Wednesday, September 12, 2012

A $4.95 mistake

Yup, that would be a fee. Or as other people call it: stupidity tax. I was lazy and didn't yield on the side of caution or reason when transferring funds around.

My father asked me to help him transfer some money to his Paypal account. I normally do that by having him deposit money to my bank account, which in turn I'll transfer to his Paypal, after the money is posted. But he needed the money right away to cover for an already-scheduled transaction, instead of having it hit their bank (which is empty) and incur a fee. He said he would deposit the money that day, but I know better than that, meaning at the earliest, it'd be the following day.

Now, as much as I'd like to think I have how long it takes for one transaction to post, I was not in any mood to play with being put to overdraft by depositing money to Paypal that I don't have. But I caught out of the corner of my eye that you could have a credit card as funding source. But only if you were paying for goods. Now, all of my Paypal payments in the pass to my father have been as gifts. I did some quick reading and saw that as a buyer, there wouldn't be any fees. I completed the transaction in the nick of time, and... yes. He only received part of the money, minus his fee. I did have $5 floating around in my bank account, so I completed the transfer with that and gave him his full amount, absorbing the stupidity tax for myself.


Just when I think I am smart enough, life has its ways to plant my feet on the ground. Lesson learned! What is the last stupidity tax you've paid? Other such taxes (though not my own) that I can think of is parking meter tickets. Working close to a courthouse, we have TONS of those parking meters, and I always see at least 3 cars with tickets on their windshields per week.

4 comments:

  1. $8 = Library fees for a DVD I forgt about! :/

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  2. Wow, I used to pay a lot more than $8 for late DVD fees because they were about $1 or $2 per day fees, and I'd take out a stack... I don't even want to think about it.

    Typically I do a bank overdraft once or twice per year. I can get the bank to refund it, usually, but the other institution might not. I had to pay $20 or so to the gas and electric company, and I'm about to check Verizon Wireless to see if they hit me with the same.

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  3. My biggest stupidity tax was accidentally putting a parking receipt UPSIDE DOWN on my dashboard - I think I had to pay an extra $60 for that bit of stupidity!!

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  4. Recently I overslept at the hotel I was in and didn't move my car from the lot across the street in time so my $5 parking turned into $30 parking... Didn't make that mistake the next day!

    -Brian

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