Homeowners Insurance – UGH – Part 4

This is STILL a nightmare, going on—what??—six months now? Seven? Eight?

A few weeks back, we got notice that Farm Bureau was cancelling our insurance because we hadn’t paid something (I think it was). Well, we had paid, but they hadn’t received it or the agent had to confirm something or whatever. Whatever it was, we received a cancellation notice. So we got that taken care of and thought we were done. We received the “cancellation rescinded” notice and thought great, we’re REALLY done.

Then we received our mortgage escrow analysis…with a new mortgage payment about $400 more a month! 88| Yeah, turns out they still had the incorrect insurance premium on there. I guess it was confusing since it was our primary residence, then it wasn’t but it was empty, and then we got renters…so actually I should have been surprised if there WEREN’T problems with the statement.

So anyway, since they hadn’t gotten the updated insurance amounts, they said we would have like a $3,000 deficit, which would raise our mortgage payment by like $400. I called to request an escrow REanalysis and they ended up having to call the insurance company to get the correct premium amounts.

So, we did get it figured out, but we still have a shortfall that increases our monthly payment like $150. Which is better than a $400 increase, but still…instead of being in the hole $250 each month like we are now (since we couldn’t rent it for what our actual mortgage was), we will now be in the hole $400 a month.

WHY COULDN’T THE DAMN HOUSE HAVE SOLD? Ugh. XX(

Miscellaneous Facebook Posts

http://www.facebook.com

  • Jennifer Hudson says “Bizarre. I was placing an order on Overstock when an Overstock commercial came on.”
  • Jennifer Hudson is watching The Mole (S1) reruns since I missed it originally.
  • Jennifer Hudson is making brownies and cleaning the house while Owen naps.
  • Jennifer Hudson says “Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, brownies.”
  • Jennifer Hudson is fast forwarding through this week’s American Idol. Two hours in under 20 minutes. Man I love TiVo!
  • Jennifer Hudson was NOT expecting to cry at Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Cute movie.
  • Jennifer Hudson almost just got pooped on, LOL!
  • Jennifer Hudson is pissed about a late charge on AmEx. I never NEVER miss any payments. Ugh.
  • Jennifer Hudson thinks 70 is too warm for a walk. Hoo boy. What happened to me?
  • Jennifer Hudson has a cranky kid today.
  • Jennifer Hudson and Owen just surprised daddy at the gym.
  • Jennifer Hudson has a warm baby sleeping on her chest. /sigh
  • Jennifer Hudson hates it when sites don’t work in Firefox. What kind of programming is that?
  • Jennifer Hudson is about to take babes for a walk since it’s 52 degrees.
  • Jennifer Hudson had a rough night last night.
  • Jennifer Hudson is trying to pick just the right Kozy Carrier.
  • Jennifer Hudson just did 5 minutes on the elliptical. Hey—it’s a start!
  • Jennifer Hudson is enjoying Solitary 3.0.

Gas bill shocker

So we thought our previous bills of about $200 were bad… This month? Just over $300!! >:XX

The summer months had BETTER make up for this, because this is INSANE.

That said, we think they screwed up this month. Why? After last month’s $200+ bill, we turned the heat down, we turned the water heater down, etc. so the bill should have at least been the same, or less.

And then we started thinking…no one came to the door to read the meter! (Normally they wouldn’t come to the door, but since we have the fence up, they can’t just get to it on their own, and last month the guy told me he’d have to come to the door. And no one came.) So we are thinking they just used last month’s figures to extrapolate this month’s figures…and it was way off. So we have to put in call to them. Maybe next month will be WAY cheap!

Homeowners Insurance – UGH – Part 3

I have honestly HAD IT UP TO HERE with homeowner’s insurance. Or maybe it’s Farm Bureau. Or just our local agents.

So Tom just called me to say they need a credit card for some authorization or whatnot. Fine. I assume it will be so we can pay the monthly $250. Fine. We decided we’d rather do that than have the bill sent to the mortgage company, so we don’t have to deal with a refund when the house sells or rents.

So he calls back and says “No! They wanted to charge the entire $3000!” Um, NOT. >:XX

So why the hell would they break it down into a monthly payment (in their email to us), if we are not allowed to make monthly payments? Give me a >:XX break. It’s like these people are telling us as little as humanly possible and then acting surprised when we have questions or are confused by something.

So now we apparently have seven days to get the mortgage company involved and payment made, so we don’t lapse coverage…which we could have been doing ALL THIS TIME had anyone told us we needed to do that.

I hate insurance companies.

Homeowners Insurance – UGH – Part 2

I just want to cry. :'(

So we got the new quote for unoccupied homeowner’s insurance: $2939/year. Yes, THREE THOUSAND >:XX DOLLARS A YEAR.

We called USAA to give them another chance. They don’t even insure unoccupied residences. They said “Here, let us transfer you to one of our referral agents” (or whoever). Once I gave her the address? “I am sorry, we are restricted from insuring anything in that area.”

Of->:XX-course.

