SOLSC March 20: Balancing Expenses

            Do you balance your credit card statement?

            I do. I am obsessive about it. Until the pandemic, my credit card was used mostly for expensive items. If I had dinner with a friend, I paid cash. If I went to the movies, I bought my ticket with cash. Books, groceries, dry cleaning, all paid with cash.

            But at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn’t know how it spread, so we didn’t know whether going to the bank to get cash was healthy. And so much that we needed was now ordered online and delivered, thus paid for by credit card. My credit card became my prime method of payment for pretty much everything.

            Today I spent almost an hour going over my credit card statement. First, I checked each of the receipts I have against the amounts on the statement. Then I looked at the remaining amounts to make sure I knew what they were: automatic monthly payments for subscriptions, farmers’ market payments (they don’t give paper receipts), online donations.

            Every now and then, there’s a charge I can’t remember. This month it was something called Jewish World Watch. The amount looked like it might be a donation, but for what? I don’t remember this organization. However, the statement contained a phone number, so I called it. And without much of a wait, I reached a woman named Jan. She had a record of my online donation, and it was for medical supplies to Syria. Of course — this was a Jewish organization providing support to Syrians affected by the earthquake that hit along the border of Syria and Turkey back in February. Jan e-mailed me a copy of the receipt, and everything was cool. 

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 20 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!