We’re fairly organized people, or so we like to think. We can almost always find what we’re looking for, even though a good portion of our things are in “storage”. We pay our bills on time. We keep our commitments.
While I like to think that we’re organized, there have been a few instances lately that don’t support that claim. In fact, being a little disorganized had cost us or nearly cost us on several occasions.
Exhibit A: Refunds and Reimbursements
I was looking at the “free” section of craigslist (we’re looking for some fencing materials for a possible project) and was reading some of the interesting posts out loud to my husband. I came across “free bar study materials” and read that one (even though wmy husband already passed the California bar exam).
Hearing “bar study materials” triggered a thought. He remembered that Kaplan never gave him his book deposit refund. He paid $2,350 for the study materials, but $250 was refundable if you returned the written materials of the Bar study package. We paid $20+ to send back all the books two years ago and haven’t heard a thing from them.
My husband emailed them the next day and got a, “Whoops! It looks like that didn’t go through. We’ll send that out right away!” I’m not sure if that was an oversight or just the way their standard practice.
Had we been keeping a real budget at the time, I would have noticed that we never got the refund. Thankfully we got off easy this time, but being disorganized almost cost us $250!
Exhibit B: Recalled Products
As my husband was cutting some wood on Saturday for the tree house he’s making with the kids, the motor fell right out of the Skil table saw he was using. Pretty scary! Thankfully, the smoking hunk of metal missed his foot (and the children).
Hours later when the motor had cooled off enough to handle, he began to research the problem, if it could be fixed, and what it would cost. He learned that the saw was recalled back in 2005 because, well, the motor falls out of it! The recall said to stop using the saw immediately and return it for a refund or replacement.
Had the saw been registered when it was first purchased (it’s actually his dad’s saw), we would have been warned of the recall. Because the recall is 9 years old, we aren’t sure if we can still get it replaced. We’ll try, but we may just be stuck with a broken saw. Thankfully, we’ll still have all our extremities.
Update: We were able to send the saw back to Skil and get a new one, even though the recall had long since passed!
Exhibit C: Library Fines
The library is a great free resource, but if you’re not careful, it will cost you. Right now we owe $12.25 in library fines that have been accruing for over a year. I usually limit my kids books to as many as we can carry (and they think I’m supermom), so when we go to the library we take home a lot of books. We keep them separate from our books and keep track of them, but we still manage to get some of them turned in a day or two late. I won’t bore you with my excuses.
Last fall, I even had to pay for a book
We still love the library, but if we’re not organized, it’s not free!
Other ways to be more organized and stop wasting money!
- Keep your stuff where you can find it so you don’t have to buy multiples.
- Keep track of mail-in rebates.
- Pay bills on time to avoid late fees.
- Make a list before you shop to avoid impulse buys and return trips to the store for items you missed.
How about you?
- What ways has being organized saved you money?
- How has being disorganized cost you?
My quick tip to prevent library fines: as soon as I get home from the library, I put an alarm in my smart phone’s calendar on the day before the due date. And I put the number of books that we borrowed – very useful when the books are scattered all around the house!
That’s a great idea! Now that I have a smartphone I can do that too. I need a reminder a week before though (checkout is 3 weeks). The library sends an email 2 days before the book is due, but sometimes we just aren’t going near the library within those two days (we live in the boonies). A week would give me more time to work a trip into our schedule. Thanks for the suggestion Pascale!
Stephanie,
just a thought on the ‘lost’ library book. There have been times when I couldn’t find a book and we checked the shelves and it had been put back on the shelf but not checked in. It might be worth checking to see if it is already in the library – you might be able to get your money back if it was an error.
We have a library basket in our school room to help keep them in one place. It helps, but is not fool-proof
thank you for the wonderful list
blessings
Karen
Thanks for mentioning this Karen. I thought the same thing. Every time I went to the library I checked the shelf for it because I was almost certain that I did turn it in. Even after paying, I still kept checking the shelf for the book because they told me I could get part of my money back if it showed up in the next year. It never panned out, but it does make us more careful now!
Oh gosh yes! I’ve always been a super organized person but throw in two kids and now I’m not as organized as I thought I was. Case-in-point just last night I had to tear apart our house to find the water bill (they don’t have an electronic system unfortunately). I was like “uhhhh, I’ve never had this problem before what the heck happened to my organization?!” You just gave me the motivation I need (i.e. kick-in-the-pants) to get myself re-organized! THANK YOU! 🙂
Ha! Throwing kids into the mix definitely adds some craziness and disorganization. I hope you found your water bill! 🙂
I would always forget about my rebates/CVS or Kohls bucks/Groupons/gift certificates/etc so now I put a reminder in my phone to use them before they expire. 🙂 I also put in a reminder to make sure I received the rebate in the 8weeks it takes and follow up if I never got it. Now if I could just keep up with them and find them when my reminder goes off on my phone lol. Need a designated place to put them I guess.
