Personal accounting error in your favor, collect $300
2014-Feb-06, Thursday 19:33![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Things I'm thankful for: addition errors.
I went down to the bank today to go deposit the remaining savings bonds that I haven't cashed in yet, because I'll need them to pay off the last ofschoolpsychnerd's student loans a few days before she graduates in order to laugh in the face of the student loan companies, and it turns out that I was wrong about how much we actually had. $300 wrong, in that they were worth a lot more than I thought they were.
I realize that this is the textbook definition of a first world problem, but it really bothers me how off I was in my calculations. I've been keeping track of my own accounts for almost 15 years at this point, from when I was introduced to money software by my father, through the demise of Microsoft Money and switching to Quicken, through the rise of Mint (which I mostly use soschoolpsychnerd has easy access to a close-enough copy of our budget), I make sure entries are properly categorized and filed literally every day.
So, how did I make such an error? It turns out that the software I use, with the file put together and tracked by my father before being handed over to me, was incomplete. There was a bond included in the bundle he gave me (that he had been keeping in a safe deposit box) that hadn't been entered in, and I never bothered to specifically check the envelope containing the bonds closely enough to find it because I figured that my father, from whom I learned my penny-pinching ways (though by observation, not explicit teaching), wouldn't have made such a mistake.
On the one hand, it's like secret free money. On the other hand, it's not doing much to convince me that I don't need to use such a heavy hand when managing my finances.
I went down to the bank today to go deposit the remaining savings bonds that I haven't cashed in yet, because I'll need them to pay off the last of
schoolpsychnerd's student loans a few days before she graduates in order to laugh in the face of the student loan companies, and it turns out that I was wrong about how much we actually had. $300 wrong, in that they were worth a lot more than I thought they were.I realize that this is the textbook definition of a first world problem, but it really bothers me how off I was in my calculations. I've been keeping track of my own accounts for almost 15 years at this point, from when I was introduced to money software by my father, through the demise of Microsoft Money and switching to Quicken, through the rise of Mint (which I mostly use so
schoolpsychnerd has easy access to a close-enough copy of our budget), I make sure entries are properly categorized and filed literally every day.So, how did I make such an error? It turns out that the software I use, with the file put together and tracked by my father before being handed over to me, was incomplete. There was a bond included in the bundle he gave me (that he had been keeping in a safe deposit box) that hadn't been entered in, and I never bothered to specifically check the envelope containing the bonds closely enough to find it because I figured that my father, from whom I learned my penny-pinching ways (though by observation, not explicit teaching), wouldn't have made such a mistake.
On the one hand, it's like secret free money. On the other hand, it's not doing much to convince me that I don't need to use such a heavy hand when managing my finances.
