Month: July 2011

Got a letter from California Employment Development today.

Looks like they’re going to pay me my unemployment via a debit card.

It’s only slightly more convenient than if they were paying me in gold nuggets.

For those of us that actually have a bank account and who pay our bills via that account, a debit card is problematic.

For example

My Mortgage, Car payment, credit cards, and utilities are all paid out of my credit union account. Without a constant flow of REAL money going through that account in short order I’m going to be in default on a lot of my financial obligations.

I suppose that I can reroute the payment to the California issued Debit card but there’s since I don’t know how much is going to be available from week to week on the debit card that doesn’t really work either.

Especially since I was planning to use my unemployment check to supplement my savings and thereby be a responsible if unemployed person. In that  I WOULDN’T DEFAULT on my obligations.

Now what do I do?

Cash out the debit card each week and then deposit the cash into the account I need to have it in?

I thought about trying to phone in payments to my various debts but I know that at least a couple of those businesses charge a hefty fee to do that. (One organization charge me $25 bucks once to process a payment from a debit card.)

All of this leads me to wonder what were they thinking?

Direct deposit or a check makes much more sense from the perspective of someone with bank accounts, and a regular payment schedule.

California claims this is to save them money in postage, but they’re still sending me  the little form to fill out and sign (which used to contain the check for the previous 2 weeks) So what are they really saving?

Then there’s the Bank of America who administers the card. They’re making a ton of money on short term interbank loans, and they’re also getting a % on each and every transaction. What a racket!

Well, I’m hoping that more information is forthcoming when I get the damn card.

I see the potential for another complication that I wasn’t expecting.