Money Madness
If I have already told this story, forgive me. I'm so full of hot air (hence the name of my first blog site) that I don't even know which stories I've told or not. I like this one. It's worth retelling.
My parents traveled a lot during the last few years of their lives. By a lot, I mean they were almost never home. They went to visit family. They went on trips to see places. They went on trips for reunions. They even went to Wickenburg, Arizona every year so dad could participate in a trail ride. I was happy for them, except when they almost always conveniently traveled right when school teachers were going back to work. We could have used them to watch the boys then. But, in all fairness to them, that was not their responsibility.
Whenever they took a trip, they went to the credit union and took out $1,000 in hundred dollar bills. Mom pinned that stash into her bra, and, it stayed there until they needed money, or, in most cases, came home with it. Whatever was left upon their return went back to the credit union. Unfortunately, it did not go into an account. It went into their safe deposit box.
One day, about six or so months before Mom died, I was sitting in their house talking to her. She was telling me how she was thinking about buying a bigger television for Daddy to watch, since he was not doing well with his cancer and spent a lot of time sitting in the den watching TV. Somehow in the process of that discussion, Mom suddenly got serious and made me promise that, if anything ever happened to them, I would run over to their safe deposit box and get the money out before the bank froze their accounts. She said we could use it for any kind of expenses their passing brought our way. I told her that Rachel and I had plenty of money to take care of anything that happened, but Mom insisted, stating that it was a lot of money. I asked her what a lot of of money was. I was shocked when she gave me her estimate of about $50,000. Did I mention that they traveled a lot?
I promised her I would go and get the money, and we moved on to other things. Then, something in the dining room caught my eye. The wall seemed to be about an inch lower than the ceiling. I asked Mom about it, and she told me that they were going to get that fixed and siding put on the house, but they didn't want to spend the money right then. Knowing that I had re-sided my bigger home for about $15,000, I told her that she needed to put Daddy in the car, drive to the credit union, and get some money out their safe deposit box before the house fell down.
Well, Mom decided to put her foot down with Daddy, who we now understand was not a penny-pincher, but a money hoarder. He had a psychological urge to save money. (No. Like his passion for running- that did not come down to me.) They were going to hire Sears to do the siding project. The only problem was that Mom wanted to put it on her Discover card so that she would get her cashback bonus points. That meant that they needed to put about $20,000 from the safe deposit box into their checking account to use to pay Sears. However, one of their friends told them that would get them in trouble, because the money wasn't traceable. Mom called me up to ask my opinion and told me that she and Daddy had decided to take about $500 and put it into their account every few days until they had it all in there. That just sounded totally ridiculous to me.
I called my credit union and said, "Suppose my parents had been putting money in their safe deposit box over the years, and now need to put it into their checking account. They plan to do it about $500 at a time. That just doesn't sound sensible to me." The guy answered me like this. " First of all Mr. Baker, just be glad they had the money in a safe place. You wouldn't believe how many elderly people keep money under their mattress and other equally vulnerable places. Now, trying to put small amounts in an account to go unnoticed is a federal offense. It will get noticed. Tell your parents to put the entire amount into the account at once. It will get red flagged, but the credit union will look at the case, see your parents age and history with them, and there won't be a problem." And, that is what my parents did.
Today, I needed to go to the credit union to get some money out for Rachel and my trip to St. Louis. We are going up for four nights over her birthday weekend to visit with kinfolks and see James Taylor in concert. I asked Rachel how much money I should get out, even though we usually use the Discover card for everything just as Mom did. Rachel said to get $500, adding that we could always use it for groceries, etc., when we get back. I told her I had a better idea. We could get $1,000. Then, when we get home, I could run it over to the credit union and stick it in our safe deposit box! She didn't like that idea. But, it did give us a much needed laugh.
Some day, I'll tell you the story of the day Daddy died, and how, keeping my promise, I ran over to clean out his safety deposit box.