Change for May

You can definitely tell that I have been using my CC or my debit card this past month, rather than going with the money jars and cash. My change is much less than usual. Hard to get change from plastic :-)

For this month I had 1 roll of quarters and 1 roll of dimes, for a grand total of $15

This goes down on the new debt for the replacement car, to whittle away at that line of credit.

(this post has been back dated by a lazy jolie blogger)

He's going to college....."I" am learning

Well it's a sad/exciting week in the Money Tree household.

DS is gone. To quote Ned Flanders, he's "gone diddily on"

He and his dad left to begin the drive down to the US where he will stay for about 5 weeks, for spring training.

I am going to try to pretend he is on a long 4 day road trip. I have survived many of those before.

So here is what mama has learned:

1) Health Care - rather tricky when he is gone out of the country. For this spring training time, it doesn't qualify as 'student' because he is not a full time student yet. It doesn't qualify as vacation, but it's not quite a vacation.  I have spent time on the phone with my work health care provider and DH's. He has Blue Cross and they sounded much more friendly and confident when I called and they could answer the questions I had. With mine, we spent a great deal of time trying to determine if his scholarship counted as 'professional' as that would mean he was financially compensated by someone in the US and that would change his health care eligibility.  I ended up calling the team doctor who sent us the forms to fill in and she said they would take care of it down there and that the team has a great policy for their athletes. I am hoping it is as simple as she made it sound.

2) Phones - We are in a three year contract up here with his iphone so that can't be broken. I will be paying for his contract even though he isn't going to be using it up here. They have suggested that we pay to unlock it here ($50), and then when we are in the US, buy a sim card there and sign up with a company there with a good no contract plan. Anyone have any suggestions for a good northern midwest US phone company that doesn't have a complicated data plan fee???

I have paid $30 for a month of 200 minutes of LD with my Canadian provider. That will help with the calls from the team and give him a few more minutes to call his mama (lol yeah right)

3) Banking and Money
So we know that his debit card will not work in the US at stores and such. He can take money out of a machine for a fee.

His new MC would work but would also have those fees plus the money dif between countries. The replacement card took 15 business days to arrive, but we were unable to actually get through on a phone line to activate it. On hold and on hold and on  hold.

The local branch recommended he get a US MC so that we avoided those fees between currencies so we ordered that. It never arrived. Helpful. Not!  We paid a $25 fee to rush it here.  Today is business day 7 and it has not come. Rush was supposed to be 3-5 days. I am hoping they will wave the charge, but I won't hold my breath.

We can set up a US bank account there, but he needs a permanent address for his US time to do that, we are told. He won't have a permanent address until fall.

This leaves us with a dilemma for the spring training session. Really our only option is cash and I don't think it's a great idea for him to have a whack of US cash on him. If something happens, it's gone, and so is his main money source.


4) I've learned that he drove me crazy here being an almost adult doing his own thing, but my goodness do I ever miss him.

New wheels = new debt

I tapped back into my LOC when I was buying DS2's car.  I wrote a cheque for the car, then went home and transferred that amount from my LOC to my chequing account.

I will say this for SGI ( our provincial insurance), they are very quick at processing. I had the cheque for the payout of the old car, in my mailbox before the week was out. That went straight to the bank and I applied it back to my LOC. Remaining balance - $2000.

I will have to halt my funding of my savings/planned spending schedule to redirect the cash to the LOC until I have it paid off.

I dislike that all this has happened, but I know his accident was completely unavoidable. Darn icy roads.

I am grateful that I have this LOC to access for emergencies.

Still working on the CC fraud

On  Thursday, April 17th we learned that my older son's MC had been used for several charges that were not his. We dutifully called that night to MC to begin the process.

On Tuesday, April 22nd, nothing had changed on his account so we called again.  This gentleman took all the same information but seemed surprised that we had not received a fraud affidavit in the  mail yet. He checked and the man who took our original call did not get that started.  We went over again the 6 charges on his account. I told the CS Rep that DS would be leaving for the States soon and asked what would happen if this time sensitive document came while he was gone. He took my information down and DS's verbal consent, we agreed I could sign for him.

By last Thursday, all but one of the charges was gone from his account. There were a total of three to the same magazine in the US, but only two of them were removed. Very odd.

Last Friday, the fraud report arrived. Only 3 of the original 6 charges were listed. If we had signed this report then it would be saying that the other 3 were our responsibility.

I found it odd that online they had wiped out 5 charges but the paper said 3. What was up with the discrepancy you ask???

Good question.

And so began the moment I began my hate of 'on hold ' music.

Getting into the details again will make me bang my head against the wall. Let's just say that between Sunday and Wednesday, DS and I spent over 11 hours on hold in multiple calls. One call lasted multiple hours because I was determined not to give up.

I was not alone. Many customers joined me in our solitude of phone to ear, muzak playing ad nauseum, with an interruption every couple of minutes telling me 'My call is important to them. Please stay on the line so I do not lose my place in the queue."

Apparently there is some sort of glitch in their system.  They even apologized here , but really, gave no reason why. It was beyond insulting.

DS ended up having to take time off work to go into the branch and ask them to intervene. As of  today, the lone charge is still there.

I emailed MC and got a form letter response. It was ONLY in French. Not both of our official languages, but only in French. I was really offended. Now I do speak some French and could make sense of what it was saying.

Begin head bashing against a wall.

So he leaves for the US with this charge still there. The 'rules' say to report the fraud within 30 days and we did, so hopefully the fact that he will be gone for several weeks won't interfere with this getting resolved.

I have had a  BMO MasterCard since 1991 and have never had trouble so this is really uncharacteristic, but it's going to lose them a lot of customers I suspect.

Where the money stands

as of May 5th

Debts
Mortgage - $24 509.17
LOC - $2000

Total Debt - $26 509.17


Savings/Planned Spending
TFSA/EF - $5000
RESP - $17 800
RRSP - $8000 
DS2's trip -$1440
Plates 2014 - $1200
College Savings - $2400



LOC - sigh. well this is the final added expense when buying DS his new to him car to replace the one totalled in his accident.