My Mistake
Yesterday I began freaking out because I thought that I was going to be short enough money for rent and things (if I didn’t close out my money market account and use that cash). I didn’t know how I could have made such a mistake. From what I could tell, I thought that the $1000 I’d just contributed to an IRA had already been taken out of my checking account, but it hadn’t. So I was quite surprised to see just how short I was. I was incredulous that I had allowed this to happen.
Fast forward to this morning when I logged in to Bank of America only to find more than twice the amount of money in my checking than it had had yesterday. I saw that I’d made a similar mistake from before.
Both times I forgot about the lag on money transfers between accounts from different banks. I transferred money from my credit union account to Bank of America and the money was taken out almost right away, so my portfolio showed the new balance for the credit union, but did not show anything pending for Bank of America. So I forgot about the money or subconciously assumed that it had already transferred over. Even after I’d already made the mistake about Vanguard, it never occurred to me to look around and see if I made any similar mistakes. This could have saved me a lot of stress and time. It also almost made me impulsively close my money market account.
I find myself to be ridiculously impulsive. It probably stems from my ridiculous laziness; it would take so much time to make a thought-out decision that it’s easier to decide something quickly and go for it. Sometimes this leads to regret, but mostly it works for me. It’s also something that my boyfriend likes about me; if a decision needs to be made quickly, I can make it. The problem is that there are some decisions that don’t need to be made so impulsively. Like closing the money market, for instance; I was all set to close it today only to find that it’s unnecessary. I would have done something foolish for the sake of getting it done as quickly as possible.
So now I find that I am close to fine for the next month or so until I get a few more paychecks. And that tax refund and tax rebate. Once I get those, I can really start building my savings.
