this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

It never fails that as soon as I've made a fabulous money decision, I nearly immediately make an incredibly stupid one.

A few months ago, I switched our homeowners' insurance (yay - good choice!), yet didn't immediately cancel the old insurance (boo - bad choice!). I naively thought that once the new insurance company billed our mortgage company (we have an escrow account), it would set in motion a series of events that would ultimately end in the old insurance company realizing we were no longer their customers. But when I received a bill from the new insurance company (I did give them the necessary information to bill the mortgage company, I'm not sure why they didn't), I went ahead and told the mortgage company about our new homeowners' insurance and cancelled the old policy. We eventually received a check in the mail for the difference due to us (the policy was cancelled before the year was up), but it wasn't as large as it would have been if I would have just cancelled right away.

Next time I won't get so excited about the money success and instead try and focus on thwarting the inevitable money fiasco that's probably just around the corner.

Yesterday I received a call from the collections department of one of our local hospitals in regards to a bill that I actually paid several weeks ago. It was a call that I half expected, given how things had previously gone with this bill.

When I first received it, I knew it wasn't correct. They were billing me for forty dollars more than they should have. I called and sure enough, the billing rep can see that I did indeed pay $40 upfront when I took my son to the nutritionist. She said she'd go ahead and make that correction and I'd get a revised bill in the mail.

I didn't get a new bill in the mail, instead I got the old, incorrect bill a month later. So, I call again, tell the billing rep that I already paid $40 of it, and I go ahead and make a payment over the phone. But that payment never gets processed. A few weeks later, I call again to make a payment. This time at least, the billing rep tells me that my balance is the correct amount! A few days later, I receive a receipt in the mail and all is well.

Except that is not, because as is evidenced from my previous experiences, the right hand of this company has clearly not yet met the left hand. I told the collections lady that I paid it several weeks ago and had a receipt to prove it. She did a bit of typing on the computer, and sure enough, I did pay it! I have a strange feeling this is not over.

On a similar note, last week's mail brought with it a lab bill. Suspicious simply because we have $0 copays for all lab tests. I can't make any sense of the bill, so I call the lab. The girl I talked to pretty much had no idea other than it looked like the insurance company had paid, but then taken back the payment. I call the insurance company. The man I talked to did a lot of digging and found some paperwork that wasn't filed correctly, which apparently resulted in them taking back the payment. He said he'd correct it.

So that's two bills in a fairly short amount of time that were incorrect. I wonder how many past bills have also been incorrect, yet still blindly paid by me. None, I hope.

What errors have you noticed on your bills?

Contrary to what you've seen on this blog recently (i.e. nothing), money has been on my mind an awful lot lately. Namely, that big holiday that is quickly coming near. One of the savings accounts that hasn't been touched at all this year (despite the car buying and the medical bill paying) is the Christmas savings account. Well, I take that back, but the only reason it's been touched is so it can grow. Each month a set amount transfers out of our main checking accounts into that account. So easy.

In previous years I've come up short when it came to saving for Christmas. I never quite socked away enough. It's never been really a big deal, we still don't even come close to going into debt to pay for it, but it's annoying.  Last year, I took a really good look at everything I spent on Christmas related expenses (and by everything, I mean even the extra groceries and stamps for the Christmas cards) and upped that monthly amount that gets transferred into the Christmas savings account. So, I have high hopes that this year will be different!

I know how much I have to spend on Christmas from here on out. But past experience tells me that I need a detailed plan to make it work, and often that's the part that I'm not so good at.

Have you started planning your Christmas shopping lists yet?