Round and round we go, with no one being able to insure us, except those that want to charge an arm and two legs.

This house better sell, because this insurance BS is enough to drive me to drink.

Homeowners Insurance – UGH

Good god, will someone please rent or buy our house?

After dropping USAA because they doubled our rates (they want to get out of the Wind & Hail insurance), we had to research a bunch because apparently NO ONE wants to insure anything in North Carolina due to hurricanes. >:XX We eventually ended up with Farm Bureau who were a little cheaper.

Fast forward to us actually moving, and calling them to let them know. And oh, what a nightmare (I can barely remember all the specifics but basically) first they say they can’t insure us since we live out of state, then they say they can but they have to rewrite the policy, but then they say they can’t insure an empty house and give us 30 days to sell or rent. Then we get a notification that they are going to drop us, effective such and such date—but after we called them, they said they can change the policy for an empty house, but it will likely quadruple the price. >:XX

I told hubby we might have to check back with USAA and their $2600 might now be the best price (if they will even insure an empty house).

This is just such a pain in the ass. I can’t believe we’ve had so much problem with insurance. It’s like we’re the only people in the history of the world that have had an empty house in a separate state that needed insurance.

Insurance costs…YUCK!

Okay, we’ve changed our minds, we are not moving to Michigan. |-|

We called to alert USAA to our change of location, and the prices are INSANE. Our car insurance is TRIPLING from about $800/year to $2400/year. We are guessing it’s due to a high auto theft rate in metro areas, plus all the insurance Michigan requires (as opposed to North Carolina). Still, that’s going to hurt since we expected it to stay about the same…but TRIPLING? 88| OUCH. >:XX

And homeowners? Eeeesh. What a pain in the ass. XX(

We currently have USAA and since we have lived here, our homeowners has been around $800-$1200—which included some line item things like computer, guns, jewelry, and artwork. However, for the upcoming year, USAA just DOUBLED the cost (to $2400/year) because of all the hurricanes (they apparently want to get out of the homeowners insurance business in this area).

Well, we saw the notice but assumed we’d sell the house and not have to worry about it, so didn’t bother researching/changing insurance companies. However, now it’s looking like we might have to rent out our house, which means we’d have to keep homeowners on it, so we are looking at other insurance companies. Nationwide is apparently the only one we’ve found that will insure us in NC hurricane country—other companies pretty much just laughed at us and said NO WAY. >:XX

Well, since we were checking with Nationwide for homeowners coverage, we also asked for a renter’s insurance quote. Tom gave them all the same coverage info that USAA had and gave us a quote for…are you ready??? $1500!! 88| WHAT? >:XX At this time, we have not yet talked to USAA about their cost for renters insurance…but if we have to leave them for homeowners, why stay with them for renters insurance? You see the mess this is? 🙄

We obviously had to reevaluate our contents coverage, because we realized it was $160,000—which we surely don’t have that much in contents. We have no idea how USAA came up with that amount for contents coverage, but there must have been a formula and that’s what was included (i.e. I am sure we didn’t pull it out of the air). Once we re-evaluated, it was more along the lines of $80,000…but then we got an email from USAA saying our renters insurance would be about $350 for the original $160,000 in coverage (Tom hadn’t called them back yet with the revised figures). So, I have no idea why Nationwide was so high at $1500 with the same coverage, and then USAA came back with $350.

It’s all just a huge pain in the butt. Tom is NOT having fun with it—he usually never has to deal with this stuff because I am the one that always takes care of it—but I thought it would be good for him to see what is involved so he doesn’t take it for granted! :> However, this round of research is unfortunately a bit more involved and exasperating than normal, so he’s earning major brownie points.

Random Blather

I am soooooooooo tired of this heat wave. I swear this is the hottest it’s been since we moved here. Too hot to do anything except quickly rush from A/C to A/C. Tom even says it’s hot, and he was in Iraq (although he does admit Iraq was hotter).

I went to get gas yesterday morning because it was still $3.86 (it had been that for, I swear, two weeks) and I knew it was supposed to be going up this week. So I pull in and there is NO unleaded—just mid-grade and premium. Of course, after work, when they had raised the price 12c, there was unleaded. Bastards.

Why must people try to exit a gas station by making a left turn, in rush hour, at an intersection—when they could just as easily have driven through the parking lot and exited 100 yards farther down where there is much less traffic? Instead, they sit there, blocking the exit for those of us exiting and turning right into traffic (in this case, about 10 cars). So I drove the extra 100 yards and was able to turn directly into the flow of traffic and bypass the jerk who was STILL waiting to turn left.

I love my Tivo peeps. I needed help with something that I just couldn’t figure out so I posted about it—and within 10 minutes they started having answers for me.

