Survival
The bank froze my accounts. All of them. I had one check I could take to the Money Mart and after I paid my bills I had less than forty dollars to make it through most of a month. Counting out the coins I found under the couch cushions and cashing in the empty bottles brought a little more into my pocket. I even raided the piggy bank where I deposited all my nickels and dimes, rolling them in desperation for any little bit to add to my meager financial stash. I thought I’d hit the mother lode when I found a twenty dollar bill in my winter jacket pocket.
The outlook was bleak for the the next few weeks. Until I could straighten out the mix up, and it was going to take a lawyer, yes another very large bill, I was on K-D, dried ramen noodles and water. I splurged on butter to make the Kraft Dinner palatable and that was the extent of my luxury for the next weeks.
I turned to my computer for entertainment and watched the city go by from the balcony of my apartment. I discovered ways to stuff ketchup packets in my pockets at the local fast food restaurants. I found out I could walk a lot further than I thought. Buses were too expensive.
Each day at lunch time I broke up the cake of dried ramen, every other night I split my package of K-D and counted myself lucky. A couple of packets of ketchup gave my gritty cheese sauce some extra flavor, and once a week I would fast, only drinking water for twenty four hours. I lost weight, only 1200 calories a day, and thinking about it, it wasn’t a bad thing.
It taught me I can survive on next to nothing. The lawyer’s letter was enough to get the bank to release the freeze and reverse the interest and fees they charged me on the the huge overdraft they created. In the end, the person who made the mess was fired, and I lost over 20 lbs. Too rapidly, but heck I had to have something positive to hang onto.
This experience isn’t something I wish on anyone. Having the bank accuse you fraud, when it was their own screw up that caused the problem is terrifying. I learned one other thing. Make sure you have two bank accounts in different financial institutions. If one gets screwed like mine, you can shift everything to the other. It’s worth all the hassles of setting it up. I didn’t have the luxury, and I was looking at losing all my deposits to the bank to repay a debt I didn’t actually owe. Believe me, I’ve got that second account now. And I still have a stash of ramen noodles and Kraft Dinner just in case.
