May Monthly Report: Credit Card Payment SNAFU Left Me in the Red

UGH!!

I can't begin to tell you how angry I am (and a little miffed at myself as well) over how the end of this month went down. I went about $200 over disposable income, half of which was bank fees.

Report for May

End of the month: $230 in the red

Saved: $1,917 (31% of my monthly income)

Total Net Worth: $42,682 (including cash, my 401k, car and some other minor assets)

That means I'm already down $230 for June (i.e. I must put aside $230 in savings to make up for May. That means that $230 is not available to spending in June -- a month in which I had quite a bit planned for fun). Ouch.

I set up my credit card payment to clear the balance as I've done dozens of times before and somehow, my bank paid the bill TWICE. That put me into super negative balance territory on my checking account and hit me with an overdraft fee. Since I didn't know right away, I made two small purchases using my debit card, which hit me with two MORE overdraft fees. Long story short, I got into a shouting match with a rep over the phone and cussed him out when he told me he could only refund one of the overdraft fees, "Thank you for banking with us. Have a nice day." That's when he got cussed out. If he had just left that part off, I wouldn't have went off.

Then my credit card hit me with another fee because they had to return the second payment to my checking account. I lost $120 on fees this month. Yeah. And for what... for paying my bills.

So, why am I not just $120 in the red (the amount of the fees I didn't expect)?

I treated my guy to dinner right before the holiday weekend, when I really didn't have the money for the end of the month. I spent more than I expected to on groceries for the last week of the month and I bought three additional bottles of wine from the wine festival I went to on Saturday (instead of sticking to the one bottle I had planned to get in the first place). And oh yeah, I needed to refill my metro fare card, an expense I should have planned for. And oh yes, apparently, I didn't pay my cell phone bill last month so it cost twice as much this month, about another $70. I say apparently because if my bank system screwed up and paid my credit card twice this month, it's possible it screwed up last month and never sent my payment for my credit card bill. I have to go back and retrace a lot of steps.

So yeah, financially, didn't end this month on a high note and I'm even madder because I didn't see any of this coming and am not sure I could have. However, IF it was me who screwed up then I really must investigate how. But, frankly, I don't think I did anything wrong. We're talking about transactions I make every single month and NEVER done anything this messy.

Ah well. I'll keep digging.

DH