On same said board, someone started a thread called “What do you look like today?” and I just love it! Well, everyone loves it, actually! People post pics from their cell phones or webcams or whatnot…and it’s very interesting! After posting about 10 pics myself, I noticed that I look pretty much the same in every one—I just either have curly hair or straight hair—so I said I was going to stop posting, but apparently some of the guys like the cleavage that ends up in some of the pics and have requested that I keep posting. :)) So I posted this one for them today:

Depressing thought of the day: I just happened to login to take a look at our mortgage stuff, and after paying every month for coming-up-on three years, we are just SLIGHTLY under the official selling price. GAH!

I can’t wait for our tomatoes to be ready to harvest! We do have a few jalapeño that are ready to pick, and of course I have been harvesting basil all along, but the tomatoes are what I’m jonesing for. Someday, somewhere, I hope to have a REAL garden!

On another gas note, the Prius has been wonderful! We used to use my car for everything—every run to town, every errand, every road trip—and I had to fill up about once a week. Now that we take the Prius everywhere (and I only drive to/from work), I am only filling up about every 2-3 weeks! 😀 So, we traded paying for gas for paying for a new car. I’d say that was a good trade!

Economc Stimulus

This economic stimulus thing irritates me.

We thought we were getting $1200 back (married filing jointly, we fit all the parameters) but we only got $600.

We should be thrilled to have just received $600 in “free money” but instead I am pissed because we only got half of what we expected. And now I have to waste time trying to find/use the “stimulus calculator” to see if we really should be getting the full $1200 back…but I have to wait until I have our 2007 taxes to reference some specific lines (it might have something to do with the net income tax liability—which I have NO idea what that actually is).

4:07pm

Okay, the net income tax liability bit us in the ass. 🙄 Apparently, due tom Tom’s deployment and non-taxable income…we only get $300 per person since we didn’t pay as much taxes. Or something like that.

But we still got free money, so I guess it’s all good.

WAIT. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I hate taxes.

Long story short, the tax guy screwed up.

Short story long, I just thought it was too weird, so we pulled out last year’s taxes to check, and there was a different line filled out than I expected—a 401k contribution.

Now, we have money taken out of Tom’s pay (the military TSP plan), but it’s not technically considered a 401k, so I checked…and discovered that, yep, the preparer had read one of MY forms wrong.

I get a statement from my 401k (an old one from Staples that I no longer contribute to and have yet to switch) and it just lists what the total amount in the account is. And he put THAT amount instead of the ZERO that was in the “current year contribution” box. (I almost didn’t even include that form in the paperwork, but like to keep all the tax stuff in one place.)

So that’s almost $2000 different. 88|

I tried to do the calculations on how exactly that would affect the bottom line, but there were additional forms it also changed, so I gave up.

All I know is we are NOT getting $2000 back. We are both going in tomorrow to redo them.

Stay tuned.

Taxes!

Tom just got ours done. (Yes, it’s nice having him back so he can do these, instead of me having to take time off work to go to base.)

He called me to ask if we itemized last year (yes) and then called again to get our bank account.

Then he called a third time to ask “Did we get screwed on our taxes last year?” I said no, we got a few hundred back (which is what we usually get).

And he finishes “Because we’re getting like two grand back this year!” 88|

I assume it has to do with him being deployed, but we are still going to compare the two years returns tonight, just in case.

But wow, two grand. Hello savings account!!

GRRRRRRR, stupid taxes.

Short version: Oh. My. God. Do I ever hate doing taxes!

Long version: Okay, so for the past few years, we just take all our forms into the tax office on base and sit there for 20 minutes while they do it all for us. For free. And I don’t worry about it, because (1) it’s free and (2) we never get back that much to worry about it (i.e. paying someone $100 to get us back $300).

When I told my friend/coworker this, she thought I was nuts. She says every year, she does her taxes on TurboTax and Taxcut online to see which gives her more, than does it herself online. She said she gets back quite a bit more because she can take her time to go through EVERY little thing. She told me I could probably write off some of my business expenses, which I never do because I don’t really make any money and I don’t really have that many expenses (i.e. I use cable internet, but we’d have it and pay for it even if I didn’t use it for the business—and I buy toners, but I’d buy those anyway, even if I do use more for the business, and besides, it just scares me to deduct for business things because I do not want an audit).

So anway, I thought fine, this year, I will follow her lead and do them online to see where I end up. Which I attempted to do this morning. And 4+ hours later I now have the biggest headache imaginable.

I did TurboTax first (the $80 premier business version, figuring if I was going to do the business deductions, I should at least do that one) and that was quite involved, but I felt good about it because it asked a me a lot of stuff about the business and square footage of my office space and my utilities and it took the percentages and whatnot and figured my deductions. In the end, after an hour of messing with it, I had a measly return of $435—in other words, not too much more than we’d normally get just doing the regular tax return (compared to previous years)…so I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it (I estimated some of the figures, because I wasn’t about to go digging through my checkbook for the past year’s utility payments, etc.).

So then I went over to Taxcut, but only selected the regular (non-business specific) version, and ended up with a refund of $337—only $100 difference for a shitload less work. When I quickly added some business info (granted, not using the business version of the software), they told me that I was not able to take any home office deductions with the info I input!

