Bit of a scare... thank goodness for savings

Well, short-term savings.

I am so grateful that David and I have a checking account and two separate savings accounts. One is out of sight and therefore, out of my mind. (Plus, it doesn't hurt that I purposefully misplaced the CUEcard.) And we don't have any debt, besides our ridiculously huge students loans, but that is "good" debt. We chopped up the credit card, but didn't cancel it so we still have the history, just not the temptation.

It's comforting to know that we have several safety nets of our own before we have to rely on relatives, the government, or the church. We've made several smart decisions that outweigh the "young and stupid" decisions that we occasionally make.

I am grateful for:

• My husband who is more than willing to work at a job he does not want to pursue as his career to support us. (and who also has a considerable work experience.)
  
• Subsidized housing that charges us rent based on our income.
• Free piles and the fact that young college women are approximately my size and have good taste.
• End of school year clean-outs that make it possible for me to stock up on cleaning supplies for a year. (no joke.)
  
• Food storage that is conveniently hidden under our less stable furniture.
  

All this is brought on by a scary event of overdrawing our checking unknowingly. (It started when the money for August Term was pulled out of the checking and not the savings.) We fixed it after getting pinged a couple times by the bank. I had a small freak-out, but we had the savings and I knew it. (The majority of the freak-out was embarrassment with a hint of mortification. Given my previous freak-outs on smaller matters, this wasn't all that bad.)

We actually had the money from savings that we could immediately put into our account and stop this painful pinging. So what might have been a disaster was only a minor inconvenience and a great lesson.

I have made a large red 'Finances" binder. Let's hope that I'll pay more attention to it than I have to the poor checking account. Too bad our debit card didn't make loud squalling noises when it dipped near zero, or I would have given it the attention it deserved earlier. (It was determined that I couldn't kill a baby because they make noises of distress when they are in distress. Bread yeast, on the other hand, is omniously quiet as it expires as was our card.)

I decided to share this because I felt that it was better to admit that we made a mistake and caught it before it was too heinous than sit quietly pretending that David and I are perfect people who never have trouble of any kind. We do; this is it and we are still doing well.

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