I’m reliving the last few
years of my life through my bank statements.
I haven’t balanced my checkbook in a long while, and I have been hoarding
receipts. Today I sift through all of
those receipts, getting organized to make the final balance and see how
horribly I’ve screwed myself by being so lazy.
I used to balance my
checkbook to the penny every month almost as soon as the statement
arrived. Then I started balancing kids’
accounts, too, and then I had two kids in college, and then the third kid went
to college, and then I also went back to college yet again. I feel like I’ve spent a large part of my
adult life taking classes. The checkbook
balancing became an exercise in making sure there was something still in there
when I hit the ATM. Money’s
available? Must be balanced.
I don’t have any excuse,
though. I have relatives who’ve been
patiently waiting for two years now for me to plow through a box of family
photographs, but I can’t do that yet. I
have to balance my checkbook first. It’s
the last giant hurdle holding me back after the weddings and graduations and
sporting events and thesis-writing that have occupied my time and brain. I am so dedicated to the cause that I never
even change my clothes today. I am still
wearing the exact same clothes I went to bed in last night -- plaid flannel
pants and a lightweight long-sleeved t-shirt.
Sexy, I know. Try and hold
yourselves back. (I did apply deodorant
and pull my hair back. I have some
pride, you know.)
I should be deeply ashamed
of myself for my financial negligence. I’ve
managed to misplace two statements – I’ve no idea how – from 2009. Yes, 2009, and yes, I do need them. Don’t judge me; I feel stupid enough as it
is. I go to the bank website, download
and print out the now-online statements for the part of 2014 that I don’t find
in still-unopened envelopes today. The
bank only goes back as far as 2010.
Damn. I’m going to have to put in
the formal request for those two documents.
Of course, the bank website only allows me to request a month, as in a
full month. The statements run from the
14th of one month to the 13th of the next. I guess that means I have a 50-50 shot of
requesting the correct ones.
The best part about today,
so far, anyway, is the shredder. I’ve
had that baby rolling for hours. The
best feeling in the world is the purging of the old crap I don’t need
anymore. I find a blue folder
mysteriously stashed amongst the pile of junk.
It is crammed with receipts from Christmas … 2010. Yup, so if anyone wants to return anything, I’ve
got you covered. No, wait – most of that
folder is now in little straggly paper bits.
This process is somewhat
like looking through a giant scrapbook.
I come across the hospital receipt for when my son busted his foot and
missed most of his JV soccer season.
There are old beach parking receipts that I saved because I used my
debit card. I find receipts for when I
went crazy from a stressful year at work and cut off all of my hair (it took
three appointments for the horrified stylists to understand my incoherent
babbling, terrified to go near me with scissors lest I bite their fingers
off).
I also find receipts for
restaurants that I have absolutely no recollection going to – The Pizza Factory? I ate there? I don’t even know where it is. And CVS claims that Extra Bucks “never”
expire. Really? Because I’m going to try out that theory soon
with the few I uncovered hiding in the years-old stash. CVS owes my $5.45, and I intend to collect,
damnit!
Some of the receipts are
so old that the ink has faded away. I
sort of kind of guess where they’re from.
Honestly, I’m not that worried because anything I put on the debit card
will appear on my statements. But it’s
all about the orchestration of it all.
The papers and the numbers and the statements and the registers … they
have to synch; they must play beautiful music together. If they don’t, if my checkbook ends up
looking like a Stravinsky score, I’ve no one to blame but myself (and Igor and
his cacophonic notes).
Sunday I am supposed to go
to various places – a party, a tournament, the store (I’m out of milk), and I
desperately need to shower and change my clothes. I have a feeling, though, a sinking and awful
feeling, that the mountain of receipts and statements I spent all day sorting,
filing, and organizing, will prevent me from getting much else done. If I can wrap up years of financial ignorance
in the span of one weekend, I’ll amaze even myself. (If I find extra money, I’ll be even more
amazed.)
In the meantime, don’t
send out a search party. I think I’ll be
okay. As long as the steady
whirring-grinding sound is coming from the den where I have given my usually
mobile shredder a permanent home (I moved a bookshelf to plug it in --- that
puppy isn’t moving), you won’t need to send out a search party or paramedics or
the haz-mat team (though the latter is probably needed already). Ignore the screams of torture and the
wailing of mistakes and the screeches of agony when I’ve used up the last
pencil eraser trying to correct my mistakes (went through an entire eraser
already today).
When it’s all said and
done, the checkbook WILL be balanced … and that will make one of us.
