When you don't keep track of your money, you run out of it very quickly.
"Money is the root of all evil!" someone said to me once, misquoting the Bible. Timothy says the love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself. Obsess about money and you will likely be miserable and make others miserable as well. Funny how "miser" and "miserable" have the same root!
But that doesn't mean ignoring money is the answer, either. It is a powerful tool and even a weapon (ask Russia about sanctions!) and can hurt you badly, if handled carelessly. I make the analogy to guns - useful in some cases, dangerous all the time unless handled very, very carefully. When you handle firearms like they did on the Rust set, people die.
By the way, how did a live round end up on the set? I've read countless articles about this, but none come right out and lay blame for it. The Armorer is shown in one photo with a tray of rounds, one of which is clearly a live round. Others claim that striking guild workers "borrowed" the weapons to go shooting at beer cans in the desert. Whatever the reason, it was sloppy, and when you get sloppy with guns, people get hurt or die.
The same is true with money. Every day, it seems, some fool kills themselves over money - failing to take Timothy's advice about the love of money and at the same time being careless with it.
I fell into the careless trap for most of my life. My Dad spent money freely and then freaked out at the end of the month when the bills came due. He had no idea how much he was spending and on what. He thought a wallet full of credit cards (at least 20, I am not kidding! Every store and gas station had their own card) was a sign of success. It was a sign of sloppiness.
When I started my own business, I realized quickly how ignorant I was about money. There were some painful lessons involved. I bought a copy of Quickbooks and took an adult education class on how to use it. We balanced the books every day and accounted for every penny and from then on, there were no more painful lessons.
This isn't to say this is a panacea for all personal or business problems. You can account for every penny and still go bankrupt. The difference is, if you are not sloppy with money you can see the bad things coming and either prepare for them or avoid them entirely. One reason I decided to work from home and be a solo practitioner was that once I put everything on Quickbooks, I realized the people I was hiring were costing me money and not making me more money. So rather than ride that all the way down, I made changes and avoided disaster.
But my personal finances were still in disarray. I was making all the payments so everything was Kosher, right? But an unexpected tax bill put me behind the 8-ball and I realized I had to start treating my life as a business if was to pay off this hefty ($40,000) capital gains bill.
And I realized, once I started tracking expenses, that I was spending a little in a lot of ways, that added up to a lot of money. There was no one single thing that was tanking my budget, but a death of a thousand cuts.
I had always been suspicious of subscription services, since my first experience with a local cable company back in the 1980s. $30 a month may not seem like a lot, but when you are only making $17,000 a year, it adds up - to $360 a year! Doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it is a big chunk of your disposable income. Those "little things" cumulatively cost a lot - by design. And marketers and business-people know they can sell you an expensive product or service based on a low monthly price, rather than showing you the overall cost. It is why car leasing is so popular - it isn't a good deal, just one than seems attractive.
A reader sends me this link to a Guardian article about "accidental" subscriptions - free-trial memberships and such that are easy to sign up for, but nearly impossible to cancel. Online services and gym memberships are two of the biggest offenders. And many people keep paying these fees for months or even years (or in the case of AoL, decades) telling themselves "I'll get around to cancelling that next month! It's only a few dollars!" And that's why they make it so hard to cancel - they know a certain percentage of people will simply give up, at least for the time being.
Others, well, they never notice as they never go online and check their balances or charges and when the credit card bill comes due, they just pay the minimum amount and then forgetaboutit for another 30 days. Usually folks like that end up in bankruptcy court - drained dry by bogus charges, at least in part.
I wrote about these "ghost subscriptions" before - when I saw an ad for an online service that, for a low monthly fee, would monitor your finances for ghost subscriptions and then try to cancel them. A ghost subscription for ghost subscriptions! It is like the MLM bounce-back companies that prey upon disgruntled MLM victims. "Sure that last MLM you signed up for was a con, but this time it's the real deal!" Dumb enough to do it once, why not again?
The easiest way to avoid this problem is just not to sign up in the first place. Almost every subscription these days is predicated on a "free trial period" followed by your credit card being charged. Some are pretty sneaky - putting up a one-click signup box that you can easily click by accident while trying to "X" it out. Funny how that box "jumped" the moment you moved your mouse over it. There are few, if any, of these subscription services that are worth anything. Amazon Prime is worthless - you don't get your packages much faster than normal, and odds are, you are buying too much crap online already.
And no, the latest season of "Mandolorian" isn't worth paying a years' subscription fee for. Maybe one month, but many streaming services are now toying with the idea of forcing subscribers to pay for an entire year, rather than by the month. They hate people like me who sign up for one month and then cancel. So far, they haven't made it hard to cancel. So far.
I should note that so far Disney has been decent about cancelling. I signed up for one month and then a few weeks later, cancelled online. Not only was the process painless, but it kept the subscription active until the end of the original subscription period. Given that Disney is losing money on the Disney+ streaming service, it is only a matter of time before some clever business major persuades them to "improve" their subscription model - right?
I saw online a fellow who said he had a hard time cancelling a service. He got the idea of using a VPN to virtually relocate himself to California, where apparently there is a State law allowing for one-click cancelling (damn Socialists! Always looking out for the little guy! Trump would never do that!). Another was able to "move" his gym membership to California and then cancel it online, rather than being forced to drive 50 miles to his old gym to cancel in person.
And let me drive home that last snarky comment about Trump: Republicans have been doing everything in their power to shut down the consumer protection agency. If you think Trump is out to help "the little guy" you are seriously delusional. Trump is out to support Trump. Full stop.
Of course, the other thing to do is challenge the charge on your credit card and ask the credit card company to block all future charges. This may work, it may not. The company might come back with the "membership agreement" showing the charges are "legitimate" and thus should not be reversed. After all, they offered you services to a gym that is now three States away after you moved, right? On the other hand, if a company gets a lot of charge-backs, the credit card companies might stop taking charges from them. Then again, if they have millions in "legitimate" charges, well, money talks.
Another fellow was able to shut down the "retention specialist" by telling them he had moved overseas and no longer needed the gym membership. Retention specialists are on a quota, so there is no point in pumping a dry hole, for them. You shouldn't have to talk to one in the first place, however!
If you MUST have a subscription service, think about it carefully and read all the fine print about how to cancel if you don't like it. Mark the cancellation date on your calendar, as our reader suggests. Never take verbal promises by salespeople as being true. Yes, they will lie to your face and tell you it is easy to cancel, when in fact, it requires three lawyers and a certified letter. Never fall for the "free trial" gambit - the "free trial" is a sure sign the service they are offering is shitty and also hard to cancel. If a subscription service is worthwhile, they don't have to snooker people into it with "free trials". The "Free Trial" is pretty much Police Tape marking off a potential crime scene.
Myself, it has been decades, if ever, since I ever had an issue with nonsense like this. I have always avoided subscription services like the plague and have been skeptical of them since, well, when I was a kid and signed up for "Columbia Record House" - remember that? But even that was easy to cancel with a phone call. And quite frankly, they wanted me gone after I returned almost every record they sent me. They would mail you records, unsolicited, and you had so many days to mail them back or be charged for them - it was a weird business model! 13 records for ten cents! - that was the "free trial" to get you hooked. They hoped you'd paid for the later records at the regular retail price. My 100% return rate convinced them they had nothing to gain by keeping me on as a member.
But heck, I was a teenager back then. I have learned a few things since - I think. And maybe also, I have a deep skepticism for business-people and marketers, perhaps influenced by my parents, who assumed nearly every transaction in life was a potential ripoff.
And you know what? They were pretty much right about that.
