Rant #2,462: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Yesterday was certainly "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" for me.

Let's go over what I mean by this:

The Good: Well, I got a bit of good news yesterday.

A fellow alumni of mine from my old college--the defunct and out of business Dowling College, formerly of Oakdale, New York and now existing in oblivion--contacted me when he heard that I was out of work.

He runs a publishing house, and he needed a proofreader for a job, picking up errors in a fiction book that his company will probably be putting out in the future.

So I got my first freelance job in years, proofreading this book.

It is the first fiction proofreading I think I have ever done, and again, I am not reading for content, I am pretty much reading for quality, just trying to find things that I believe to be errors in the text.

I have read 20 some odd pages thus far, I have a deadline to get this thing back to them, and once I do that, maybe more can come my way.

But let's not put the cart before the horse. One thing at a time, so let me get through this first project, and then we will see if anything happens beyond that.

One thing at a time.

I am very, very happy that I have this to do, and I am going to give it my best, as I always do.

The Bad: Well, yesterday did not go well on the job front.

I applied for a few jobs, but honestly, there is nothing much out there for me that I haven't yet applied for.

I even applied for one job in the morning, and by early afternoon, I received an email back that I was not being considered for the job.

Leads provided by others have gone absolutely nowhere, but somehow, the bills keep knocking at my door.

I have to reapply--and yes, that means fully reapply--for unemployment benefits on Monday, Veterans Day, and I know that the process can take several weeks to reach fruition.

Why I--and I have heard, my fellow former co-workers--are getting such a difficult time about the measly severance pay I received--working 23 and a half years and getting one month's severance--is completely beyond my capability to fully understand, but it is what it is. Heck, unemployment even gave me agita about exactly what my salary was and when my last day or work was, so they can be difficult.

So all that means is that yesterday marked not only my first month out of work, but it also marked a month since I brought in any money to the table. And looking at perhaps another month of no money coming in ... no, it isn't pretty, in particular with the holidays coming up. I don't think I will get any money coming in here until mid-December at best.

Not good.

The Ugly: I did the right thing when I paid off my car in total right after I lost my job, but it has turned out to be the wrong thing, as I found out yesterday.

I received a letter in the mail from my bank, stating that I had to fill out a form related to the taking out of money from my Roth IRA account, and account which you may know you can take money out of without any penalty, because you have already paid the taxes on such an account.

I have two IRAs that came out of my former 401K plan at my former place of work, and the story leading up to all of this I am not going to go into again, other to say that I saw the true colors of the higher ups at my then place of business when all of this transpired.

Anyway, I called up the bank so I could understand what this paperwork was, because I could swear that I filled out this paperwork when it was originally presented to me when I set up this Roth IRA and a regular IRA, a savings IRA, with the bank. I set up the Roth IRA specifically for the inevitability that my place of business would go under, and that I could quickly pay off my car when that happened.

And I did just that, but the problem was that on Roth IRA paperwork was my other IRA account number--the savings IRA, which if the money is used, I can be taxed on--and this needed to be changed.

So I went to the bank yesterday during early afternoon, and to make a very long story short, I found out after 6 p.m. that they will not change the paperwork, because even though the mistake was made by either the person on the floor who helped me or the back office accounting department, since I signed off on it, IT IS MY FAULT. They will not make such a change unless it is the bank's fault, but since I signed off on it, the onus is on me.

I don't know if you have memorized all of your bank account numbers, but I certainly haven't, and my two IRAs have very similar numbers, so yes, it is true, I did not catch the mistake. So yes, it is MY fault.

However, as a customer of the bank--the very bank my wife is employed at--you would think that they might give me a pass here, but I know why they aren't going to do that: when they get audited, a red flag will go up on something like this, and they don't want to take responsibility for something that even though the perpetrated, they aren't obligated to fix, since my signature said everything was copacetic.

As it stands, I raised a fuss about it, saying that this is poor customer relations, a not nice way to treat a "family" member, and what's more, this was all done at a vulnerable time for me, and when a mistake is made, a mistake should be corrected.

But they won't change it, so woe is me when taxes are paid, because I am going to be taxed on that mistake that was made.

I am not happy with either the bank or myself at this juncture.

So that is how it is going right now. Let me move on and get this proofreading done, because I believe I have two jobs now: that proofreading job and my job to find work.

One I am certainly going to do gangbusters with, the other, probably not.

Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.