Of Friends Old, New and Forgotten

I mentioned in last week's blog about my new tribe for friends here in the ATL. Apparently some of my comments were misconstrued by one of my oldest and closest friends back home in North Carolina. So, I want to clarify things about friendships both current and past. Being 39 years old and having lived in NC and GA (twice now), I've had opportunity to meet and make friends with lots of folks. Some are forgotten (like old friends from high school whom I haven't heard from in two decades) or even some from college. Life moves on, and when someone is no longer directly inside one's sphere of influence, it makes it difficult to remain friends unfortunately. One of the hard things about uprooting myself and moving to Atlanta was leaving not only family and my fiancee, but my friends as well. I tend to choose friends carefully (just look up Scorpio in any online zodiac guide and you'll see that we tend to be like that), but once I've befriended someone, I tend to be very loyal to them. Life in Fayetteville was such that even my closest friends and I were rarely able to get together. There's just something about that town that does that; that sucks life right out of people, not to mention it's over-priced cost of living versus the job market there making it hard for anyone to afford to do much more than work-eat-sleep. The friends I've made here in Atlanta have become like soul-mates. In only five months time we've become close; we hang out together usually once a week, or at least call/text just to say hello. That fact doesn't mean that I'm closer, per se, to my Atlanta friends than my North Carolina friends. It's just something about the Metro-Atlanta area that seems to facilitate being able to spend more time with friends than I was able to in Fayetteville, NC. If I could somehow move everyone important to me from back home to Atlanta, I most assuredly would, for then I'd be able to spend time with all of them (not to mention rescue my NC friends from the life-sucking cesspool that is Fayetteville, NC).

Now, no doubt someone from Fayetteville, NC will become offended that I've called that town (yes town, not city no matter what it's “City” Council thinks) a “life-sucking cesspool.” Well, it is. I've left there twice, and returned once. I do not wish to return a second time. Other than the fact that I never would have met the love of my life, and the aforementioned friends I have there (including the one who is now currently my roommate in Atlanta), the biggest mistake I ever made was moving back there in 2000 from when I lived in Athens, GA. Fayetteville offers nothing in terms of career choices, unless one wishes to slough away in minimum wage retail and restaurant jobs the rest of their lives. My beloved has an MBA and has still had no luck finding anything in Fayetteville outside of the crappy non-profit organizations that don't even come close to paying someone with a Masters Degree what they should be making. Even my buddy Andrew, who is a school teacher, is trying to get out of that burg because NC has the worst teacher salary in the entire nation! So before you go getting upset that I ragging on Fayetteville, consider this – the apartment I'm going to be moving into here in Atlanta in a few weeks goes for $650 per month for two bedrooms and two bathrooms; that same apartment in Fayetteville, NC would either be a really bad neighborhood, or cost $100-200 more per month. With the exception of the place I work now (which hopefully won't be much longer), the average employer in Atlanta (including retail) probably pays $8-9 per hour starting out instead of maybe $7.50-8 per hour like in Fayetteville. So, here the income to cost of living ratio is much more favorable than back home. All that being said, where would you rather live? Somewhere where you not only had a decent income and reasonably priced housing plus lots of places to go do things in your free time? Or, somewhere where the apartments are horribly over-priced for the average income level of the populace and where you can't really tell where the ghetto ends and the “nice” neighborhoods begin? I'll take “Places I Can Live Instead of Withering Away and Dieing” for $1000, Alex!

I miss my friends. I miss my family. I most assuredly miss my fiancee. But I absolutely don't miss Fayetteville, NC... not even a little bit.

~ JC

“Bank On Me Going Green(dot)

Banks suck. Few would argue that banks, and the corporate greed of high ranking banking officials is a large part of why our economy is so fucked right now. I'm not here to argue a political point. My beef with banks, and banking, is of a more personal nature. Namely, the policies under which personal deposits to checking accounts are governed. Bank deposit policies are bullshit (sorry if it seems I'm channeling Penn Jillette). In recent weeks I've had issues with deposits I've made not showing as available when checking my account online. Who the fuck, and at which bank, decided that the business day ends at 2PM? Furthermore, what's the point of having drop boxes to create the “convenience” of not having to stand in line, if the damn thing isn't checked regularly enough and therefore creates an inconvenience when it comes to a person's hard earned money being available to them? I'll explain.

