I suddenly have very little money in the checking account, thanks to ignorance of an important rule. Just temporary, thank goodness!

NT and I got our stimulus check and I deposited it on Wednesday. I took out our portion for spending money and distributed it. On Thursday the deposit went through, and I found a good deal on plane tickets to Virginia this fall, so I went ahead and bought them with the other portion of stimulus money plus a bit from my fun-money savings.

Today I suddenly had $1200 less in available funds! The deposit was there, and it wasn't pending, but it just wasn't showing up in my available balance! I called around for awhile and then finally went to the bank in person with NT. Turns out (all you married people can laugh at me) that we both needed to sign the check, but I didn't know, so I just signed it.

They're mailing me the check, so I can have NT sign it and we can turn it back in to them. Then they'll release the funds. Grr...

We don't have any big bills coming up, luckily, so we just have to keep an eye on household purchases and make sure they stay under $130. Plus, we all have stimulus money in our sock drawers that we could put back in temporarily. I wasn't sure if we'd be OK while at the bank, so I whined (I admit it) about what if I had to dip into the reserve line and got charged fees? I pointed out that the deposit had gone through so I assumed it was OK to spend. The guy was very patient in the face of my shrillness and gave me his card. Which means I could probably get the fees refunded if something happened and I did overdraw somehow.

So really there's no crisis after all. I'm a bit shamefaced that this guy at the bank probably thinks I'm a regular spendthrift paycheck-to-paycheck American--hey, I'm a recovering spendthrift, and I am living paycheck to paycheck--but only because we put almost $2K per month extra toward debt!

It was just a weird coincidence that I found such a good deal on the plane fare that same day the deposit cleared; I expected to keep looking for a few more weeks before I got under $275 apiece. Then I saw a flight for $230 and had to grab it!