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Home > Saved $18 and left a dumb decade

Saved $18 and left a dumb decade

April 7th, 2006 at 12:07 pm

Okay so I told you I was stuck in the 80's when it came to personal finance. DH and I have a credit card with a major brick and mortar bank that we have had since the mid 80's. We have had other credit cards come and go with introductory offers, or the one that DH applied for at a professional football game because it has the logo of "his" team on it.....Anyway........this old one, we just have kept hanging around and have used it on and off for major purchases and paid it off....or used it for our monthly billing for internet service. But in the past 2 years we have not charged on it or had a balance. (We don't even have the plastic....it was cut up and thrown away years ago) Last week I got a statement which was strange because we havent bought anything. There was a charge of $18 on it for the "annual fee". It was actually the turning point for me to get off the fence and get involved with our future finacial picture. My first thought was, pay the $18, cancel the account so we won't be charged that again next year. (yes we have been paying it annually since the mid 80's). I decided to go to the bank and talk to them to see if they would just waive the fee. The branch manager is the one that helped me and he looked to me to be about 15 years old. He initially thought that I had some sort of annual dues for a club or subscription that I was being charged for. No I explained...its an annual fee for this account. He said..we don't chargee annual fees. He called the home office and was educated about the archaic 1980's and old original accounts still had these. He was shocked that I had not done anything before now!!
He waived the fee, closed the account and reopened one that has rewards.

So now I have saved $18 that normally I would have just shrugged off and paid...

I have been reading about the $20 challenge in other blogs but I don't really know what that is.....sounds like I should start one with this money.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Saved $18 and left a dumb decade”

  1. Ima saver Says:
    April 7th, 2006 at 02:48 pm 1144421337
    1144421337

    That is just what you should do. You start with$20 and try to grow it to as much as possible, like $5000. I take any spare change and save it every day, turn it into the bank once a month. If you clip coupons, you take the savings and put it towards your challenge, Some sell things on e bay. I am going to have a garage sale. If you have extra money coming from anything, you add it to your challenge. I got a big check from a local building store, when I asked if they would give me a rebate, just anything you can think of to generate new money to save.

  2. Thrifty Ray Says:
    April 7th, 2006 at 05:09 pm 1144429790
    1144429790

    you know your in a time warp when the bank doesn't even know about the fee...

    Don't you just love it....when they do away with a fee, you have to ask for it....when they add or increase a fee, no action required....geeze...

    Good for you for checking into it and saving yourself the $18 this year...

    Join the challenge, it's fun!

  3. mjrube94 Says:
    April 7th, 2006 at 08:02 pm 1144440143
    1144440143

    I think one of the ideas of the challenge is this: you're used to living on whatever you make now. By cutting costs using some of the tips found on this site, or doing some of the things that Ima mentioned, you free up extra money. But if it just sits in your checking account and gets used for something else, then it was never really saved. So the idea is to set aside a completely separate account where you can put all the money you save or earn outside of your normal income, and use it for some special goal. Some want to pay off debt, others want to save for a house or a trip. Whatever you want. It's been a lot of fun for me. (A good place to start, if you haven't yet, is by opening an ING account with a link from Jeffrey and getting a $25 bonus for it)...Good luck!

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