“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” 
― Epictetus

The other weekend, Jeff and I were doing our monthly bills round up when we noticed some charges on a card that neither of us recognized. We’re pretty sure this card was “skimmed,” as it’s not the first time we’ve had a security issue with the bank in question. It’s a solvable problem but we were angry and frustrated by it. This was over the bank holiday and we were considering a bit of a madcap city break for some quality time. The money in the budget for this? Compromised by these false charges. Ugh.

Jeff got on the phone to the bank immediately and we’ve done the necessary paperwork to resolve it, but it was a shock and annoyance all the same. We’re probably going to close this account after two cases of lax security from the same provider in a year. 2018 is already too fraught for this kind of stress!

However it was a good moment to review our household budget and goals. I’ve started a new contract and Jeff earned a promotion this past summer, so we had some modest growth in our take home pay and we hadn’t really considered how to use it. Our one purchase for the house was made and I’m on some personal spending challenges already, but we knew we had gotten a bit lax with items like eating out or travel costs around the city. Take into account the ever fluctuating exchange rate between dollars and pounds (thanks, Brexit, you slow moving mess), which has more of an impact on our monthly finances than you may think, and you can see why expat life and banking can be a bother on a good day, to say nothing of an obnoxious one. We decided we wanted to try and add another $300 to our debt/savings plan. Which also would have been doable had not our card been compromised. Ugh again. Anyway, we’ve set up some minor self goals to help achieve this in spite of other people’s criminality and it was a nice way to look ahead to the upcoming season in terms of money and plans.

Moral of the story: always check your bank statements, kittens. Some jerk may have prevented your planned trip to Bath.