Money Matters

Today was my day for dealing with money -- well, actually with bills. Our Social Security checks were deposited in our account yesterday, so today was the day to dispose of those dollars.

I got done with BillPay, then went on the "Chat Line" while I was on the computer with my credit union to find out why I hadn't gotten a new Debit Card. The expiration date on mine was 12-31-2012, so it was no longer valid. Of course, the Chat Line lady had to transfer me to the Customer Service lady. After a long time on hold, she came back and told me that my new card had been sent on December 17th. She said "between the snowstorms and Christmas, the mail has been really slow. And that she was just beginning to get returned cards that were mailed on the 17th and mine wasn't one of them..." We ended the chat with my decision to wait a week and if it then hadn't arrived, I would ask to have it cancelled and a new one sent. It's a good thing Forry's debit card has a different expiration date. I guess I can use his at the grocery...

Next I went on-line to try to pay one of the ranch's credit card bills. I had no trouble logging on and getting to the screen to pay the bill. But once I told it to pay, a screen came up that said there was an error... After trying a couple more times, I called their Technical Assistance Line. After a fairly short wait, a nice lady came on the line and walked me through the same process I had just been going through with the same result. We played around with clearing the cookies and history from the browser and even switched to Foxfire to see if a different browser would make a difference. The lady said they had done some updating on their web-site over the holidays and I wasn't the only one having difficulty. Finally, we decided to try a different computer, thinking perhaps Norton's firewall might be causing a problem. We did the same cleaning maneuvers with Forry's computer, but then were able to make it work by by-passing Favorites and using Google Search to get to the website. After forty-five minutes on the phone, I got that task done.

After that, it was time to ride the bikes over to check the mail at the Annex to see if the box of mail that Daughter MM sent was here yet. There was no pink slip in our box, so we headed over to the Main Office to pay the month's electric bill which we had gotten yesterday. $214.36. Ouch! You can tell it's been cold at night and we've been running out little electric heaters both in the living room and the bathroom. I actually had to write a check for it (the only other places I write checks are when we visit a church or our hairdresser!) as the Valle del Oro has an interesting policy: "Visa and MC are accepted for Daily and Weekly Site Rents and Reservation Deposits ONLY. All other payments must be cash or check."

There are still lots of RVs arriving and the Resort is filling up. The colds and coughs unfortunately are still with us...