A Humbling Moment

Lisa and I keep track our finances using one of the many financial software packages available for computers. It's a great tool to use because it makes it easy to balance your checkbook and keep track of investments, and it has all kinds of reports that can be run to show how much money you have, where you're spending your money, spending trends, and so on.

One of the features of the program is to create "recurring payments" for bills that you pay every month. Once you've set up a recurring payment the program will remind you when it's time to pay a bill. You can set these recurring payments up manually, or the program actually monitors your spending and will suggest that you set them up automatically. Make three payments to the power company within a few days of each other on three separate months and it will pop up a message saying "It looks like your transaction to DUKE ENERGY is a recurring payment. Would you like to set up a recurring payment for DUKE ENERGY?" Hit the "Yes" button and boom! Your transaction is created.

That's all well and good, but in the ten years we've used the program I've gotten a smackdown from this feature maybe three or four times. The latest was yesterday when I got a message that said, "It looks like your transaction to DIXIE CHILI is a recurring payment. Would you like to set up a recurring payment for DIXIE CHILI?"

This is a pretty clear sign that I'm eating too often at Dixie Chili. And it's pretty humbling. On the other hand, maybe I should thank the program--it's a friendly reminder.

And I guess Dixie Chili is better than Dunkin' Donuts!