Interesting Trend...

I'm seeing an interesting trend when I'm out shopping. Perhaps I'm just being more observant of other people's spending habits, but I'm noticing more and more people are paying with cash or debit cards. I think this must mean that more people are being money conscious and living within their means - in the fact that they are not paying by credit card and then neglecting to pay the credit card bill off in full. Hubby and I are the complete opposite of the cash system. We will pay with our credit cards for everything - in order to get the Air Mile rewards - and we do pay off all our credit card bills each month. As I've stated before, we redeem the Air Miles here in Canada for Shell Gas Certificates - I haven't had to pay for gas for my SUV for almost 2 years now and we've redeemed Air Miles for a large portion of our Renovation Supplies.

The Thursday From Hell...

Last week was certainly not the best - we received notice on Thursday evening that our tenant who signed a year's lease back in April mailed us a letter saying that she loves the condo, but after taking a University Course this past Summer (she is 88 years old - yes you read that correctly) she now realizes that her "Spiritual Needs" are not being met. Whatever the heck that means... So not only is she not honoring the year contract she signed, but she's only giving us 2 weeks notice to find another renter. This is not an easy time to rent in the year and we turned down other people, because she agreed to a year's lease. Oh - and she wants her damage deposit back. Also Thursday night, hubby was working overtime, so he calls after 9:00 pm and says he'll be home even later, because he's just realizing that he doesn't have his wallet, he had it in the morning, because he put a cheque into the bank, so he's going to look around his work place again and check the parking lot where he works. He gets home and no wallet. He remembers putting his wallet in his coat pocket at the bank and is thinking that maybe it fell out. So it's now after 11:00 pm and the bank closes at 8:00 pm, so thinking someone might have found it and turned it into Customer Service, we call the 1-800 # to see if there are any notes on our accounts that the wallet was found - they check and say no, but to check with the bank branch in the morning. I told him he should phone the credit card companies, but he wants to wait until the morning to avoid all the hassle if his wallet just at the bank. So against, my better judgement, he waits. The next morning, hubby calls the bank and no, noone turned in a wallet. So he proceeds calling all the credit card companies to let them know - seems some one must have it - because it seems on Thursday all his cards were charged up - fast food places, cabs, liquor stores, convenience stores, etc and the biggest was at a camera store for almost $600. This is definitely a stressful situation. The Credit Card Companies, say that we won't be responsible - but, they have to send him forms and he has to complete them and then send them back and then the Fraud Dept at the Card Companies start dealing with it. In the mean time, as luck would have it, the credit card statements are all starting their new billing cycle, so all the charges that happened on the day it went missing is on the statement that is due in 2 weeks. We always pay all of our bills in full and on time and I doubt that the "fraud' dept will have time to reverse all the charges before our balance is due. So now, I'm super stressed, because I pay the bills and the fraudulent charges amount to approx $1,000. Oh, and of course all the cash that was in the wallet is gone also.

I'm not feeling very positive ...

Check Credit Card Bills for mistakes

We always make it a habit of checking our credit card bill charges, on line, every couple of days, to make sure that no extra charges show up, that shouldn't be there. By doing this, over the last couple of years, we have caught approximately $400 in charges at various times that shouldn't have been charged to us and out of this $400, about $200 were things we had legitimately bought - but were accidently charged twice for the same thing. So it pays to double check.