME? Who would have thought!

When you find yourself in The Season of BROKE, you are forced to cut corners.  Lucky for me, TLC launched its all new TV Show Extreme Couponing!  IF I could just save enough on my grocery bill, I might have enough money to get a mani/pedi, cut and color or finally get that moisturizer & mascara I so desperately need!  (Thank goodness I found a Clinique Days this weekend!!)  Back to couponing…I was thinking long-term and if I really perfected this awesome technique, I may even be able to get the cleaning lady back!  Now if you are a *NUITA type, please STOP reading because you are just NOT going to get this!!

I vowed early on that I would never become that person who bought 100 boxes of cereal or 75 bottles of salad dressing, but like I said I am an over-achiever and I can be a little competitive.  I don’t have that much in my stockpile yet but it is growing that’s for sure!

So the local Shop Rite was offering the deal of a lifetime!  Buy $75 worth of “said” products and receive a $25 gift card for gas to one of four gas stations – Shell, Gulf, Hess or BP.  Yes they are the most expensive gas stations around here, but free is free after all and I set my plan in motion!!  I would typically buy some of the products on the list anyway, just not all at one time, and as an extra added bonus, I had coupons for many of them.

So I turned the $75 order into only $50 and I also received a “coupon” for the gas card!  I was smiling from ear to ear.  I even made my husband stop cutting the grass when I got home to give me a high five!  Having him stop cutting the grass is BIG NEWS around here – nothing gets him to stop doing that!

Needless to say I was very excited and read and reread the rules so I did just the right thing.  I went to Shop Rite yesterday, picked out a gas card (of course they ONLY had the two MOST expensive ones left by that point) and went to the checkout, as instructed.  You might have thought I was asking for a FREE trip to Tahiti for goodness sakes.  The young cashier was clueless and HAD to call for a supervisor.  She did not look happy that she had to be taken away from what she was doing but she looked at me, looked at the card and my receipt and said “you’re too late.  That offer ended yesterday.”  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  I believe is the phrase that just blurted out of my mouth.  Upon closer look, she pushed a couple buttons, never saying a word and “put it through.”  I guess I am good to go I asked and the cashier said “I guess so” and the supervisor walked away.

Did I mention that I can’t make this stuff up??!!  Wait until you hear what happened when I went to the “said” BP Gas Station.

* Nose Up In The Air

You can't make this stuff up!!

Last “dis” on this bank I promise, at least for a while.  I swear I can’t make this stuff up!!!!

Since I have a direct selling business I get quite a few checks written to me.  Usually it’s not a big deal, but when I am trying to close out the end of the month, I sometimes have to get a bit creative!  After all, I am an over-achiever and strive to WIN/EARN every contest that is dangled in front of me! 

I asked the bank “guru” what the policy was for depositing checks – is there a hold on them?  “The funds will be available the next day in most cases,” she replied.  That was promising!  What I discovered was bankers have their OWN language!  What they say and what they mean are two different things!!  Local checks clear the next day UNLESS one of your checks comes in against it on that overnight shift THEN they charge a $5 per check uncollected fee.  When you find yourself in THE SEASON OF BROKE, $5 per check can be HUGE!  That’s not all!!  IF the checks were deposited on Friday after 2, then they don’t get credited to my account until Tuesday morning – SILLY ME!!!  Of course THAT was the policy!  Any moron would know that, right?!

Oh it gets even better…I do a few odd jobs here and there and get paid with company checks.  IF the check is hand-written however and it is not CLEAR to the teller that it is a paycheck, there can be up to a 5 DAY HOLD on that check!  Who knew it was my DUTY to tell the teller that it was a paycheck and not just some business rewarding me for being pretty!

There’s even more!!  With all these fees and fines, I really found myself scraping to GET IT TOGETHER.  I decided to cash in some of the quarters I was saving for a rainy day.  Let’s face it, casinos don’t take quarters any more anyway – just sayin’ –and during THE SEASON OF BROKE there are few trips if any to the casino these days anyway (even though it’s a great stress-reliever!!) in my opinion.

Who knew that I would ask THE IMPOSSIBLE?  Coin wrappers?  Do you have any I asked?  The deer in the headlight look was staring back at me.  I stared back and said, “You know, the things you wrap up change in?”  Thankfully for her I had my sunglasses on because what she would have seen was a combination of rage and hysterical laughter – ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  Is the only thing that I could say but didn’t, so I held it in even though it was killing me.  OH she said, you have to buy those at WalMart!!  REALLY???  If I am asking to cash in coins, you senseless, heartless, bank employee, do you think, even for one second, that I could or even would afford to buy them at WalMart?  BUT I kept my cool and my silence.  That seemed to not only make her nervous but it also brought back her memory!!  She suddenly “remembered” that they did indeed have coin wrappers there if she would just sashay herself from the drive-in window and go look!