So then I went back to TurboTax and created a new account just using the basic version (which would cost $30). After another hour, it came in with a return of $345 (vs. the business-edition refund of $435). So, I would save $50 by using a lesser software edition, but would lose $90 in refund (net gain $40). Big whoop. And it seems stupid to go with the Home & Business TurboTax because while it would get me $100 more, I would have to pay $80 to use it. (I didn’t even save my TaxCut info because I just wasn’t thrilled with the site.)

I guess worst case scenario I take my basic forms (i.e. no business stuff) into the base tax office and see what they say my return is. If it is a significant difference from either of the two I did online (say, if I owe money!), I will have to either (1) go more in-depth with the base office and dig out all my business stuff or (2) just push the button on one of the TurboTax versions and deal with it.

This all just seems like a lot of work for very little return (no pun intended). And while I would like to take some home office deductions, I really don’t want to “poke the bear” and take the chance of an audit because really, you’re only supposed to use your home office as your office (100%) and that’s certainly not the case here.

I just don’t understand why this has to be so difficult… But in this case, I think I blame my coworker, LOL (you hear that, Jennie? :>>)—if she hadn’t tried to convince me this was for the best, I would have just taken everything to the tax office like the past five years and been done with it, not knowing anything different.

So, I can’t wait to see what happens…stay tuned.

The Saga About My Raise

The short version is that last Friday, I was told that we would FINALLY discuss my raise/evaluation (which was technically due in November). As I predicted, they were too busy to get to me and other things got in the way—even after John said (around noon) “We haven’t forgotten about you. We will get to it this afternoon.” I know they’re busy, but to me, it sort of implies “We really don’t care that much and your raise isn’t important to us.”

The long version is really long—get ready.

So in the work world, you typically get a review and/or raise on your anniversary, right? You’d agree that’s commonplace? Okay, so on my one-year anniversary (which would be November 2005), nothing happens, nothing is said, no review, no raise, etc. Well, actually, John or Sue might have made some mention, but it was small (so much so that I obviously can’t remember), but I just thought/assumed that after the holidays Sue would get to it. Well, that is right about the time that things got crazy at Coldwell Banker and we were talking about moving and then we did move to the new office (March 2006). STILL nothing had been said about any raise—and we were already four months beyond my anniversary. I was ticked, to say the least. I mean, they kept telling me how great I was and how much they appreciated me—but they apparently couldn’t be bothered to give me a raise. (Now, I know they were busy—even crazy busy at times, especially with the opening of our own office—but you just don’t mess with someone’s raise.)

So one day while John and I were out shopping for the new office, it came up that I hadn’t received a raise. He was surprised, saying that he thought Sue had given me one back in November when it was due. Nope, nada, nothing. At that time, I made the comment that I sort of had an offer to go elsewhere (I hadn’t officially had an offer, but our good friend Roger had suggested that I might come work with him) but that they [John and Sue] had been good to me and I wanted to stay true to them. John appreciated me telling him that, and said he’d have a talk with Sue. A few days later I got that $2.50 raise. Since it was so much, I didn’t really feel I could complain about not having gotten it on/around my anniversary four months prior. (Of course, I still didn’t think it was what I was worth—but honestly, who ever does? 😉 ) But I was still thrilled with the raise.

Fast forward to November 2006, my second anniversary—technically only eight months since my last raise, but remember: my last raise was technically four months late. So, again, no review, no raise, no mention, nothing. Before I left on vacation, John did mention something about it, but of course nothing ever happened and then I was gone for three weeks. Upon my return, nothing was said FOR 2 WEEKS. Finally John brought it up or I mentioned it and he said he was “still working on her” because she feels that raises should now be based on WHEN WE OPENED THE NEW OFFICE, as opposed to WHEN I ACTUALLY STARTED. What the hell? He blathered on about how that’s just the way she thinks and she “just” gave me a raise in March! WHAT THE HELL? was my first thought. I mean, do they not remember that the March raise was technically the PREVIOUS NOVEMBER’S RAISE????? And he said…it’s easier for her to budget if the new girl and me are on the same schedule (which apparently means that the other girl will get her raise two months early, since she started two months after we opened) and something about tax-wise it’s easier and how she just has a hard time thinking about hourly wages because she’s so used to commission.

Needless to say I WAS PISSED. Now, I realize she doesn’t have to give me any raise at all, ever. But with how much they say they love me and how great I am and how they couldn’t live without me, you’d THINK they’d show a little more appreciation. John said something about “How would you feel about $12 an hour?” Yeah, great, that’s another $1.50/hour (a great raise in and of itself), but I think $12 is still SHIT for what I do for them. I joked that I could quit, charge them my regular fees for such things as design, website stuff, etc., and I’d be able to work half as much while making the same amount. They just DO NOT realize how much I do and how hard it would be to find someone who could COMPETENTLY do what I do if I ever left.

