Abigail M. Schilling

I have a bit of a credit problem because it is really hard for me to remember when to pay which bills. I am super organized. I have spreadsheets up the wazoo. And yet, somehow, at least once a quarter I mess the whole system up and my credit profile drops a few notches.

(Side note: In my mind, the sound effects accompanying the rise and fall of my credit score are exactly like the Tivo skip sounds. Clearly, I need to get Tivo so I can properly associate those sounds and also so can stop freaking out about Grey's and The Office being on at exactly the same time. Life is tough being the target demographic; sometimes I have to look the other way during commercials otherwise I will totally buy the new iPod Nano because I love that song! Also, Old Navy sweaters* even though I'm sure they'd look terrible on me.)

(Side note number two: When I was camp girl in high school there was this girl who worked with me who was from the "town" our camp was in. I don't even think it was technically a town. Anyway, her parents owned the electronics store in the nearest town with actual streets and I thought that was totally hokey because I am a judger. I was all, fine, I guess they use electronics in the middle of nowhere, things like toasters and maybe microwaves. But satellite TV? Does that even work here? Clearly, I had not yet grasped the concept of satellite. So this electronics girl was always wearing electronic label t-shirts that I assume she got for free. The point of this story is that she had a Tivo shirt in high school! This was 7 years ago and the girl knew about Tivo. Talk about ahead of the curve. Also, I just used the internet to see if the store was still around and it is! And it had this super fancy diagram and I was all surprised. Guess I'm still that judger girl.)

So, bottom line is that this happened recently and I forgot to pay one of my credit cards that I'm trying to pay off (Game Show, please send me my money) and I incurred a late payment fee of $30. That fee put me over my credit limit and I got hit with a $39 fee. Basically, I just burned $70 for fun. Whee! Obviously, this would make me feel awful if I dwelled (dwelt?) on it, which I can't because then I wouldn't be able to love. Thusly, it continues to take forever to get this card paid off.

I still receive paper copies of my credit card statements just in case they give me a coupon for free Starbucks or something as an insert (this happened once so I continue to kill trees in hopes of another miracle). I usually open them, peer in the envelope and the reject it by throwing it into a pile of messy, half-read mail. But today I thought I'd mix things up a bit and read through my bill. I already knew it's contents (you are overdue! and you wasted $70! again!) but I wanted to see it again. My own personal version of time travel.

What they didn't tell me on the website but did mention on the bill was that I can get help with this. In fact, I can go to wamucanhelp.com. This was all kinds of encouraging. Suddenly, I felt as if the heavens were opening up, that an angel was reaching down to me and saying, "it's okay, we all get confused. Wamu can help!" I thought if I went to that site they would reverse all my ridiculous (and deserved) fees. But, alas, first the page kept timing out and then my account information couldn't be found. Good thing I have my stories (the real and the kind on TV) to keep me warm at night.

*I cannot link to youtube videos without giving a shout out to the always awesome comments. My favorite for this video, "that could possibly be the worst song i have ever heard... if you are chilly please take my sweater? singer songwriter not exactly!"