Needless to say she gave me what I wanted in the end.  And that my friends is what prompted me to begin this BLOG.  I kid you not.  It’s all true.  And to think that these are the same institutions that our wonderful government felt it necessary to bail out.  The solution seems much simpler than that to me.  Fire all those nimrods at the banks and give the jobs to the smart, common sense folks who know that the heck IS going on in this world!  Stop relying on computers and start putting the HEART back in customer service.  Take the iPods and Smart Phones out of your ears – open up your eyes and take notice of the community around you.  There are so many who are in THE SEASON OF BROKE and just a little compassion can go a long way.  Just think how much better off we all would be!!

PS – the NUITA (nose up in the air types) need not come back to this BLOG because now you are probably even more clueless than those bank tellers!!

Thanks for the courtesy...

I find myself stopping at the local grocery store where it’s easy to write a check.  Those clerks don’t prejudge and could care less who I am or what my financial status is!  It is a great way to satisfy two needs – much-needed groceries and a few extra dollars (for gas or to pay a bill) they allow you to cash out.  Most grocery store checks do not clear for up to 5-10 days – plenty of time for my paychecks to roll in…or sometimes not.

Now I am no angel and I do admit this has been happening for a few years now from time to time.  I refer to it as “survival mode” some of those nose up in the air types call it careless, pathetic, sick or even stupid!  Hey it is what it is and I own it!!

I wrote the checks and watched the balance.  I thought I had it all figured out this time around.  I just knew exactly when these checks would clear from the grocery store.  If I was mailing a check to pay a bill, I could pretty accurately judge when it would arrive and clear on their end.  What I didn’t count on last week were capable competent employees in the grocery store accounting office or worse yet at the cell phone company.  So ONE check arrived at my bank quicker than anticipated and all hell broke loose!

Check #1 was $201 (and I really thought I had an extra day for that one – (PLENTY of time as I was expecting a paycheck the next day), check #2 was $140 and check #3 was $72.  All three checks arrived at the same exact time (according to the bank records).  But those “nice” heartless moguls stated that the larger check always comes in first and gets posted first.  How nice of them to do that for me, as a courtesy I might add!  “Can’t you switch the order of the checks,” I asked, “then only 1 would bounce – the other two would be paid and I would only be charged $35 in fees instead of $35 for EACH of the three checks!”  “Oh no” she replied, “that’s just not how the system works.  We do it like this to protect.”  “PROTECT WHO,” I asked?  “We do it to protect YOU just in case the larger check was important – like your mortgage or something.”

Seriously??  Thankfully my doctor prescribed xanax three years ago because I was definitely going to need one after that response!

…these clerks just get smarter and smarter…hear what happens when I ask for quarter wrappers…

…it’s not that I don’t work these days.  My jobs are all commissioned based (no more 9-5 or 9-10 p.m. for this girl!!) and I sometimes have to wait a bit to get paid.  While my checks “are in the mail”, payable to me, I still have to find a way to live and pay the bills.  So I am officially in the SEASON OF BROKE!!

Like many who have recently lost their job, whose benefits ran out or who have just been faced with an unexpected turn of events, I find myself more and more “juggling” my money or what used to be “my” money.  While I was getting back on my feet from the second financial blow – unemployment benefits running out – I was forced to play the “check float” game again.  It is very similar to playing the lottery.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Unlike the lottery however, when you lose, you lose BIG and have to face humiliation and sometimes even depression.  It only lasts for a few days however because the checks that are owed to you eventually arrive!

Oh those that have never been in a financial crunch simply won’t understand this blog.  My assumption is that these days, more people than not can relate to what I am about to share.  Simply being honest with creditors does not work anymore.  Asking the bank to help when your checks get there before your deposit is a thing of the past.  And the word “friendly” can never again be associated with any type of lending institution.  Worse yet the people who work for these greedy moguls have become more and more heartless.

You can’t make this stuff up!  This is life when you find yourself in a predicament with finances.  And to you pompous, nose up in the air types, be careful how high you place that nose.  You may just be the next one writing on this issue!

Come back and visit.  You won’t believe what my bank just said…again!