So we live in these inflationary times.
A lot of us are happy to have work at all and we try to find ways to stretch our meager incomes to cover not only the basic cost of being alive, but also the growing plethora of "nickel-and-dime" expenses that seem to have become the never-ending bane of our existence.
My consciousness prodded me into trying to verbalize my growing frustration after I went online to pay my Internet bill.
Frustration?
For the longest time, the service provider kept hounding customers to enroll in online billing and statements, or be assessed a $3.50 per statement cycle "paperwork fee."
Fine. I'm all for saving a few trees; I don't need a paper statement.
But here's the thing: When I went to pay my bill just now — online — I noticed that I am now being assessed a $1.00 "convenience fee" for doing so!
WTF, over???
And it wasn't because I was using a credit card with processing fees... this was your basic EFT payment, at no cost to my service provider.
I might not be at the verge of boiling over if this were an isolated case, but it's not. This seems to be becoming increasingly common practice.
I already spent several days (days of my life I will NEVER get back!) cleaning up my phone to get rid of every single app on there that has gone from free to "it's only $1.99 a month!"
Sorry, but you can all bugger off! Unless, of course, I can charge you a $2.00 "typing fee" for each time I have to fill in my payment information on your web site!
Not so long ago, we were visiting our daughter and son-in-law in Seattle, and got on the topic of money and budgeting.
In their early 30's, they are among those less common Millennials who actually own a house... but they are barely making ends meet on combined incomes of about $180K a year.
Of course, we made it a little easier for them after a thorough "audit" of their spending habits... leading to them being able to cut well over $1,200 a month from their living costs purely by eliminating a huge pile of small "convenience fees," and the ridiculous amount it costs to have too much food brought by Uber Eats or Door Dash.
Around our place, one of the primary reasons we can still afford to be alive is that we have NOTHING "convenient" in our lives.
Even so, constantly staying on top of whether or not you're getting clobbered by "tiny fees" all over your personal finance map is a thing that requires near-constant vigilance.
We might be given to ask how companies can "get away with it." It's pretty simple, really... as long as the fees are small enough that we perceive them as "not enough to worry about," we don't protest too much.
The problem is that 85 different services charging you between $1-10 a month soon adds up to a tidy pile of money... and you find yourself "bleeding to death" from all these tiny cuts!
So.... be vigilant!
