Money talk: bank fees and property taxes

Way back in 2009 I started reading personal finance blogs. I had just gone through a divorce and was anxious about my ability to pay a mortgage and all the bills by myself. It was through the comments of some of those blogs that I first “met” people who I regularly converse with via their blogs and Twitter (like Revanche of A Gai Shan Life and nicoleandmaggie of Grumpy Rumblings.)

I dabbled with writing about my own experiences with money, budgeting, etc, but I never tried to remake this, my personal blog, as a “personal finance” blog. Money — how to manage it, increase my income, and minimize mistakes — has been weighing on my mind a lot lately, though. I’m not sure if I’ll start writing more about money topics yet, but today I want to write about some of the money topics that have been occupying my thoughts.

As noted in my last post, this has been an expensive year for me. I expect some of that money to make its way back to me, but it looks like the bulk of it won’t get into my accounts until January at the earliest. Yesterday I received the additional refund check from the State of California and deposited it in my checking account; dare I hope to receive the federal refund check before end of year? Only time will tell.

Usually I put deposits like this into one of my savings accounts (yes, I have several and I could certainly write about them another time), but I learned the hard way last month that I hadn’t been padding out my checking account enough for unexpected little hits, so I’m trying to rectify that. What happened? Well, due to my habit of keeping a minimum of funds in my checking account and poor planning, I triggered an “excessive transactions fee” in my main savings account. Ugh. That was $10 I really didn’t want to lose.

Here’s how it happened: one of my savings accounts is my “general fund.” I have my paycheck direct deposit go into this account. About once a month I tally up my variable bills — PG&E, and the various cash back credit cards I use — and transfer funds from my “general fund” to my checking account to pay those bills. I also transfer a little bit extra so I can withdraw cash now and then for some things. There is a separate recurring transfer every month from this “general fund” to checking to cover my automated mortgage payment. And I have a recurring transfer from the “general fund” to another savings account that I use to save for annual expenses, like my property taxes and LTC insurance premium. So, if you’re following along, that means that I regularly have at least 3 transfers a month from this “general fund” account.

Occasionally there is an unexpected expense I need to cover, though, like checks I have to write for home repairs. I then have to assess how much extra I have in the checking account and transfer extra funds to cover any checks that haven’t been planned for. I also have this “general fund” account set as the overdraft protection fund for my checking account.

Last month, I had a “perfect storm” of events that tipped me over the withdrawal limit and led to the “excessive transactions fee.” Because my LTC insurance premium (which is set to be withdrawn from my “general fund” account automatically) was due, I had 4 qualifying withdrawals/transfers just to cover my planned bills that month. I also had to transfer some extra money to cover a payment to a tradesman to fix my heater, bringing me up to 5 withdrawals. Then, I ended up writing two more checks to another tradesman when the first one didn’t fix the problem. The padding in my checking account wasn’t enough to cover these additional checks, and I triggered the overdraft process, not just once, but twice by the time I thought to check my account balance. Damn.

Well, next year the LTC insurance payment will be handled a different way, so I won’t repeat that scenario again. And, I’ll put some thought into how to handle my monthly bills in a more efficient manner, too.

I’ll be ending this year with another big payout by pre-paying the second installment of my property taxes. The payment isn’t due until February 1, 2018, but with the new tax law taking effect on January 1, I will no longer be able to deduct the full amount of my property taxes + state income taxes, as they exceed the $10,000 limit. That should give me an even fatter tax refund in 2018, although it doesn’t bode well for tax refunds in 2018 and beyond.

Overall, I’m really glad that my December 29 paycheck is going to be my third paycheck this month, making it an “extra” one that isn’t part of my normal budgeting process. Here’s to hoping 2018 will be a strong financial year for me!

Are there any end of year money moves you’re making? Any other financial things I should consider before 2017 is over?