I get up this morning and check my bank account thinking I will see a nice large number courtesy of the financial aid disbursment fairies. I see a balance of -$80. More than a little concerned, I look in my recent transactions and see that a check I wrote back in November (when I had the money to cover it) has just been cashed. I vow to cause the death of the person who sat on that check for two months. Then I call up the university cashier’s office to find out where my financial aid money is.
I get a tired-sounding woman on the phone. I explained my dilemma. “Oh, those checks won’t be in until Tuesday.” Dumbfounded, I hang up. Did I hear her right?
I call back. I am put on hold. Someone picks up the phone, says “Bah!” and hangs up. I begin to set fires with my mind.
Thoroughly enraged, I drive to campus, parking in the county library parking lot because I can’t afford a parking pass. I am, after all $80 in the hole. I call up the cashier’s office again as I walk to campus. I get a more awake-sounding person.
“Is there any way I can pick up my check today rather than wait for the direct deposit to go through on Tuesday?”
“No, since you signed up for direct deposit, you have to wait until it goes through.”
“This is completely unacceptable. I need my money today and I can’t really wait until Tuesday.”
“Blah blah blah stock apology blah blah I was just informed that we would have to wait two days for the money blah blah bureaucratic bullshit.”
I am speechless. Unable to say anything that wouldn’t cause my cell phone to melt in my hands, I hang up again.
Did they bother letting people know about this? NO! Any phone calls, emails, cryptic messages on the Financial Aid homepage? NO. Did the people who don’t have direct deposit have their checks today? YES. Am I going to wring the neck of the person who waited two months to cash a check? HELL YES.
There had better be a damn good explanation for this involving Optimus Prime, the fate of the univers, and a flock of mangy ducks. Otherwise, I will be setting the Financial Aid office’s computers on fire. I do this only to show my love for them and respect for all the hard work I know they do.
Sorry, your post sounds like the rantings of a welfare queen to me.
Your own car (or borrowed)?
Couldn’t you walk from the library parking lot every day and donate the annual parking pass fees to the tsunami vicitms Asia?
Cell phone? Last time I checked, they were a luxury item, not a necessity.
Emails? Hopefully read and composed from a public PC
*I am speechless * too. Emulating the hard work you witness from the bureacracy might be the 1st step toward finding your own financial independence.
Just an opinion…Good luck out there in the real world
Just out of curiosity, if instead of direct deposit on Tuesday you accepted a check today, when do you think it would be good money at your bank? Assume for the sake of this exercise that you actually retrieve the check from wherever (The financial aid office? Your campus mailbox? Your parent’s house? Wherever.) and were able to deposit it to your (presumably) in-state bank prior to 2:00 PM.
It was bad form not to inform recipients of financial aid their funds would be delayed several days.
It is in extremely bad form to say anything to the person who deposited the check later than you would have preferred. That money, for all practical intents and purposes, stopped being yours when you wrote the check.
I never understand it when people bitch because a check doesn’t get deposited right away. Don’t you record the check in your register and deduct the money? As UrbanChic pointed out, the money stopped being yours the minute you wrote the check. Why does it matter if the person cashed it the day after you gave it to them or 2 months later?
This is why I love my credit union…I could put an out of state check into my credit union bank today and have the funds available for immediate withdrawal. You may have a point about his bank though.
John, born with a silver spoon in your mouth? Parents always paid for everything, or were you buying your own diapers?
Honestly, give the kid a break. Yeah, maybe Spazcat should have taken more care of his/her finances so that the check he/she wrote several weeks ago didn’t bounce, but what does receiving financial aid to attend school have to do with having a computer with internet access or a cell phone? I get financial aid to attend school, I have a cell phone and a computer at home with high-speed internet access. What’s your point? School is several thousand dollars per year. If Spazcat qualifies for financial aid, does that mean he/she is required to take a vow of poverty until graduation? For the record, most classes I’ve taken in the past few years have at some point required access to a vehicle, computer and/or internet access.
I sure hope that one of the classes you’ll be registering for will involve simple math and how to balance a checkbook. This problem is entirely of your making and has nothing whatsoever to do with someone waiting 2 months to deposit a check that you should have had the funds to cover regardless of when it was processed.
Oh, that really irks me when people/businesses don’t process the checks immediately. I’m very anal about my finances and I know on a daily basis what checks/debits/credits/pending payments etc are outstanding and what my balances is. I know that I’m in the minority there, especially since I store all of the info in my head instead of using Quicken or a spreadsheet. I’m not much for having to always think about an item I returned on my debit card or a check I wrote out hasn’t cleared my bank yet. I got in this habit many years ago when I was living paycheck to paycheck and never changed behavior.
I’m glad that in the case of the OP that the bank didn’t let the check bounce and gave him/her a big negative in the account.
But I STILL don’t get it… you write a check, you remove the money from your register. Certainly if you’re that anal about your checking account, you realize that when you have outstanding checks that they could show up at any time, right? The bank can never give you a realistic idea of what moneys you have available - only the person who writes the checks can do that.
Ooooh, I also hate, hate, hate it when people take forever to take out the checks or my charge cards. I balance my checkbook weekly because I get a lot of cash and have to go to the bank to deposite stuff at least once or twice a week. When checks aren’t taken out, then I make two totals - the amount the bank thinks I have and the amount I actually have. Since I am bad with memorizing numbers, I can only keep of them in my head and it drives me crazy when I can’t immediately figure out the descrepancies between the amount in my head and the amount on the slip I get from the ATM.
I’ve never made a mistake and overdrawn, but I always assume that I have less than I actually think I do and I keep about $500 buffer just in case.
It was dumb of you to not consider that check in when figuring out your finances, but I would still wring the neck of that person/s unless they had a very good excuse.
Oh yeah, I know the money is not there. I just don’t like having to keep doing the mental balance months down the road after the check is written. I’ve had one check that had 5 months lapse between the time it was written and when it cleared. For me, it’s having the bank be reconciled with the least amount of transactions outstanding, and as such, I use a debit or credit card for as many transactions as possible for a quicker reconciliatory gratification. (Yes, I’m a dork). I’ve never kept a register, FWIW, except for the one in my head.
If the direct deposit transfer was in process, there was no way the Financial Aid Office could pull your aid amount out of what was no doubt a transfer of many thousands of dollars to your financial institution (assuming you’re not the only customer of your bank that is a student of your university) and issue you a check on the spot.
When I was a student – back when hair bands and Duran Duran roamed the earth – everyone knew you couldn’t assume your financial aid checks would be available on a certain date. Hell, one semester I went through nearly two weeks without my textbooks because financial aid hadn’t come in yet, and I couldn’t afford them.
This all pales before the simple fact that you wrote a check and couldn’t cover it. Your irresponsibility, your problem.
My roommate essentially got screwed out of thousands of dollars of financial aid when the school in New York she went to for an exchange program kept referring her back to her school here and here they told her they had nothing to do with it and she needed to talk to the school in New York, whose financial aid department has been completely useless in helping her get the money promised when she went there.
So your money is a couple days late and a check bounced. Deal with it. Be glad they have their shit together enough to have it on it’s way to you [about] when it was expected.
was the funniest thing I’ve read all day. No doubt every other student who had direct deposit on their financial aid was calling up and saying “wtf?” and some poor secretary just snapped.
What’s your point? School is several thousand dollars per year. If Spazcat qualifies for financial aid, does that mean he/she is required to take a vow of poverty until graduation? For the record, most classes I’ve taken in the past few years have at some point required access to a vehicle, computer and/or internet access.
(Yes, I’m a dork). I’ve never kept a register, FWIW, except for the one in my head.