Monday, February 25, 2008

smile when they ask you too and you'll get them expecting things

Happy Monday.
I did a stupid thing last week. Or actually, somehow I managed to do a stupid thing a couple of weeks ago, but because it was a stupid thing having to do with automatic transfers of funds, it didn't kick in until last week.
I have set up automatic transfers of money into various accounts, to coincide with my pay dates. Its really nice, an easy way to save money and stay on-budget or close to it. When I first set it up (sometime last year) I was really fanatical about checking every time I had a transfer set to go, to see what the balance was in each account, see when it had gone through, see how much was left in my "spending money" account, that sort of thing. But then I got used to it, and used to just having a certain amount left over after all was said and done with the transfers.
I got a notice from Sharebuilder (who I've been using for a couple of years now, but who I've only been automatically saving with for maybe five months) recommending that I check my account and "re-balance" to make sure I'm meeting my savings goals et cetera. I'm totally invested in Index funds through Sharebuilder, so there isn't really too much to do as far as "balancing", but the stock market is kind of tanking, and it has come to my attention that I am going to need to be investing in a new(-er, it will still be used, rest assured, but it will be a new-to-me) car in the near-er rather than farther future. So I decided to about halve my contributions to Sharebuilder and funnel the other monies into a "car fund". I thought I had gone about doing this correctly, but apparently I never canceled the original transfer-of-funds order for Sharebuilder, I just added another that was half as much. At the same time I set up a transfer into an ING account for half as much. So I got screwed on this one when I tried to withdraw the same money twice basically. I feel like such a doofus. I'm really lucky it didn't screw anything else up, but now I am waiting two more days for that money to get re-deposited into my spending money account so I can buy groceries.
Its always something, isn't it?

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