To add to this saga, whenever we get together with our friends, the conversation always ends up at real estate…and they ineveitably have to listen to me bitch. And as good friends, Roger (the agent I mentioned above) wants what’s best for me, so he is trying to help me get a raise—and he is the one who pointed out that since we left Coldwell Banker, we have TWICE as many listings (i.e. twice as much work for me)…meaning I should get a raise just for the fact that my workload has at least doubled. Add to that we now belong to three MLS boards (not just our local one) which means an additional 2x the amount of work on 2x the amount of listings as we used to have. The actual saga comes when I mentioned these facts to John, and happened to say that Roger was the one who actually pointed out that information out to me. Well, let’s just say there is NO love lost between the two…so right away, John thinks that Roger is trying to steal me away again and makes a comment to me [to the effect of] “I know how you play us against him.” WHAT? I did that once, and it was not really even playing one against the another—I was being honest and saying that someone else might offer to hire me and left it at that. (That said, I am not sure I could work for a friend—I mean, technically I could, but I would hate to chance ruining our friendship.)

So a week ago Friday I emailed everyone in the office to let them know I was going to be taking Thursday off (when Tom left). It was going to be unpaid, as I have no vacation left. (As a semi sidenote, Wendy and Jennie were completely AGHAST that Sue wasn’t going to give me the time off and I just shrugged it off—technically she doesn’t have to do anything, but I agreed it would have been a nice gesture.) So Wednesday afternoon, I think it was (maybe Tuesday), John emailed me to say that I could use my banked hours for Thursday and then have the remaining time off with pay…and that we’d talk about my raise Friday. Wow, I was completely surprised about the day off, and of course was geeked about my raise.

So, as mentioned earlier, Friday comes and goes with no raise. I did get a call at 8:30 that night (voicemail, actually!) saying “We just realized we forgot…we will do it Monday.” Again, making me feel extremely UNimportant.

And that’s the story.

As I was writing this post, it was 4:30 on Monday afternoon. I had actually written:

Stay tuned, I’m sure the meeting (whever it actually happens—it’s 4:30 today and it hasn’t happened yet) will be a doozy…

Then I got called into the office at about 4:35!

Long story short, I sat down, John basically said “How about $12 like we said?” and Sue said she did appreciate me, even though she doesn’t say it enough…and John agreed with her. We chatted a bit, and that was it! So I have a raise, effective immediately, and all future raises will be March 1.

Again, Wells Fargo ticks me off.

So, I wanted to check my mortgage account information. I do have online bill pay set up, but full account information is NOT available through that account. I swear I had an account set up, but I can’t find logon info anywhere, and none of the “I forgot my username/password” links work because they can’t find my account. Of course, what makes matters worse is that I don’t know if the account is under Tom’s social or mine (or both) so I try a variety. I keep getting errors and then finally I get “We are unable to process your request without further information. Please call us at…”

So I call. After waiting on hold for at least 10 minutes, I give the guy my name and social and nope, he can’t find me. So I say it might be under hubby’s social and he immediately got snippy and said “Sorry, we can’t do that.” I totally understand the privacy issue, but told him my husband was deployed, I have a POA, and what do I need to do to gain access? He again says he can’t do anything, hubby has to do it, and suggested I have my husband call and put me on the account. I said that really was not a feasible option at this point, this can’t be the first time this has happened, what do I need to do to get online access? He tells me I could probably go to a local office, show ID and POA, but there’s nothing he can do for me. Which I guess I understand his hands are tied, but he was just waaaay too rude and snippy about it. I said “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” He then said “Well, I guess I could call the mortgage people and make sure.” Oh, you think? 🙄

So he puts me on hold for like three minutes, comes back and says “Here’s the number, I will transfer you.” I still have to go through all the voice prompts and entering of account numbers, and I was thinking “I thought you were going to transfer me to someone?” The gist of it? The mortgage department is closed on Sunday. Like the rep didn’t know that and couldn’t have told me that? GRRRRRRRRRRRR. >:(

I guess I will call our local Wells Fargo lady (she’s always in our office, know her pretty well) and see if she can help me. I have never had good experiences with any of the 800# reps—every time I have to call them I get ticked off.

Should I get paid more for the IT work I do?

So as you all know, I just LOVE my job ( 😈 ). There are so many little issues that make me crazy, I won’t even begin to go into them all. That said, I just have a question.

I was hired as a real estate assistant/secretary. To me, that means things specifically associated with real estate like paperwork and phone calls, etc. To me, the pay I was told I’d get is for the work I was told about.

Well, as it happens, I also know a little bit about computers (such things as web design and email, etc.)…so of course, I quickly got sucked into doing those things, as well.

Now, I know that all jobs come with duties that weren’t explicitly stated … and new things pop up that need to be taken care of … and stuff along those lines. But it seems as time goes on, I’m becoming more and more responsible for anything computer- and IT-related. Just because I’m the one that knows the most—even if I have no clue, it becomes my job to figure it out/solve it.

