God Bless Jimmy Hoffa!

[miko2]

Okay so this story really begins several years ago, when I used to only have one credit union Visa and that was fine with me. Then I got a second Citibank Visa so that I could buy a laptop computer (actually transferred the balance from the purchase from a Circuit City credit card to a Visa with an introductory low finance charge).

So then I had two Visas. But my finance charges went up, and I had a balance on a CompUSA card, and maybe Sears or something I can't really remember, and Providian called and wanted to give me a Visa card and consolidate all of my debt onto one card, and that sounded like a good idea, so I did that.

So then I had three Visas, but I didn't carry a balance on my Citibank card. And then I had to buy a new engine for my car, and I was out of work at the time so I charged the whole thing on my Providian and Citibank Visas.

I managed to pay off the Citibank one quickly -- as a rule I don't like having outstanding balances on multiple cards, two is more than enough. I've been trying to pay down my Providian Visa for some time, but they've got me at a high-interest rate which is counter-productive to paying off the balance, so I've been meaning to transfer the balance to a new card with a lower rate.

In the meantime, when my cards expired and my new cards came, I cut them up and tossed them without activating them, so I had no way of using my Citibank Visa or Providian Visa even if I wanted to. I only used my credit union Visa on a regular basis.

More recently, Providian was bought by Chase, and they issued me a new Chase Visa card, which I also destroyed without activating. I skipped a payment in September because money was tight in the weeks just before and after Conifur, and I found out that Chase was much more persistant and invasive about this sort of thing, and called me daily, sometimes several times a day. Jeff was watching Spiderman with me a few weeks ago (the day my car had been stolen as I remember) when they called and I explained to them that I'd mailed my payment four days earlier and they should have it already, or by the next day at the very least.

So when, half an hour later, my union (the Teamsters) called offering a Mastercard with good rates, I was more than ready to give them my information and let them sign me up. Something I should have done a long time ago, get a new card and transfer my Providian balance.

Flash forward two weeks. I've been driving my landlord's junky Honda, but he'd told me that he needed it all this week. So I'd called my insurance company and then Enterprise and arranged to rent a car for Tuesday. They said they'd need my driver's liscense and a credit card for a deposit, but at the time it didn't occur to me to ask how much that deposit was.

I'd thought of that by the next morning, and called to check. They needed a $250.00 deposit. They explained that in part, this is to cover my deductible in case of a collision -- my insurance covers me of course but like many people I have a $250.00 deductible that I'm responsible for. Okay, that's reasonable.

I called my bank. My Visa only had about $100.00 free on it. This wasn't too much of a surprise, I'd used it several times recently and pathetically I'm never more than a few hundred dollars from my limit. I don't work to pay down the balance on my credit union Visa -- I probably should, but the Providian is much more of a priority for me since the interest on it is so much higher, and I want to just get rid of that card.

My checking account only had about $150.00 in it. This surprised me a bit, I'd felt certain there was more than that, even though I'm only a few days away from payday.

Well, this was a dliema, because I obviously couldn't transfer every last cent out of my checking account to cover the rental deposit. I had at least a couple of small checks that hadn't cleared yet.

Okay, I know, living paycheck to paycheck isn't the smartest way to live. I know. ^_^

I called work and we decided that even if I could get a rental car, it was better for them to call in Mary Jo to cover for me for a day, that way they were certain to have someone. So I took the day off to try and solve my rental problem.

Now, the thing was, I had a $400.00 check in my pocket from Tom, who paid me rent for the next six weeks. I'd meant to deposit it Monday, but I left late and didn't have time on the way to work (and I get off work at midnight, of course). But all I needed was to get to my bank. I called a couple of friends, and Jeff was happy to drive down immediately and help me out. Twenty minutes later, I deposited Tom's check, placing half on my Visa and half in checking. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. Tom's check was from a Hawaiian bank. They told me there was a five day hold on the funds. They did say that $100 of it would be available the next day. That would be $100 of the amount placed in checking, not the amount on the Visa.

Hmmm. I wasn't really sure if there was a way I could work that out -- $100 free on Visa, potentially $250.00 free in checking, a bit less than that really. Hmm, sounded messy.

So Jeff invited me over for dinner, but first I wanted to stop at my house and see if I could call Providian and somehow find a way to use my account with them. Of course, this wasn't possible -- I couldn't activate my card without the card in hand, nor could I use the account without the expiration date, which was only listed on the card.

At this point I was not at all sure if I was even going to be able to rent a car at all before I got paid on Friday, but while I was still on the phone, someone knocked on the door. Jeff answered. It was a neighbor, who had a piece of mail for me that had been delivered to them by accident. Jeff brought it in and handed it to me, and noted that it might be a credit card. It was that sort of official-looking but mostly blank envelope.

And in fact it was my new Teamster's Mastercard. Yay! You can bet I activated it immediately!

So today I rented a car for the next couple of weeks. I was expecting to rent a compact, but a mid-range was only $25 (my insurance covers $25 a day), so I only had to pay the tax (which btw is considerable -- more than 18 percent). This works out to a little over $4 a day from my pocket, but I can live with that for a couple of weeks in exchange for a better-than-compact car.

Which I got in spades -- they didn't have a mid-range car so they gave me a band new Chevy Impala. It's extremely nice, and very powerful.

So the moral of the story is, it's good to have a contingency plan. I had one when I needed to get a new engine for my Saturn, but I was upset at having high balances on three different Visa cards so I destroyed two of them afterwards to keep me from using them again. Which was kind of stupid, because I have more than enough willpower to avoid using them except in emergencies, and since I don't keep a high balance in my checking or savings account, or keep a lot of money free on my credit union Visa, I wasn't prepared for an emergency.

The really stupid thing is that, in the middle of the day yesterday while I was trying to figure out what to do and lamenting that I didn't have an extra credit card handy and hadn't heard a word about that Teamster's Mastercard in two weeks, I filled out an application for a Capital One card and told them to transfer the balance from my Chase card. They offer 0% interest until June, and then 9.9% fixed thereafter, as long as I don't screw up on my payments of course.

So I might wind up with five different major credit card accounts here soon. I really need to call Citibank and make sure they close that account forever, and do the same as soon as Chase is paid off. ^_^