{"id":13967,"date":"2024-06-29T17:07:23","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T21:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=13967"},"modified":"2024-07-03T08:39:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T12:39:00","slug":"the-900-misadventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/29\/the-900-misadventure\/","title":{"rendered":"The $900 (mis)adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marlene and I have booked a 25-night cruise from Tampa FL to Anchorage AK in Aprill 2025. This will be the most expensive cruise we have ever taken together – over $2,500 each. This is because it is on the Norwegian Jade<\/em> rather than a Carnival ship where we both get major discounts. But we felt the expense was justified because it is still not expensive in absolute terms – just about $100 per day – and because the itinerary is amazing – 15 ports, including some in Columbia, Panama and Costa Rica as well as some good Mexican and Canadian ports and both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Had to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, we need to get it all paid by December. We are going to make several payments. We agreed that we would each pay $900 in July. No problem, right? We had the money. I am responsible for the payments so Marlene gave me $900. I just had to pay via Visa then get the money into my checking account to pay the Visa bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So… how to get her money into my checking account in Massachusetts? There are no branches of my bank anywhere in Florida. But Zelle works everywhere, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan A<\/strong>: Use Zelle to transfer the money from Marlene’s bank to mine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would have been simple but, unfortunately, Marlene’s bank doesn’t support Zelle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan B<\/strong>: Use CashApp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We both have CashApp and have transferred money between us before. She successfully transferred the money to my CashApp, I linked my CashApp to my checking account and tried to move the money. That was declined by my bank on Thursday. Why? No idea and I wouldn’t be able to ask the bank until Friday. I needed the money deposited by Monday. Couldn’t wait to try again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan C<\/strong>: Buy a money order and remotely deposit it into my account<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I purchased the money order at Walmart, no problem. But as I endorsed the back I saw a little notice: Not for Mobile Deposit. Huh? I tried to deposit it and, not surprisingly, the deposit was declined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan D<\/strong>: Cash the money order, deposit the cash in Marlene’s checking account and have her write a check<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are probably thinking “why didn’t she just write a check to start?” Indeed, that would have been the best plan, except that it seemed so old school. Why deal with a check when cash transfer was instantaneous? Obviously, cash transfers are not always instantaneous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the flaw in Plan D was that Walmart, where I had purchased the money order just 90 minutes before, was unable to cash the money order. Why? They couldn’t say. Just that the third-party check cashing service had some problem with my ID or the money order. Calling Walmart headquarters did not help. The best they could offer was a refund in 10 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan E<\/strong>: Cash the money order at a Western Union office<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a Western Union money order so they should be able to cash it, right? If anyone had my $900 at this point it was Western Union. But this, too, failed, due to the prior attempt to cash it at Walmart. I would have to wait 48 hours to try again. Oh, by the way, the fee for cashing the money order – to get back my $900 that they had held for just a couple of hours – would be $55. Unbelievable. The fee for cashing it at Walmart was just $4. Highway robbery. No thanks, Western Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So 5 plans, 5 failures. I gave up and sold some stock. I am hoping that money gets into my checking account by Monday. If not, I will have to pay less than my total Visa bill and will incur at least $30 in interest. But I still have hope that the money will be there by Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is Plan F<\/strong>. I won’t know until Monday if it succeeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will wait 10 days to get the refund on the money order. Then I will deposit it in Marlene’s checking account, she will transfer it to my CashApp and then move it to my checking account. I believe I fixed the CashApp problem. It was due to CashApp having *2* ways to link to a checking account: (1) routing number and account number and (2) debit card number. It seems to default to debit card number – and doesn’t offer the option to use the routing\/account number. My debit card number was an old card that had expired months ago. I was not even aware that it was linked to my CashApp. Anyway, I have corrected that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that begs the question: why, when processing a withdrawal request, does CashApp solicit a routing\/account number and then not use it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE<\/strong>: The stock was sold on Thursday but the money did not appear in my checking account until early Tuesday, about 6 hours too late to avoid interest charges on my Visa. So Plan F, like all the other plans, was a failure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marlene and I have booked a 25-night cruise from Tampa FL to Anchorage AK in Aprill 2025. This will be the most expensive cruise we have ever taken together – over $2,500 each. This is because it is on the Norwegian Jade rather than a Carnival ship where we both get major discounts. But we … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-3Dh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13967"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13975,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions\/13975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}