In which I wanna bitch about financial stuff.

As you may or may not know, I’m not a legitimate adult-type person. I’m actually one of those financially marginalized creatures who literally cannot cash a check on her own. Anywhere. Ever.

In fact, I’m so marginalized that I can’t use my own money without paying fees because I don’t have enough of it.

Below a certain point, poverty is inevitable because it just plain costs extra to be poor. If you don’t have a checking account, you cannot cash a check for free. Even if you walk into the bank with seven pieces of ID, they’ll charge you a non-customer cashing fee. If the bank the check was drawn on isn’t local, you have to go to a check cashing place, and their fees are as high as the state you’re in will allow.

If you don’t have a checking account, you have to pay fees in order to pay your bills: money orders cost $2 or more apiece these days, and even pre-paid debit cards’ BillPay services cost $1 per check.

If you don’t have a checking account, you pay transaction fees. Every single time you swipe your pre-paid debit card, it costs $2.

I can’t get a real account at a real bank because I’m listed on TeleCheck. My last checking account was literally seized by an unscrupulous collector, and the bank reported me for not paying overdraft fees or something.

I’m still really pissed off about all this, because putting a lien on my checking account wasn’t strictly legal, and my bank certainly wasn’t authorized to let some strange company take all of my money. By the time I discovered that the collector had done it all bass-ackwards (the judgement should have come first, you dickwad, and I hope you suffer a terrifying and painfully fatal heart attack quite soon for fucking up my life like this for six hundred dollars) and that my bank was probably culpable too and that I could, with sufficiently herculean effort, make them all undo what they’d done it was three years later and I didn’t even try.

Anyway.

The point is that I have a pre-paid debit card, because that’s all I can get.

Most of the time I love it. It takes direct deposit, it’s got a great web interface with built-in budgeting and a handy savings account option and it texts me automatically. If I pay the annual $70 fee, it’s pretty cheap to use.

But. Every year my fee plan runs out, and every year my pre-paid debit card company does not notify me. And every year, I end up spending somewhere between $25 and $75 in one- or two-dollar transaction fees before I notice. And every year, IT TOTALLY PISSES ME OFF.

I know why they don’t do automatic renewal: they want my money. They’re not in business to provide banking services to marginalized people, they’re in business to to nickel and dime us to death. I get it. I JUST HATE IT.

Since I’m still nowhere near getting myself removed from TeleCheck’s roster (it takes a long, looooooong time to pay off this kind of debt when you’re in my tax bracket), I’ll be a pre-paid debit card user for years to come.

Next week, when I get my UI deposit, I’ll be absolutely broke. After I pay the cell phone bill and then my annual fee, the deposit will be gone. And I have to pay the annual fee because it’s so much cheaper than the program they call “pay-as-you-go.” I’ve already spent $25 in the past week on fees; $25 I really didn’t have in the first place.

In context, I’m fine. I have a roof over my head and (after I go to the store and spend my last thirty dollars) food to eat; I have a computer and an iPod and a Kindle; I have things to knit; I have an Internet full of movies and shows to watch. I mean, it’s not like I’m homeless or something.

But I can’t see Amma in Chicago; I can’t buy clothes; I can’t pay off my debt any faster; I can’t have a tattoo; I can’t afford to get my hair color fixed; I can’t afford a guitar strap or a pair of walking shoes or fabric to sew or a new mattress, and it’s just plain frustrating.

I was going to buy $55 worth of groceries today, but my card company took $25 in transaction fees this week. Being this broke is pissing me off, but it’s going to stay like this for the next year while I go back to school and I just need to get used to not having anything beyond the basics. The absolute bedrock fundamental ultimate basics.

Hopefully I can count “bitching” as some form of psychological adjustment. No? Oh. Damn.