I work for a small business. As such, I don't have access to services such as direct deposit. I have to physically take my paycheck to the bank, fill out the deposit slip and stand in line to have a teller process my deposit. For decades banks have decided that 2pm is actually the next business day. That is to say, if you make a deposit after 2pm on Monday, it's actually not deposited until Tuesday. What makes this a bullshit concept is, if it's a Friday afternoon, your deposit won't be credited until Monday because Saturday and Sunday aren't “business days”. Now, to top all that off, in the past couple of weeks I've made deposits late in the afternoon on a Thursday only to not have them show as available until after midnight on Friday (so basically, not until Saturday). This past Friday really took the cake though. It was around 4:15pm. I was hot, tired and just wanted to get home (a commute of about an hour or more depending on traffic, for me). So, when I saw how long the line was in the bank, I decided to use their “convenient” drop box since I was only depositing and not getting any cash back this time. I filled out the deposit slip and the envelope, endorsed the back of the check, put everything in the envelope and dropped it in the box and went on my merry way home for the weekend. Saturday morning, my balance still showed $26. I kept checking every so often, and still no sign of my deposit. Now, here's the kicker – the branch I went to is actually open half a day on Saturdays, so I gave them a call. I figured, since they were open on Saturday, someone would have taken anything in the drop box out and processed it. Evidently, that's not the case. Since I put it in the box so late on a Friday, and because it was a check drawn on a different bank instead of cash, that money won't be available until Tuesday! Tuesday?! Fucking really? You mean I have to survive the weekend, plus put gas in my car to get to work on Monday with only the $15 in my wallet, the $40 I have squirreled away in my change jar and the measly $26 I still have available in my checking account? WTF? Normally I'd only be annoyed, but this is a special weekend. I had planned on taking my beautiful, wonderful fiancee out to a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants since Thursday was her birthday, and Friday was the anniversary of our engagement.¹ Now, not only can I not do that, but I can't even go get any of the hobby supplies I wanted to get so I can enjoy a weekend of painting Warhammer models.² “Well, switch banks”, you may say. To what end? They all do stupid shit like this. No, I think I have a better plan.

With all this bullshit with banks I'm seriously considering becoming an almost straight cash person. Frankly, I've always hated carrying cash and preferred to use my check card, because 1) it's convenient, 2) it makes me more responsible about impulse and large purchases because I have to bear in mind how much is actually in the bank and 3) if I lose my card, it can be replaced; if I lose my cash, I'm just shit-out-of-luck and broke. Enter GreenDot. GreenDot is a prepaid credit card. Here's they way this thing works. I can go get a GreenDot credit card with either a Visa or MasterCard logo on it so it's accepted wherever either of those cards are accepted. If it's lost, I can have it replaced and I don't lose my balance. I can control how much is on it at any given time because it's prepaid, meaning the balance on the card is just like the balance in my checking account; whatever I put on it, is what is available for use. So, I could keep the majority of my cash, and just load up a GreenDot card with as much as I need to still be able to do online purchases and bill paying. I know for a fact (since I used to work at one) that I can go into any RadioShack and re-load it, and whatever I put on it is immediately available for use (no bullshit next business day before the funds are available crap). Now, I do understand that this plan isn't perfect. For starters, despite that fact that I'm really pissed at my bank right now, I do have to admit that I get free checking and I can use my debit card all I need/want to with no fees (save for, of course, overdraft fees if I spend more than my balance). With GreenDot there will be a start-up fee and there will be a reload fee when I load it with cash and probably a monthly maintenance fee depending on my balance or how much I've used it (however, there is no fee for direct depositing funds to a GreenDot card should I ever find a job that offers that). The plan isn't ideal, and honestly I may very well keep the bank account open with a nominal balance, depositing cash when/if needs be. I'm just tired of going through entire weekends with very limited funds available to me because of banks' dubious deposit procedures and policies. It's just nice knowing that I at least have the option of a prepaid credit/debit card without having to deal with a bank's bullshit while still being able to pay my bills or make purchases online.

~ JC

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1. Seven years... yes, I know that's a long time to be engaged, but it works for us, so :-P

2. I really wanted to get an inexpensive airbrush so I could batch paint the base coats on several at one time and quickly. Good thing I already have some prepped – not to mention I have tons of reading to catch up on. But still, it's really annoying when you make plans for your weekend and they get fucked up because of banking issues that you can't control. Also, for the record, my fiancee paid for dinner and I'll reimburse her once my deposit posts – it's just pretty shitty that she had to pay for her own birthday dinner that was supposed to be my gift to her.