Financial Funnies

This isn’t entirely about finance but I liked the alteration of the title.

Here are my two stories.

The first has to do with my bank. If you own a house you know once a year the bank refigures your escrow balance. Invariably there is a short fall in the account. You’re giving two choices. You can pay the difference or have the shortfall rolled into your mortgage payment. I always pay the difference. I don’t want my payment to go up. I just like it that way.

About a week or so ago I got a letter from my bank. It said that they hadn’t properly calculated the amount that I owed. They were correcting that mistake and sending me a check for the difference. Unfortunately I did not keep the letter because I’d love to actually quote directly from it.

On Saturday I got my check. It was for 5 cents. Yes 5 cents. Let me state that again it was for 5 cents. Now I know the original letter was probably triggered by a computer program. But really couldn’t they have just applied the 5 cents to my mortgage balance. What a waste of money for let me write it again 5 cents. I feel like Lucy in Peanuts charging 5 cents for advice.

Now the other financial funny is something different altogether.

I got a little early on Wednesday from work. I was meeting my friend Stu and we were going to go to dinner and then to a GW game. Getting out early allowed me time to go over to the White House gift shop and get the 2014 Christmas ornament. I paid $18.95 for it.

After going to the museums on Sunday, I was heading toward the Metro and I stopped off at souvenir shop. They just so happened to have the ornament. It was on sale for $46.00. If you bought one you could get another for half price. Still more than the cost of the ornament from the White House gift shop. The mark up almost 2 and a half times the actual price. The other thing was that all the ornaments no matter what year they were from were $46. At the gift shop ornaments from other years are usually a couple of dollars less.

And those are my financial funnies.