So, where does it become the end of my initial job duties/being a peon and having to do everything the boss says…to getting paid more for doing stuff that really shouldn’t be my job or wasn’t in the original job description? Meaning that I was hired as a secretary, not a computer or IT person; I was hired with a secretary’s pay, not a computer or IT person’s pay. (I know I don’t deserve like $30k for computer/IT work, because that’s not my entire job—but some type of additional pay would be nice.)

I just think that she is lucky I know how to do this stuff, and I should see some sort of compensation for it. If I didn’t know how to do it (i.e. had my boss hired some yahoo who didn’t know how to do ANYTHING), she would have to hire someone else (at a much higher rate) to come do this stuff (as it is, she pays Tom $20/hour for networking stuff that I know nothing about).

So, do you think I should I get paid more for the IT work I do? Or should I just suck it up? Of course, I’m thinking about this now because I just had my two-year anniversary a week ago and haven’t heard ONE WORD about a raise. 😡

Today must not be my day.

First, the dog and my shoe (see previous entry below). Then, dinner didn’t turn out quite as expected (new meatloaf recipe). Not BAD, but not great—alterations must be made for trial #2.

But the worst thing JUST happened. To backtrack, I’ve been carrying around my paycheck and another check (both from my boss) in my purse all weekend. We tried to go deposit them Saturday but the drive-thru lines were each like 5 cars long (including the ATM line) and the inside line was about 20 people deep. Fast forward through tons of running errands yesterday and today. This afternoon we go to Staples and I physically remember seeing my check—in the same spot in my purse where it had been all weekend. Fast forward to just now, when I go to retrieve the check to give to hubby to deposit and…it’s gone. Disappeared. Not in the purse pocket where it’s been for three days. Not anywhere in my purse. We emptied the car—nothing. It had to have fallen out at Staples, but if anyone would have turned it in, they would know who I was (since I did work there) and they would call me. So I can assume if it did fall out, no one turned it in. I’m assuming no one can deposit them since, although they’re signed, they do have “deposit only” and my account number on them.

I’m scared what the rest of the night might bring…

CHECK UPDATE: Tuesday

Long story short, someone did turn in my checks at Staples. The manager tried to call me Monday, but apparently not hard enough as to actually leave a message anywhere… so I didn’t find out until Tuesday morning…after we’d already put a stop payment on the checks. Oh well. At least it shows there are still good people out there!

Compromising Situation

I hate it when you get an email from a company saying “We’re sorry, but your credit card information may have been compromised.” I know it happens, but we’ve both been pretty lucky so far—if having only two occurrences of fraudulent charges is lucky (one on my account and one on Tom’s). This time it was CooksIllustrated.com—long story short, they can’t guarantee our information was taken, but it might have been copied (or something like that). So I called to place a fraud alert on my credit report and cancelled the credit card. North Carolina apparently offers a security freeze for such situations, except you have to either file a police report (to get the freeze for free) or pay $10 per bureau. I’ll decide on that after I sleep on it. I can’t imagine I’d really NEED it for one compromised credit card—but I guess it’s nice to know the option is there.

Coldwell Banker Awards Night

As background, this was from last year’s entry:

In 2004, Onslow County had something like $285,000,000 in sales (approximately 2800 homes). Our office did (approximately) $44,000,000 in 2004 (compared to like $32M in 2003). Of that $44M, my boss was responsible for 25% of that, or $11,000,000 (give or take a few thousand)

In 2005, Onslow County had something like $445,000,000 in sales (~3500 homes). Our office did ~$67,000,000. Of that $67M, my boss and her partner were responsible for ~$20,000,000 of that (or almost 30%). Damn.

Oh, and this year since I was dieting, there were NO alcoholic drinks, no hot wings, and no dessert. The only thing I cheated on was my chicken cordon bleu (pre-ordered before I knew we were starting the diet) which came breaded—but I did skip the rice, dessert, and an open bar (OPEN BAR!). So I think I was pretty good! I tell you, it’s easier to say no to stuff if I do it cold turkey. I did, however, have a momentary lapse when the waitress came around and asked if we wanted dessert—and I asked what they had. As soon as she started talking, I thought “What the hell? Why did I even ask when I’m not getting anything?” But it didn’t bother me to say no.

Again, the only bad thing about the night is that I now smell like smoke. Blech.

Wells Fargo….UGH!

So I get an email tonight saying our mortgage payment was not able to be processed and to call this 800 number. I logon to our online account and it says REJECTED. There is no reason for the payment to have been rejected, as there is plenty of money in the account and this is not the first time I scheduled an online payment (so I know all the routing numbers, etc., are correct).

So I call the 800 number and that’s where the fun begins. I input our loan number and the last four of my social. “I’m sorry, we cannot locate your account…” Okay, so I try again and use Tom’s social. That works. Great. So I go through the security spiel (loan number, social, name, address, phone) and say my payment was rejected—what’s up with that? He says “As far as I can tell, the payment has been made” and he sees no mention of any rejection (even when I give him a reference number). “Oh, you scheduled the payment online? I can’t help you with that, you’ll have to talk to the online support, here’s their number but let me transfer you.” Fine. Transferring…and….”We cannot take your call at this time. Thank you.” *click*

You have GOT to be kidding me.

