Money Woes

All my adult life I have kept vigilant track of credit card statements, reconciling them each month. About a year ago, I decided to start using the debit card attached to my P*yp*l account (keep out the googlers!) for all my miscellaneous spending. I fund a certain amount at the start of the month and that's all I have! When it's gone, it's gone. It's worked pretty well to keep me honest. The other nice thing about it is that I don't reconcile the charges in Quicken like I do everything else. But I do keep close watch on the charges. And that close watch has paid off! Tonight, for the first time in my entire financial life, I have encountered a fraudulant charge on my card for a little over $50 from a local mexican food restaurant. We last went there over 2 months ago and my credit card is safely in my wallet. Hmmmm..... makes me wonder! There are no other fraudulant charges. Which brings out the bad thing of using a debit card: That's 50 bucks I can't use until someone fixes the problem. Still, considering that this is the first time anything like this has happened to me, it's not too bad. I'm a little nervous about getting it fixed. P*ypal is not the easiest service to work with on things like this I've heard. Not like a regular bank anyway. I'm hoping that a simple phone call to the manager tomorrow will be enough to clear things up.

Along those same lines, last month I bought a phone off ebay. I was a little hesitant to buy it because the guy only had less than 20 feedbacks. Everything went smoothly until the FedEx tracking number suddenly dropped off the system. When I called to find out what happened, they said the package had been damaged and that the shipper would have to intiate the claim. Well, this guy basically told me to go pound sand. He told me to get my money back from FedEx, goodbye, see ya later. In short, I filed a claim against him and got most of my money back tonight. Of course, he felt compelled to send me nasty emails telling me what a bad ebayer I am. Yeah, whatever.

So in one night I got almost $100 in and $50 out. I guess I'm still ahead of the game!