06.29.08
How my roommate accidentally blew this month’s rent
I didn’t want to write this post.
And I have my roommate’s permission to write it.
As some of you know, last weekend I was running security for a convention in New Jersey. Since I had most of the rent money for July budgeted for, but was still a bit tight, I had asked my ex and best friend, Marc, to pay for my hotel room on his card, and promised him I would pay him back from my next paycheck, on July 3rd. He agreed.
On Tuesday, my roommate told me that the money for her share of the rent would be cleared by her bank on Thursday. I said okay, prepared the check to send to her mother (long story, not really relevant here), and things were fine. Thursday, my roommate told me her check wouldn’t clear until Saturday. I asked if she had called the bank and she said that she had, and that when she pointed out that they had sent her a notice that the money would be clear on Thursday, she said they would investigate.
On Friday, I was hanging out online when she got home from work. She told me that the notice from the bank that came in the mail that day was that a check she had deposited was returned as “Altered/Fictitious.” Since her paychecks are automatically deposited, I asked what check she was talking about. She said she has received a check for some surveys she was supposed to take. I asked more questions, and finally dragged out of her that she had received a check for almost $5,000 with a letter from something called “Money & Shopping”. it claimed that the funds were to pay her for an assignment, and that the first part of the assignment was an evaluation of Moneygram, where she was to take the money and deposit it, then go to a Moneygram location and transfer the bulk of the money to “Pamela (Your Last Name), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”
Needless to say, this was a scam, and if my roommate had been thinking, she would have seen the many clues: The check was from a construction company in Atlanta, Georgia. The stamp on the original envelope was from Canada. The destination of the money was fictitious. Lots of things.
However, she didn’t. And the money she was planning to hand me for her share of the July rent was from this check. And she had taken about $2,000 out before the bank stopped the check and put a hold on her account. So I have to pay the July rent on my own, and I have to put off returning the hotel money to Marc until July 9th. Not a huge dealy, but a problem in that money is a hot button for Marc and to him this is just one more time I am breaking my word. And the fact that I have not broken my word to him in over a year cuts no ice. And Marc is not completely wrong, because there were many years where my word around money wasn’t really good.
When I realized exactly how screwed up this was, I talked to a lawyer friend, who suggested that my roommate call not only her bank, but the police, the FBI, and the three credit reporting agencies. Marc added that she should also contact the Postal Inspectors because this constitutes mail fraud. She has called the bank, and is going there Tuesday. The police have been called, and she has to call them back on Monday, and talk to the Detective Bureau. She also has to call the Postal Inspectors on Monday, and find out what they need her to do, and all three credit agencies.
She has proposed that, once this mess is straightened out, she sees if her employer will allow her to deposit her share of the rent directly into my checking account. I am not happy about this, but since I will be the one writing the rent checks as of August, it may be necessary so that I can keep a roof over my head, let alone hers. Her original suggestion had been that her whole paycheck be deposited into my account, and I give her an allowance, so to speak , but I refused that, since I don’t really want to become her keeper.
The interesting thing is that, while it inconveniences me no end, it still is only a bump on my horizon, as opposed to the boulder it is on hers. It means that, until the bank gives her back access to her funds, we’ll be living on my summer pay, which slows down my plans, but it by no means brings my plans to a halt.
I will keep this blog updated on what happens over this; partly because of my desire to be accountable, and partly as a warning to anyone who might even vaguely be tempted to take up one of these scam offers.
Sadly, however, I suspect there will always be people who look for shortucts to get out of messes they got themselves into in the first place.
Sacrifice or Choice?
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been reading NoCreditNeeded’s series on “33 Days and 33 Ways to Save Money and Reduce Debt”.
In one of the response posts to his post on Sacrifice, Single Ma at Fabulous Financials gives her take here
I was thinking about what she said, and to some point I disagree.
For example, she notes that: “When I was a young teenage mother and cash was tight, I had to make sacrifices to create a better life for my child. I didn’t have a choice. It was something I had to do. Some nights I ate cereal for dinner in order to afford diapers. Some days, I had to miss work resulting in less pay because I had to stay home with a sick child. Some months I didn’t pay the electric bill because I needed money for transportation to work/school. They were sacrifices. I didn’t have a choice.” Without casting aspersion on her actions, since there are far too many days I eat mac and cheese to afford paying bills, these are still conscious choices that she is making. Granted they are the choices that consensus reality tells us are the “right” things to do in that situation, but they are still choices and she still had the option of choosing not to do so, even if the results would not have been to her liking.
Further along she notes that: “My point is, the difference between a sacrifice and a choice is your ability to maintain no matter which path you take. Sacrifices are painful and necessary. Choices are willful and selective decisions.” Well, yes, choices are willful and selective decisions. But choosing to do something “painful and necessary” rather than to not do anything is still making a choice, no matter how you slice it.
For the record, though: Whether we do without as a conscious choice, or because we “can’t afford” to do otherwise, we choose all the time. Remember, even doing nothing is still a choice.
Do you make sacrifices or choices, and why? How does how you frame the action affect your reaction to having to do it?
Anomoly, Anomoly….
I did note that, from time to time, things like knitting, jewellery-making, and books would grace these pages….
The lovely bevsyarncrazy over at plurk.com pointed me to this really neat article at Scienceline called“Move Over String Theory, It’s Yarn’s Turn”. Very enjoyable, and you should check it out even if you aren’t a crafter!
Recommendation
The marvelous NCN of No Credit Needed did a series of posts a little under a year ago called “33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt.” The anchor post for the series is here. I highly recommend taking the time to read the original posts, the comments, and the posts that were written by others with this series as inspiration.
Sometimes, we forget the simple things
I was cleaning out my mailboxes this morning, and came across this entry from Mary Hunt’s Debt-Proof Living:
“Myth: Buying things on sale is a great way to save money. Truth: Buying things on sale is a way to spend less money, but it has absolutely nothing to do with saving money unless you actually stop by the bank and deposit the amount you did not spend into your savings account!”
Yeah, she’s right.
What other things are so simple we forget them on our road to financial recovery?
