Money, Root of All Evil

Yes, you read it. 'Evil Money'. As in "my college tuition is 19,000 evil dollars," or even "my bank makes sure I have no evil money left."

Why this sudden discontent with the evil currency, you ask? Well, let me break it down for you.

1.) I got a bunch of friendly Norwegian kroner from my home country for studying abroad.
2.) The college charged me most of these friendly kroner.
3.) The airlines sucked me dry of the rest, with a little help from Wal-Mart, various hotels, and the not-so-evil restaurant called HuHot.
4.) After having passed zero dollars on the way down into the bottomless debt necessary to live a life worth living, and also passing the mark indicating the maximum allowed credit on my Norwegian credit card, I started getting nervous.
5.) After having double the amount of debt allowed in my account, I realized something had to be done.
6.) I then used my MasterCard to pay off my Visa, making sure that both my Visa and MasterCard companies were moderately happy (once again keeping my balance at the very least below the allowed credit on both cards).
7.) Then I had to call my mom and brother, since I hadn't talked to them for many weeks. Cost to replenish Skype credit: $11. Charged to my American Wells Fargo bank account.

Here starts the thing that made me label dollars evil:

8.) Wells Fargo, not half as forgiving about dipping below zero on your account as the Norwegian bank (DNB), charged me $33 for being 3 -three- dollars below zero.
9.) Unaware of the miniscule debt, another day passes. Ka-ching! $33 charged again. In two days my account is spiraling into evil dollar debt. Balance now: -$69.
10.) This happened after closing on Saturday, and I couldn't do anything after that. So on Sunday: Ka-ching!! Another $33.
11.) Monday: 'Overdraft fee interval period'. Why, thank you, Wells Fargo, that's so... gracious?
12.) I got pretty upset by this, actually angry, and went down to the bank just now to close my account. They had, of course, charged another $33 to the account this morning before opening, and thus I had to pay about $135 today, before attempting to close the account.
13.) "Oh, we're sorry. It seems that you have paid $135.14 into the account today, and thus we can't close your account before the checks clear and we can give you back the 14 cents left over."
14.) "But can't you just take those 14 cents, and close my account?"
15.) "No, sorry, company policy. But feel free to come back in a few days when the checks clear, and you can have your 14 cents back!"

Grrr... Now I had to charge over a 100 evil dollars to my Norwegian account as a result of the THREE EVIL DOLLARS that I had overdrawn, so now I'm in debt in Norway again as well. Grrrrrrreat.

Labels: Episode Accounts, Money

posted by CK @ 22:24