Shortchanged
Nickeled and Dimed to Death
By Daniel Muniz

Have you ever felt that you are being “nickeled and dimed” to death but that it is just too much of a hassle to fight over the loose change? It’s not that you don’t want to fight for your principles but that putting in this kind of effort is a huge waste of time because the spare change you can get out of it is not worth it.

Here is what happened to me on one particular day.

I like keeping sodas in my employer’s refrigerator so I can drink them while I am at work. However, I had completely run out of them so I decided to drop into a nearby supermarket during my lunch break so I could buy more.
 

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This supermarket is part of a regional chain that I have bought groceries from for years. It also carries a generic soda that I liked to drink. My personal taste is for Sprite and then 7-Up. However, this generic soda is called Twist and I cannot tell the difference from it and Sprite. For all I know, it could really be Sprite or 7-Up but with this generic label on it. And since it has a much lower price per 12-pack, it is always a bargain to me.

But as I stepped down the soda aisle, I noticed that there was a promotion of two 12-packs for $4.00 instead of the usual price of $2.26 per 12-pack. And since I would save 52 cents if I bought two of them, it was a no-brainer because I am always going to buy this generic brand.

Incidentally, I also bought a 12-pack of Coke. I hate to sound like a cliché but I had to have the real thing. There is not a generic cola that gives me the same sharp taste and caffeine buzz so I am willing to pay extra for it.

I stepped into the express checkout lane and since it was noon, there weren’t many cashiers available so it was a bit crowded. As the cashier rang up my purchases, he gave a total that seemed slightly high. I handed over a ten dollar bill and he gave me my change and the receipt. As I looked at the receipt, the cashier began ringing up the goods that the customer behind me had. The receipt confirmed my suspicions. It charged me $2.26 per 12-pack instead of giving me the discount of $4.00 for both of them.

I pointed this discrepancy to the cashier. He told me that since it was the scanner that rung up the price he would have to send someone down that aisle to verify it. However, he was in the middle of a transaction and there was already a long line of people at this checkout lane. And with it being my lunch break, I didn’t want to burn more time waiting for this to be sorted out since it was only 52 cents. So I told him not to worry about it and I walked out of the supermarket.

Later in the day I needed to call my bank. I had an installment loan in which the monthly payment was automatically debited from my checking account each month. The bank had advertised extensions in which you could just pay the interest for the month and skip the principal payment. It was a popular item during Christmas although you can get it any time of the year. And since this note was for three years, I bought a couple extensions.

However, when I checked my bank balance online, it showed that my account was in the red.

The item that took me into the negative was my payment for the installment loan. But what had happened was that my bank made a balloon payment of all those extensions and zeroed out my loan. My checking account could easily handle one normal payment but it didn’t have enough to cover three payments in one transaction. I also had a whopping $34 non-sufficient fee charge as well as a separate 17 cent interest charge for the overdraft.

I called up the customer service department and got the runaround. They then forwarded me to my loan officer. After I explained what happened, the loan officer agreed that the bank was incorrect in making such a balloon payment and he assured me that he would straighten it out so that my remaining loan balance would be debited out of my checking account in the normal monthly payments scheme until it was zeroed out.

He then reversed the $34 non-sufficient fee charge as well as reversing out the balloon payment.

What I didn’t get back was the 17 cent interest charge for the overdraft.

As someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, I was grateful that I got my money back because my finances are always tight. But I didn’t get mad for losing 52 cents from the grocery store and 17 cents from my bank. In some ways, it is kind of like that statistician who calculated if Bill Gates saw a one hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, he would actually be losing money if he stooped over to pick it up. After all, his time is more valuable in hammering out multi-million dollar business strategies instead of spending a minute to swipe a free Ben Franklin.

Now if I saw a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, it is definitely worth my time and effort to stuff it in my pocket. However, was I willing to waste a lot of time arguing over 17 cents with my bank or 52 cents with my supermarket?

Absolutely not! My time is more important.

However, I wonder how often people allow themselves to be “nickeled and dimed” because it isn’t worth it to fight such a pointless battle. It is like the movie Superman III (or Office Space) in which stealing a fraction of a penny won’t be noticed by anyone but over the course of time, it eventually adds up.

Nevertheless, I am not going to lose any sleep over loose change. That’s just the way I see it.

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