Putting reminders in your phone is a great way to stay organized with rebates! Thanks Tammy!
Right now we have 3 – yes, three – tubes of Shoe Goo. Why? Because DH puts it back in a different place each time, then neither of us can find it, and it gets purchased again.
Now we have a plastic tub labeled “Shoe Stuff” (catchy, no?). It has all the shoe polishes, extra shoelaces, and more Shoe Goo than anyone needs to have.
That’s hilarious! We need to get some shoe goo for a pair of my husband’s shoes. I’ll be sure to keep track of it so we don’t end up having to buy more! I love that you have a shoe stuff bin!
I’ve been lazy about filling out those registration forms for tools and appliances. I didn’t consider the fact that we would receive recall notices. Great tip!
I never thought about it either, until this happened!
Wow – scary about that saw!!!! Glad everyone is okay. We are pretty good about organization when it comes to refunds and stuff, but our big faux pas in that area is when it comes to knowing where stuff is, i.e., we need a certain tool for camping, but can’t find it and have to go buy a new one. We are working on this, though. 🙂
Yes! I hate to think what would have happened if that blade had hit someone and my kids were all there watching daddy too!
I’ve definitely had the meat-in-the-freezer problem before. Buy meat then never use it and it gets freezer burnt. That was a hard lesson to learn, because I absolutely hate having to waste food. I keep my freezer stocked a little less cluttered now. I’m planning on making a list of all the contents in the freezer, too.
Also, I avoid using the library because their opening hours clash with my work hours. So I’d end up with maybe one day per week where I could actually get/return books and I’d have to leave work a little early for it. It’s not worth the stress for me.
I dig through my freezer pretty regularly, but making a list for the freezer is a good idea. I hate wasting food too!
I had overdue fees once that cost way more than the cost of the book. I didn’t even realize they could do that. I’ll never do that again! We also had our CAA membership auto renew on a card that we were not using anymore for purchases because we had done a low rate balance transfer on it. It will cost us about $15 more in interest as a result of this!
Ahh! That’s frustrating!!
Good for you, remembering about the Kaplan materials! I am really terrible at things like that which require follow up… I always just assume they’re going to happen and put them right out of my mind.
That’s frustrating that the library made you pay their price, instead of just replacing the book!
I’m so glad we remembered about the Kaplan things too! That’s a lot of money to forget about!
I find that keeping coins organized makes a difference. A lot of people let nickels and dimes fall between the couch cushions and under their car seats. Some people even through away the smaller denominations! I try to always keep my change in one place (car cupholder) and use it to pay sales tax on smaller purchases. Those pennies add up!
That’s great Eric. My kids love coins, so they make sure that no coins are lost in our house!
I fortunately am a very organized person, and it only takes me losing money with something once to figure out a better system. It used to be my deep freezer. I would stock up on meat that I already had several pounds of because it fell to the bottom of the freezer and I didn’t see it. Worse yet meat would not get rotated and then get freezer burnt. So I decided to pay $15 and get a dry erase board and markers. We keep out running deep freezer inventory on there.
I do have to say that I’m guilty of spending money for the sake of organization to save money. I don’t know if the two even out financially, but I do know that no-clutter is worth the peace of mind 🙂
Speaking of libraries….The library in our town is awesome and awful in the same breath. They have several (over ten including “satellite”)locations, and you can hold books online. They are really great about ordering new books often. BUT, they are very quick to demand that you pay for “damage” to a book that is old. To the point that if you don’t point out pen marks or dog ears before you leave they will assume you did it and try to charge you for the book! I stopped going to the library because in just 3-4 visits they already demanded $10 (for things I definitely didn’t do) or they would freeze my account. So I started going to the used bookstore instead where they sell books 99 cents- $2.99 and I own them.
That’s awesome that you are so organized, especially with your deep freeze! That is crazy that your library is so nit-picky about small damage to books.
This was a good read. The library system in my city is fantastic. They send out reminder emails (if you sign up) and they’ll message you a few days before the books are due, which is great for me. Ouch about having to pay for that missing book. Our library (at least they used to) allows you to bring in any other book as a replacement. I’m sure that’s changed, however the book I brought in was accept/acceptable…and it wasn’t a new title or anything.
