Sunday, May 06, 2007

$3,244.98

That's a chunk of change for most of us. And you'd think, with my years of meticulous record-keeping, I'd know where it came from. I've used Quicken to track expenses and pay bills since way back in the 1990s.

I was having financial upheaval in January and February which I allowed to slide. I started trying to get caught up in March and April and I'm only now almost finished. I've reconciled all my bank statements and credit card statements except for the American Express statement with a 3/7/07 closing date.

The reason that one isn't finished is because there was a payment made on 2/8/07 for $3,244.98 and I have NO IDEA what the source is for those funds. Under normal circumstances I'd remember exactly. But during the first two months of the year, I had a negative $2,800 balance in one of my checking accounts at a California credit union, a negavtive balance of around $1,700 on the VISA card associated with that account, and several attempts to write a cash advance check from another credit card to pay those off resulted in a bounced check for $2,900 and another for $2,800 because in each instance I was about $40 over the credit limit thanks to interest fees. There was so much juggling of funds going on from one account to another I'm surprised I got any of it cleared up.

This mysterious American Express payment is about to drive me bonkers. I even called American Express and all they would tell me is that it was paid with a check. I'm assuming that means a paper check as opposed to an electronic payment. Since neither of my two checking accounts were the source of those funds, I can assume it has to be a cash advance check on a credit card. Which means I'm not done reconciling yet or I would have found it.

Sigh. Isn't this how we all love to spend our precious weekend time?

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