As The Pandemic Slogs On

      Each new month of this pandemic provides another challenge. Lately we sat on pins and needles, running low on personal checks to pay our bills. We'd heard of mail delays but had never waited this long to get our package of new personal checks to be delivered. Was it staffing shortages because of quarantines and the like? My brother passed along the fact that mail carriers were calling in sick because they got ill with their second Covid inoculation. So if it's not the disease, it's the cure then.

       Regardless, when we were down to only two checks, we had to come up with a plan B. I know our creditors would love for us to initiate their 'automatic bill pay' or some other 'eco-billing' plan which might give them direct access to our bank account. I'm not a fan and probably never will be. I'll always want a paper bill so we can write a paper check.

     My brother arranged for some type of bill pay plan that ended up paying for his flip phone service through 2023. Last I heard, he was on his way to the bank to check his transactions since he had no clue how that happened. I imagine there are folks out there with paid service plans for cars and appliances that don't even exist. Then there's trying to cancel those automatic billing plans. I've heard it's problematic even if you die. No thanks. I don't want to be getting dunning notices after I'm gone.

     So with my credit card bill, I decided to go straight to our bank and pay in person, taking the money out of our savings to pay it off forthwith. When I tried to enter the bank, the door wouldn't open. Turns out our Bank of America branch was closed. In fact, all the local BOA bank branches were closed, blaming staff shortages and Covid. But other banks are open. I'm sure even the Bailey Building and Loan from It's A Wonderful Life remained open.

     While we were dealing with this latest wrinkle in pandemania, my son informed us of his issues trying to get his nine-year-old son Grant to finish some math story problems at home. Grant has to do remote learning on certain days.

     His problem: Mary has $27. If she goes to the store and buys six pairs of socks at $4 each, how much money will she have left over?

      Grant ranted that NOBODY needs that many new pairs of socks (I guess that's especially true in these times with so many people at home). So my son asked Grant to determine first how much the socks cost. But whatever it cost was too much money in Grant's estimation. Then he added, “Why do the people in these math books have so much money?”

     I think all of us now are waiting for things to get back to some sort of normalcy. Coping can be tricky. I never learned whether Grant determined the answer to his sock math story problem. My wife and I figured out our bills. I paid one in person in cash, we put our cable TV bill on our credit card, and I did find a way on-line to make a one-time transfer of funds from our savings account to pay our monthly credit card bill.

    But using our credit card to pay our cable bill triggered an unexpected chain of events.  Our son who lives in St Louis got a "thank you for your payment" e-mail from our cable provider.  It freaked him out since he knew it was not HIS cable bill so why should he be getting a thank you for a payment.  And I have absolutely no clue how his e-mail got linked to our cable bill.  I can imagine how panicked he would have become if the thank you would have added that he's paid up through 2023 as happened with my brother.  Just shows you that even paying bills is not easy in these times.

     Then the following day our checks arrived in the mail.