So I call the 800 number he gave me for online support and pressed whatever number and I go through the whole security spiel again and my whole rejection spiel and…”Oh, you did it online? I don’t have access to that information, let me connect you.” WAIT, I say, I just went through this with another rep and I called the 800 number he gave me—and I got you! She’s sorry, yada yada yada, I have no information, let me transfer you. UGH, fine. Transferring…and…”We cannot take your call at this time. Thank you.” *click*

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!

So I’m steaming mad by this time and go bitch to Tom. I decide to give it another go and come back and try once more. This time I wait until I get an operator (listening through the entire Spanish menu) and he’s what I need. Oh, so apparently I was wrong when I originally pressed one for “If you have a question with your mortgage.” I go through my security spiel and rejection spiel and…???? He said the payment had been applied, but he did see the rejection note but didn’t have any idea why it was there. Lovely. He said I should wait until Thursday, in case it took a few days to actually post (and their system just says accepted because they’re expecting it). But he couldn’t explain why the system was telling me rejected if it was accepted. ARGH!!!!!! So now I have to watch my bank statement like a hawk to see if the payment gets taken out, I have to call the bank to see if they have any notice of a payment being attemped (and if so, why it was rejected), and I have to worry about it for the next two days.

This is not my first beef with Wells Fargo. It’s a nightmare every time I have to call them for something and I’m always talking to the wrong person. I asked the original rep if he could fix it so that I could use MY SS# to access the account via phone and he said “Hmmm, I’m not sure why you can’t…your number is on the account. Maybe it only takes the primary SSN?” YOU ARE A CUSTOMER SERVICE REP AND YOU DON’T KNOW THIS SIMPLE ANSWER? I ask each time I call and no one has a clue.

Oh, and earlier this week we got a letter from them saying they tried to pay our annual taxes but they had already been paid (so they couldn’t pay them) so could we please look into it and get back to them and send them a copy of the paid statement. Okay… long story short, the taxes were paid through closing and you’d THINK the mortgage company would KNOW that, right? Ugh.

This sucks because I just stepped out of a nice hot shower and was all relaxed and ready to go to bed all nice and calm and now I’m all riled up and have a splitting headache.

I owe the IRS.

So I got a notice in the mail yesterday…seems they think I owe $175 or something stupid like that for NC state tax. It’s just not possible. I mean, the USMC does our taxes and they use computers and there. should. be. no. errors. So I dig out my 2003 (yes, 2003!) taxes and of course, that was the year I had to have the state portion refigured because Staples screwed up my withholding (they said my entire salary was in NC, when half was in NC and half was in VA). So Tom takes the stuff into the base tax office today and…the good news? Are you ready? WE OWE $146!! They screwed up!! I sort of lost my mind at that point in Tom’s retelling of the story, so I’m not entirely sure what the exact details are, but it was something to the effect of they input the wrong numbers or gave me a NC tax credit for the entire salary amount instead of half the salary. Regardless, it took the IRS TWO YEARS to figure it out. After they already paid me the $200+ in refund bucks in 2003. ARGH! So Tom got a form from the tax office that I have to fill out saying this was our first notice of money due (so we don’t have to pay the $20 in interest). Or something like that.

Like I want to give the stupid IRS $146. That comes out of our honeymoon budget, dammit.

TWENTY-SIX CENTS! NO! FORTY CENTS!

Last night on my way home, gas at the cheap station was $2.49. It’s been $2.49 for a good week or more. Of course, I didn’t stop because I still had over half a tank. So this morning on my way to work, I see that the price has gone up to $2.75! What happened to price increases of 5c or 10c? What’s up with a quarter jump?

EDITED TO ADD: At 5pm, it had jumped to $2.89.

Procrastination is expensive!

Owning a car sucks—at least today, LOL. Our check engine light came on a few days ago so it went in for service today. We were expecting it to be the oxygen sensor (what it was the last time the light came on—a mere $35 issue). Well, it was that, BUT there was another issue which they needed to do an in-depth diagnosis to determine…at a charge of $70. Well, you can’t NOT do it… So the next call was to tell me they found what it was—the air flow ratio sensor, which can be replaced at a cost of…$380!! If we don’t get it fixed…it will eventually kill the catalytic converter. Lovely. Then, I had also had them do an oil change…so they noticed that ALL our fluids (and especially the transmission fluid) need flushing. Add $460 to the bill. Egads. I wasn’t prepared to deal with all this today, so we’re not having it done today…but we need to do it soon. Of course, had we kept up with out 30,000 or 35,000 mile scheduled maintenance plan, we probably would have already had some of this stuff done. So, our procrastination is now going to take a big-assed bite out of our savings… He said the air flow ratio sensor might be covered under an extended warranty—which I thought we bought, but they couldn’t find any record of it…so I put in a call to Spartan Toyota in Lansing and they looked it up and said we bought the 6-year 100,000 mile warranty (phew!)…so now I just hope the air sensor is covered by it!!! Hoo boy.

