Turns out Mrs. Dress Pockets and I have 7 checking accounts. Seems a bit excessive doesn’t it? One is a joint checking account between us where we have consolidated most of our monthly cash flow. One is a joint account I recently opened with eldest daughter. That still leaves 5 individual checking accounts: 2 for me and 3 for her. (Technically there’s an 8th checking account for a dormant political campaign where Mrs. Dress Pockets is the treasurer).
I jinxed Capital One a few months ago when I said they hadn’t caused us much grief. Their name change process was the straw that broke Mrs. Dress Pockets’ back. A phone call last week got heated when they requested she mail her name change documentation a third time to remedy them processing the second mailing incorrectly. An escalation to a supervisor, a disconnected call and the money was quickly in flight to other banks. I suspect it would have been easier all along to open new Capital One accounts in the new name, transfer the money, close the accounts in old name. I’m sure they’ll read this blog and fix their janky process.
But besides the frustration, it was a good exercise to revisit why we have all these accounts. A few came from having mortgages, a few came from chasing higher interest rates. I had planned to close the checking account tied to the home mortgage last year until I found a box of forgotten blank checks that can be used to pay child support. Amazing the frugality that kicks in to save a check order service charge. The moral of the story is that a bank serves us until it doesn’t and we move on to find another that does. Thank you, next.
In other news, I took Coinbase up on their viral Super Bowl ad offer of $15 in free Bitcoin. Mostly as a conversation piece and to get grief from my family. This is a blog about pockets full of Bitcoin after all. I am curious to have a bit of experience with blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. I’m not interested in investing any single digit percentage of our assets in cryptocurrencies. While I would not blink an eye at buying VTSAX comprised of real companies, that make real profits and pay real dividends at a hypothetical share price of $40,000, I oddly find BTC overpriced. I tell myself if Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 or $1,000 per share again, I might buy a single Bitcoin. So until then I’ll do some more reading and perhaps track the price a bit closer with my 0.0003445 BTC. Next year, I’ll attempt to remember to pay the $15 in ordinary income tax from the token gift and check the box on our tax return that alerts the IRS to my massive Bitcoin war chest. #HODLGANG. Diamond hands. Rocket to the moon.
