Why you make me hate you?!

I am referring to various financial and credit corporations that have severely irritated me. I will list them in order that I am annoyed with them.

1. California State Disability Insurance. Remember the conversation I had with the oh-so-clever employees of SDI? Well, I finally convinced them that I did NOT, in fact, return to work the day after my baby was born, and my disability benefits needed to begin on the day right after that last Friday I was at work. However, SDI benefits have a mandatory 7 day waiting period. Most people use vacation pay to cover this unpaid time, which is what I fully intended to do, had my baby come closer to his due date or later. For a vaginal delivery, you get 6 weeks of SDI pay. This comes from the doctor's certification stating you were disabled. So, my claim date was essentially 3 days before my child's birthday. SDI will only pay you benefits until the Dr. certifies you are able to return to work, 6 weeks after the baby is born. See where I am going with this? Basically, I am losing 4 days of paid maternity. In the grand scheme of things, it is not such a big deal. The important thing is that I spent the time with my baby and had any pay at all. It just irks me that I am entitled to 42 days, but because he came earlier than expected, I will only get 38 and I have only been paid for 23. And I am back at work!. Seriously, this has to happen to more people than just me. How many babies come on their due date? Like 1%? GET IT TOGETHER PEOPLE! I have done everything you told me to do and then some! Pay me!

2. Citibank. Bastards on their own. We got a loan from them to cover business expenses. We signed up for this loan with our "personal banker" who has helped us with many things before this. There are numerous things that she did not disclose to us when we signed that should have been brought to our attention. First, the loan payment will automatically be deducted from the checking account that we have to open when we get the loan. All we were told was that we had to have a particular account linked to the loan, and it had to be opened the same time. I guess if I had really thought about it, I would have thought dig deeper into it. However, I was like 10million weeks preggo and on a break from work where things were busy. And no one told us that we had to have the autodeduct option in order to secure our not great interest rate. Apparently this option made it not so great rather than definately not so great. And did she tell us that the account she set up had a minimum balance requirement of 10,000 in combined accounts? Um, no. Seriously, wtf? If we had that kind of money, would we be borrowing it? Needless to say, we have closed all our Citibank accounts and have moved to WaMu. Tomorrow I am going to set up Isaac's account again. And let me tell you, he loves to sit still at the bank for long periods of time (sense my sarcasm?).

3. Citibank credit cards. Like most people in this rough economy, my husband and I are constantly looking to reduce debt and save money at every turn. We recently received an offer from one of his credit cards that had what seemed like a great offer. For however much we paid over the minimum amount due, Citibank would reduce our debt by 5% of that amount up to $550 over the next 4 billing cycles. Good deal right? I was all for having my husband call and sign up for this offer. On the last night for him to possibly do so, he was looking for any reason not to call. He hates calling about things like that. So he turned over the sheet and read the ittty-bitty, light gray fine print on the back. Good thing he did! By enrolling in this offer we were agreeing to allow Citibank to reduce our credit by the amount we over paid. So if we paid the maximum amount and had our debt reduced by the max $550, our limit would then be reduced almost $3500! That would definately cause a credit hit! Lesson learned bastards....always read the fine print.

4. New York Life Insurance. Yes, my husband and I understand the need to have life insurance now that we are caring for a child. However, I do not understand the need to carry a term policy for 1.2 million dollars. We do not own a home. We do not own a business. I am pretty sure that our assigned guardians would take our child even though he was not rich. We simply need enough money to cover childcare expenses and the other spouses yearly salary for a few years, as well as funeral expenses. We are pretty sure that our child does not require a 50k policy either. He generates no income at the present time. Please quit trying to pressure me into a policy that we don't need, or we will take our business elsewhere. Do not waste my time until you have written the policy to the specifications we asked for.

My husband and I have come up with specific financial goals. These goals are tailored to help us meet our long term goals of buying a house and moving closer to family. People like the above mentioned do not help us meet our goals.