25 January 2011

in which I make financial professionals despair

I lost my checkbook, sometime in the last month, and I couldn't pay my student loan. (All of my payments each month are paid automatically except the one from Citibank. I do not trust The Student Loan Corporation because they have, in the past, charged me late fees for months during which I paid on time, and they never have credited that money back to me, so handwritten checks it is.)

I finally went to the bank that holds my student loan money (thank you, dear over-priced law school of mine), and asked for some checks. I explained that I moved and then I traveled for the holidays and somewhere in all of that, I lost my checkbook. "I can't pay my student loans because I can't find the checkbook, and I keep looking, but I just don't know where it is, and I have to pay the loans."

"Do you think you'll be able to find it?" the bank person asked, in a tone that said, Do we need to worry about id theft? "Is it in a box somewhere, or is it really gone?"

"I think I have it somewhere," I said. "I just don't know where. I mean, I've had it since I moved. I just lost it again in the last few weeks."

To fill the silence while he printed the new checks, I babbled. "I would have made my student loan payment with my debit card, but I had some problems with id theft last year and I got the new card, but I don't think I activated it."

"Yeeesss," he said, looking at the screen. "You've had that card since November, but it hasn't been activated."

"Yeah," I said, cheerfully, standing up, "I can't find the new card, either. It's probably with the checkbook."

He literally sank his head in his hands in despair.

But I'm sure it was not just me. It was probably the culmination of all the financially hopelessly disorganized people he sees every day.

And I am not quite as incompetent as I look, because when I got home to make myself some lunch (I haven't gotten around to making a new set of beans-and-rice dishes for the week), I had a moment of brilliance and walked directly over to my checkbook.

The new debit card wasn't with it, though. I still don't know where that sucker is.

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