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$13.73 found, $775 spent, No Problem

Isn’t it great when finacnes are under control! As some may know I started seriously working a get out of debt plan a while ago.

As part of that project, I have built up sinking funds for various things that happen routinely. One of these is car repairs. Over the last week and a half I noticed that my brakes were having problems. Yesterday I put the car into the shop to see what the damage was going to be. $775 for a brake overhaul and other routine things. That’s quite a bit of money. The good news is that my car repair sinking fund carried the brunt of the hit. The emergency fund carried the last little bit and that will be replenished shortly. The best part was that when I was contemplating the repair costs, and even when I heard the number, I didn’t worry about it. I knew I had it covered and under control.

So out of curiosity, I went to BankRate and used their credit card payment calculator. Had I put that $775 bill on a 15% credit card making just minimum payments of interest plus 1%, it would have cost me $626.74 in interest alone and I’d be paying on the card for 122 months. That’s just nuts to me in my current mindset, but it’s how a lot of people live.

Today I was working within MoneyDance to move the funds around and such. I decided to hunt down a problem that I’ve had since the changeover a few months ago from Quicken. After moving to MD from Quicken, my checking account stopped reconciling. I was $13.73 off each month. As there was that much more in the actual account than my records indicated I wasn’t worried as long as it balaced that way each time since. I dug out the paper records from the bank starting at the beginning of the year. Within minutes I found the issue. Some entries from the beginning of the year on paper were actually recorded at the end of ’06. So when I transfered from 1/1/07 a few items that cleared in 07, but were recorded in 06 didn’t make it and threw off the account.

So now I’m all balanced and good to go.