Financial Odities.

      Sorry I missed Manic Monday, but I had other things to do.  Congratulations to my friend Darryl on his retirement.  In case you were wondering, that is what I was doing yesterday.  I felt it important enough to skip the post.  Now on to today's post.  I thought about doing yesterday's post today, but decided it just wasn't worth it.  I really don't need to upset myself with it.  So this weekend, we were planning on going camping.  Since there were a few items we needed, we decided to total up the checkbook.  We discovered that we had spent a little more than we thought and were down to the point where spending extra would be irresponsible.  So we ended up working on the yard and house.  Yesterday, we did a little shopping for necessities and decided we needed to transfer a bit out of savings to our checking account to get us through.  I decided to compare what the bank said we had and what we said we had.  After checking the math twice, I discovered that the bank said we had around twelve hundred dollars more than we said we had.  I have had a day to think about this now and have realized why this is.  We constantly round up our monthly bills to even dollar figures.  With about 15 monthly bills that we round up by about one to two dollars apiece, it adds up over the years.  Add in the fact that I am overestimating the amount we set aside for the house and you end up with a significant amount set aside.  It's nice to know that even when the checkbook says we are in the red, we are still safe (we only allowed ourselves to take $200 of the error back), not that we let the checkbook go into the red.  At some point we will have to go into the bank and have them go through our records, just to make sure that we are truly up to date.  I have to thank my wife for being so pragmatic at times that we can have this extra bit.  Now if I can only talk her into the Star Wars special edition Xbox.   Have a wonderful day.