Because I spent most of today figuring out my stupid rent situation, here’s a song for the destitute. It’s Elizabeth Cotten’s version of Shake Sugaree, a Cotten wrote with her grandchildren. Notable covers include one by the sadly neglected Fred Neil on his Everybody’s Talkin’ album, and one by Mary Lou Lord on her major-label outing Got No Shadow.
Cotten’s version appears in the depressing but lovable 1991 Vietnam-era film Dogfight, for those of you recognize the song and spent some part of your life obsessed with River Phoenix and/or Lili Taylor.
The other issue I’ve got going on is that my roommate gave me his half of the rent with a money order. Being new to the world of check-like things that aren’t actually checks, I told him to make it out to me, thinking I could just cash it when I went to the bank yesterday. But it turns out that banks don’t let you do that unless you have enough money to cover it. You can deposit it, like a check, and then wait for it to clear, even though the whole point of money orders (I thought) is that they’re supposed to be just like cash. Since my landlord is sort of understandably pissy about the rent being a week late, I figured I’d just go to a 7-11 (where it came from) and cash it there.
Except that they don’t cash them. They just issue them. They’ll only cash them if they’re for less than $75. So then I went to another Western Union place, and I was told that they didn’t cash them either, and that I’d have to go to a check cashing place. I haven’t done that yet, because I’m pretty sure they charge a bunch of money for the service. Since I have more or less exactly the rent money, I can’t afford to give a chunk of it to a dodgy check-cashing place just because they’re the only option. I AM SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW!!
Filed under: money (lack of) | Tags: rhode island, things that suck, unemployment
So, it’s been a while now since I’ve used the “money (lack of)” tag on any of my posts, and since I have spent most of the last 48 hours fretting over stupid things I figured I might as well share.
As you may or may not have gathered, I’m currently unemployed. Busy all the time, planning events and fundraisers out the wazoo, but not actually making any money doing it. (Also, I’m not pursuing the rentboy thing anymore, for personal/boyfriendal reasons.)
In Rhode Island, you get your weekly unemployment payments via a debit/Visa card, which makes it easy to get cash out of ATMs and track your payments and, though credit cards are evil, I’d rather do that than have to go to the bank and stand in line and wait twenty-four hours for checks to clear and everything.
There’s just one problem.
The cards are issued by Chase. And there are no Chase banks in Rhode Island. That means that every single time one of the sixty-eight thousand unemployed Rhode Islanders takes money out, they have to pay an ATM convenience fee. Even if each unemployed person takes all their money out in one lump sum, and assuming people will only pay $1.50 per charge (which is conservative these days), that’s about two hundred thousand dollars a week that the state forces people to pay in convenience charges. And that’s totally aside from the fact that it means the state is choosing to work exclusively with a bank that does no other business in the state. If, like me, you don’t want to walk around with large sums of cash, your fees add up pretty quickly. Unless you go to a Chase branch, I guess, but according to their website the nearest location would require an hour of driving plus two ferry rides.
And that’s just the first part of why I’m so annoyed today…
I lost my wallet. Again. I’m not really sure what to do about it. I lost it some time between visiting my parents on Saturday night and going out for Singapore noodles on Sunday afternoon.
I’m mad. Mostly at myself. Partly at other people. But I won’t get into the other people now. Luckily there was only 20 dollars in it (my wallet, not other people.) And my credit cards are basically maxed out anyway, so even if it got stolen it’s not like people could do anything more than use my library card. And not even, because I rented Young Torless again last week and still haven’t returned it. Or watched it, for that matter.
I’m sorry if I sound vague and fourteen. It happens when I get really bored. Which I am.
Also, The Go! Team is playing in Boston tomorrow and I don’t think I have the money to go. Kind of like how I didn’t have the money to see Of Montreal. Or The Pipettes. Blaggh. The Go! Team are one of those bands that are really cool, but wouldn’t make good music to play while fucking a stranger, so they don’t get featured on here.