That’s really cool that you could replace a missing book with any other book!
This is funny, but I avoid the public library BECAUSE I don’t want to be stressed to get the books back on time or pay late fees. I actually asked the school librarian if I could take out about 25 chapter books for my son for the summer. I was surprised, but she said yes! So now we have the books for the entire summer. 🙂
That is funny Liz! At least you know yourself well enough to foresee the cost! That’s awesome that your school librarian let you take out a summer’s worth of chapter books!
I absolutely do not understand the library charging so much more than the cover price for lost/damaged materials. I wish someone would explain it to me because we had to go through that once for a dvd that got cracked somehow. I *think* they would up letting me buy it myself and bring it in, but the replacement price they quoted was ridiculous.
One resource I absolutely love for library reminders is Library Elf. You can get your own subscription or use it for free if your library subscribes and you can manage multiple cards from multiple libraries. I love it.
They told me it was because they have to buy a special library bound version of the book and they have to put all the stickers on the spine and the magnetic sticker for checkout/security. Still ridiculous though!
My daughter broke a DVD from the library several years ago. We bought a new one on Amazon and put it in the library’s case. I think we wrote the library’s name in sharpie on the DVD to match the broken one. I felt good about it because it saved us money, saved the library work, and gave the library a brand new DVD (the old one was pretty scratched). It ended up being a $12 lesson to not let your 3-year-old try to take the DVD out of the case.
Oh okay, I guess that makes sense for books, which is probably why I got away with bringing in my own copy of the DVD. Thanks for the info!
At the library I work at we only charge the cost of the item. We also offer a refund, minus a small overdue fee, if the item is returned within one year. We want our stuff back! I do know some libraries charge a fee for the item to be processed since someone has to update the catalog, add barcode, stickers etc. Also some libraries charge more as a deterrent. We’re not a bookstore. Some patrons would just rather pay for item than actually look for it and don’t take into account the amount of staff time it takes to replace an item.
Thanks for your insight Lindsay!
I’ve had more than a few CVS Extra Care Bucks expire before I could use them. I know my CVS will take them if they are no more than 1 month past expiration but I’ve managed to loose them long enough where they expire. So frustrating! There is always room for improving my organizing systems. Besides saving you money, living in an organized space gives me peace of mind. Peace of mind = priceless.
Oh me too! I have some expired extra care bucks in my purse right now, in fact!
Amen to peace of mind being priceless!
Great points! It’s so important to keep track of late fees and refunds! They could save you a lot of money that could be spent on much more.
Yep! We would be thrilled to throw all that “extra” money at our debt!
Hi Stephanie. My most disorganized area is the “Mommy Do Later” basket that sits on my kitchen counter in the corner by the phone. It’s really big and stuffed full to overflowing with stuff that either needs attending to–but not immediately–or stuff I want to look at later because it interests me–but don’t have time for immediately. I go through it, culling and tidying it, but not nearly often enough. Also, my book shelves are usually overflowing. And I find it so hard to give away or otherwise say goodbye to books.
That happens to me too. When I put stuff in a “Mommy Do Later” pile, I am always sure I’ll get back to it before it is overdue/expires/ends, but that doesn’t always happen.
I signed up for Angie’s List a while back, and it auto-renews. I was planning to cancel, but I completely forgot about it until they charged my PayPal account, which was empty, and then PayPal over-drafted the savings account that I no longer use. I was SO mad at myself!
Oh I hate it when that happens! I’ve been there, done that, too! You have to be so careful with signing up for free trials and things that require a credit card when you sign up!
oh library fines.. the bane of my existance. I take out loads of audiobooks every month (I do data entry for a living, so if I have nothing to listen to, it makes for a LONNNGGG day of work). I can’t even begin to tally up my library fines in the past 10 yrs. I’ve also made the mistake of taking out dvd’s a few times. I swear this is worse than Redbox. Every day the movie is late, its a $1 fine vs 15c for late books. I don’t think we’ve returned a dvd on time in over a year.. I just paid a fine of $48 a couple months of ago because we had 3 out at one time that I completely forgot about!! I’ve vowed to not take any dvd’s out for awhile.. that was one of the more painful lessons we’ve learned in awhile.
Oh that is painful Kim!
Does your library send emails when your books are overdue? I was so happy when ours started doing that, so at least I wouldn’t go for more than a day without knowing the books were overdue (even though I couldn’t always make it to the library right away). If I catch them before they’re due, I can also renew online to avoid accruing late fees. My late fees always come when I have maxed out the renewals! 🙂