The Case for being Your Own Accountant

“I never balance my checkbook”. “I just pay what they tell me to.” “I don’t have time to be so precise about my statements.” These are all just excuses to be lazy with your money. Did Donald Trump or Warren Buffet make money because they didn’t care if their creditors upheld their end of their agreements or didn’t hire auditors to ensure accuracy for their income and expenses year to year? I doubt it. In their case a mistake could cost them millions but in today’s world a mistake for any one of us could costs us more in lost money than we can afford.

One client found out after several months that the agreed upon interest rate for his credit card was never changed. There were two credit cards available from his financial institution. The first, a $2000 credit limit would give him a 12.99% interest rate for all unpaid balances while the second program allowed a $5000 balance and a 9.99% interest rate. He was approved for the lower program and used that over the last 5 years. This year he applied for and was granted an increased credit limit of $5000 which would drop his interest rate to 9.99%. He’d been busy the last few months and was behind putting his statement activity in his Quicken ™ personal financial software. When he finally gathered his statements, he found that his finance charges were way out of line. He saw that for several months the interest rate stayed at 12.99% and was not changed according to his agreement. He called the financial institution and asked about the mistake. The finance company admitted that the interest did not change as it should and finance charges would be credited on the next statement.

Had this client not paid attention to his own situation no one would have caught this oversight of being overcharged in fees. This would be an unfortunate waste of money. It’s kind of like having a hole in your pocket and losing it along the way. While the monthly amount of a 3 percentage points may seem insignificant to some, simplistically over the course of a year he could have cost himself roughly $150.00 more in finance charge than he should have been paying. Think of what having an extra $150.00 could do for you.

Situations like this occur all the time only with much larger consequences. Just look at the mortgage and foreclosure fiasco. How many poor consumers were led blindly to accept foreclosure when, in some instances, proper legal procedures were not followed? Then there are many cases of unauthorized or duplicate charges in one’s checking account, identity theft issues, fraudulent applications, misappriopriation of loan payments and charges and the list goes on. People make mistakes. Computers are only as smart as those who program them and they mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are made knowingly and some are not. If no one is left to examine the results frequently, costly errors go unchecked. Nothing is infallible and being a responsible consumer means being aware that banks, credit card companies, mortgage banks, credit bureaus and any company that involves our money and our information must be checked by the very customers who use them.

Copyright 2010
Consumerwarfare.com