I had a bad feeling about what the A.T.M. would reveal about my balance, but I was shocked when I looked at the receipt: $196. We were broke.
..
“How the hell could we have run through so much money so quickly?” I asked her accusingly.
Umm.. he is in finance and he doesn’t even track his own expenses, cash burn rate?? He waits for the ATM slip to tell him his balance?
She thought it wasn’t worth agonizing over nickels and dimes. I was almost exactly the opposite. My answer to any money squeeze was to stop spending. I would skip lunch at work to save $7. If I arrived at the Metro just before the end of rush hour, I would wait for five minutes to save 50 cents on the fare.
.. and he waited for the ATM to tell him what his balance would look like??? Something is not quite right with his statements.. or this story. I am not going to keep putting excerpts from this point on in the article.. but if you read it, you might start wondering if this article is true. Not tracking your balance and running against the overdraft protection for a person who works in finance? Who warned about what was going on with Greenspan/Bernanke? .. I think some literary license was taken.
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Ucodegen,
I track my finances through online banking just about every night. And sometimes I am surprised when I see a lower balance than expected – then I talk to my wife and find out that she had to use the debit card on XYZ expense.
It is not that hard and probably happens more often in joint accounts that an ATM slip balance is a surprise. Sometimes you need to spend some money and you dont have time to tell your spouse or you forget or they forget or …
In fact, his surprise at the ATM slip balance makes his story more credible to me as a married person with one joint account between my wife and I.
