Sunday, June 14, 2009

Are Weekends Supposed To Start Like This?

During the first two hours after I got home from work on Friday, I felt as if several days jumped out of a dark alleyway and mugged me.

My company, starting next month, is requiring employees to pay a higher share of health insurance premiums. And that, along with flat salaries this year, means effectively a small pay cut. Well, I find that an acceptable trade to still have a job.

There was a letter informing me that the company has engaged an outside auditing firm to ensure compliance with eligibility requirements for covered dependents. Fine, I can deal with providing a copies of my marriage license and birth certificates for each of the kids. It's a little more of a bother to ask my daughter to get me documentation from her university to show that she's taking enough credit hours to be considered a full-time student and to show her expected graduation date. I'm far less overjoyed to give them a copy of some acceptable joint bank account statement, bill, tax return, or lease for my wife and myself. Even considering that the auditing firm expects all financial details to be redacted.

There was another piece of mail that was even less palatable. My latest credit card bill showed that my interest rate has more than doubled since the last statement. I called the credit card company and learned that I hadn't rejected the rate increase after receiving a letter from them back in April. Now, I'm sure they did send the letter, but I don't remember it at all. Of course, that's no one's fault by mine. They did let me reject the rate increase during the phone call, and I'm locked in to my old APR, as long as I don't use the card.

The weekend has gotten better since then, even though the Braves lost yesterday and today to the Orioles, for goodness sakes. At least the re-read of Watchers lived up to my high expectations.