Our $1800 weekend!

We were tired of seeing all the pallets and crap gathering in our backyard, so we decided to have a bonfire, come hell or high winds (the past week had been totally calm, except—of course—for the night we wanted to have the fire). We had the hose at the ready and only had to use it once when a small bit of ash started a little piece of our lawn on fire (and by little, I mean about a foot section). Oh, and Tom had to chase down some escaping ash as it floated serenely away towards our neighbor’s house…but overall, it was fairly uneventful (thankfully). We visited, had a few drinks, and enjoyed s’mores. It was also the first time the guys all had their new shirts at the same time (Tom and Tom bought themselves one, plus one for Roger, when we were in Myrtle Beach):

The Three Amigos

We also found out that our old neighbors were having a garage sale at their new house. What a perfect time to put Tom’s car down there, I said! (We had planned on taking it down there to sit, since it’s on the main road, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.) So we printed the Kelly Blue Book info and went to drive it over (after the bonfire) and…the car was dead. Crap. I had started it a few times while Tom was gone, but it must have sat too long. Tom’s theory was that somehow the “alarm” button had been hit and the alarm went off (silently, since the horn doesn’t actually work) for who knows how long. Since we couldn’t do anything about it right then, we continued on to our neighbors for a dip in the hot tub (the first time, since they’ve moved). Tom assured me that sometime in our life, we would own a hot tub. YIPPEE!

In the morning, Tom jumped the car (and amazingly, the horn started working again!), drove it over, stuck a price on the windshield, and waited. We sat over there visiting for about an hour, and while we were there, there were a few people VERY interested in it. But, as luck would have it, the battery was really dead. The jump didn’t hold so we knew we’d have to buy a battery. We left to run some errands (get a battery!), go grocery shopping for our visitors this week, and do some house things. When we got home, we got a call from our neighbor with the phone number of a guy who was EXTREMELY interested in it. So Tom went back to put the battery in and meet with the guy. Excellent news—after only about one minute into the test drive, he said he absolutely wanted it and would give us the money Monday! WOO HOO!! That night, it was back to Roger and Ursula’s for dinner and games…which was fun, as usual! I had a little too much to drink (damn Tom for surprising me with tequila and margarita mix!) and I was home and in bed by 11:30.

Today was our monthly Walmart run. We’d heard (from online sources) that they’re slowly phasing out a lot of the low-carb products, so we wanted to stock up on some soup that we really like. They already don’t have the Russell Stover (?) Low-Carb Chocolate Fudge Sauce that we love…and they stopped carrying the low-carb Doritos last year. We also wanted to hit the mall (I had to return something) and we were surprised to see that the mall didn’t open until…are you ready?? 1PM! Are you kidding me? We knew it probably opened late, but we figured it was noon, so we weren’t too concerned when we got there at 11:50. We wandered through Sears then at 12:10 asked what the deal was… 1pm. What a crock. Needless to say we didn’t wait. That’s just asinine. Why bother even opening? Ugh. The rest of the day was spent napping and cleaning the house. And Tom just walked in to tell me we were invited over to use the hot tub tonight since we didn’t make it in last night… Cool.

Stupid credit card fees

I didn’t lose my credit card and I don’t think I’ve used it anywhere unsafe. However, there was an unauthorized charge for $80 recently so I called to cancel the card and have another reissued. Imagine my surprise when I was told there would be a $10 fee for new cards. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I have never heard of a fee for reissued cards before and I think it’s just asinine. But I was so flabbergasted that I couldn’t even think or respond—I just said fine. For a split second, I did consider just cancelling the card but it’s the one with our photo on the front that I love…

UPDATE

I wrote an email to customer service complaining about the fee and they said they will credit it as a one-time courtesy. I guess sometimes it pays to complain…

Chase sucks!

I used to have a Chase credit card. USED TO. I finally decided to close it…and that’s where the fun begins…

Since I no longer needed the account, I wanted all my online information deleted. Easy request, right? You’d think. I emailed them via their own secure message center.

No luck.

They gave me an 800 number to call. Fine, I did.

No luck.

They told me to email [via my own email] to request closure. Fine, I did. They told me to reconfirm I wanted Bill Payment cancelled since it would be final and I would no longer be able to make payments.

Um, not quite.

I responded that I wanted ALL my information (i.e. login, account, bank account, etc.) deleted in addition to the Bill Payment service. They responded…are you ready????

After reviewing your account information, I have needed to forward the information onto our research department for further evaluation.

For further assistance please log on to Chase Online at http://www.chase.com and access your ‘Pay Bill’ link. This will launch the Chase Bill Management Center window where you can select ‘Contact Us’.

Please note that replies sent from within your personal email account will travel unsecured through the Internet. Therefore, we recommend that you access our website to send a secure email inquiry.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARGH!!! They’ve now recommended I email them via their own secure message center—which is the first %(*&#* thing I did!