The Difference Between 50 and 500

You would think that after years of college, graduate school, teaching and tutoring that I would know the difference between 50 and 500.

Apparently, I do not.

Yesterday, it came to my attention, via hubby, that our checking account had no money in it.  This was a surprise to me.  Even though we are stretched very, very tightly month after month, hubby and I both work very hard to make our ends of the budget meet.  Needless to say, this is not an easy task with a family of kiddies that are growing like weeds (Ab grew 3 inches since last year!) and gas back up to around $3.00 a gallon.  But, despite the fact that hubby gets paid tomorrow, I still believed that we should have had some money in our account, albeit a lowly amount.

"That can't be right!"  I replied to hubby.  "I know we had extra expenses this week like the doctor's office, prescriptions, and of course, groceries, but we still should have some left over."

Hubby scrolled through our online activity and replied, "Well, according to this we don't!"

And then, not 2 seconds later he asked, "Did you pay 5oo.oo dollars to credit card X?"

Instantly on alert I screeched, "$500.00?  No.  It should have been more like 50.00!"

But, after close inspection and detective work I discovered that I had paid $500.00 to credit card X and not the $50.00 that I believed I had paid.  Apparently, I had accidently punched in an extra zero when I typed the number online, and I had not caught my error.  The payment went through and we, in fact, were and are out of money.

I feel like a complete idiot.

And, I felt even worse explaining this to my bank this morning.  The lovely banker lady actually laughed when I explained my mistake, that is until she saw how distraught I was.  Although she did not have the authority to override my overdraft charges, she forwarded my case to the bank manager.  I am hoping that my long standing relationship with the bank and the fact that this has never happened to me before help shed some positive light on the situation.

But, I worry that it won't.

And yet, even though we scrape by each and every month because we chose to have me stay at home with the kids, I still feel blessed each day.

Because my kiddies don't know about overdrafts or extra zeros or even money for that matter.  Ethan just think that the bank hands it out along with the suckers to anyone in the drive through line.  My kiddies just know how to smile and make my heart melt, how to laugh and make me laugh, and how to love a crazy, harried mom like me. . .

Even if I don't know the difference between 50 and 500.