To bring in some of my 2017 income, I needed to invest $3891* in taxes, tax return prep, college tuition, and college texts. To bring in yet more, I needed to move money I already had into other accounts. (Weird, hey?) Where does a person with tricky circumstances get that kind of cash to start… Continue reading Does It Take Money to Make Money?
Attempting to hand out $5 bills -no strings attached- Jia Jiang seemed surprised to find that three out of five people weren’t interested. I would have anticipated that. In my work, I’m regularly encouraging clients to pursue the free cash available to them. Rarely do they. “Oh, I think that’s meant for someone else.” “I’ll… Continue reading Would You Take Jia’s $5?
With the Equifax breach, regularly checking transactions in our accounts is more important than ever. Even without a breach, check out what I found “stolen” in today’s quick review: Bank: $20 – Converted a cheque from the wrong currency. Child Recreation: $137. The rec centre cancelled the classes and offered a refund. I said yes,… Continue reading This Week’s Found Money: $1144
About once a week or so, I do a one-click download of all new transactions appearing in my personal bank account, my business bank account, and my credit card account. In my financial software, I glance at each one, ensuring the amounts and categories are correct. The entire process takes 3-5 minutes per week. Regularly,… Continue reading Found Money: $52
I review every bill that comes in and, approximately once a week, I check all of my accounts (banking, investing). This is to ensure that nothing is cuckoo. Almost every week, something is. I told you about the cell phone fraud here, the merchant trickery here, the difficulty banks have counting here, and a couple… Continue reading $300 Per Hour
In the summer, I signed up for a membership which had a refund guarantee. So far, so good, right?? When the service turned out to not be a match, I requested a partial refund—just on the segment that wasn’t a fit. The business, though, claimed that while it genuinely desired to honour the request, it… Continue reading Who Are YOU In Cahoots With?
I’m having fun time watching stuff I wrote about in my book show up in the news 🙂 The latest? TD Bank counts differently than we do! I’ve actively explored this topic, wondering what kind of year-end accounting to the government allows banks to claim transaction amounts that don’t match what we—the consumers—deposit or withdraw.… Continue reading Catching Bank’s Errors
In my book I talked about a fee that kept being added to my cell phone bill, increasing its total from $30 to $40/mo. The fee was for an unrequested “service” and simply added to my bill. When I first noticed it, I asked my cell phone company to refund the several months of costs.… Continue reading Cell Phone Bill Win!
