2 Financial Stories

September 30, 2022

Here are two true but absurd stories about my finances from sometime in the 1990s:

I had my wallet stolen in the New York City subway. My wallet contained my driver's license (official identification) and a bank check. I went to my bank to cancel my bank account and open another one. The man at the bank canceled my account without my identification and then asked me for identification to open my new account. I told him that my identification was stolen. He told me that I could not create a new bank account without identification. I went home to get my passport and opened an account at another bank.

I took out all of my money from a money market account with the Charles Schwab financial company. For some reason, I still had 50 cents in my account. I decided to leave it there for fun to see what they would do. They sent me letters requesting that I take out the 50 cents. Total postage for these letters was more than 50 cents. One day, I received a letter from them telling me that they charged me a 50-cent fee to keep my account open and then canceled my account because there wasn't any money in it. My loss of 50 cents was well worth the laugh.