Money matters
Saturday, 12 March 2016 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"Four Fifteen. Not Four, Not Four Thirty, But Four Fifteen. Hm. She Thinks To Intimidate Me By The Use Of Quarter Hours?"*
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Whenever I find myself in a quandary—which is far more often than I like—the first thing I think of is Robert Benchley's book My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew and I wonder if I ever read it. Then I think of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and I wonder if that's what I read when I was in San Antonio when I was thirteen, because I certainly read something like that and I'm sure it wasn't Mary Poppins. Well, reasonably sure. And then I think of the interlocking watermarks on my aunt's dining room table and wonder what book that came from and how that one series of Agatha Christie books had marks that looked like interlocking watermarks on the covers, and usually by that time I've forgotten what the problem was and I'm thinking about something else, which might have something to do with why I so seldom accomplish anything.
The latest quandary is what to do about my bank. I've been a member of this credit union for a really long time and I'm mostly happy with them except that they've started charging fees for things and also giving credits for things and it all pretty much comes out even, but it's annoying. It's particularly annoying that they're calling the credits fees; there's a reward fee for direct deposit. This makes me want to slap someone, preferably whoever came up with this remarkably stupid term.
I could deal with the fees. I could deal with the stupid terminology. What I can't deal with is the password bullshit.
This is what I know about online passwords: long and strange and filled with symbols is better. For this reason, I have a system for creating passwords. These are my credit union's criteria for passwords: Your password must meet the following criteria: not contain your user ID | be at least 8 characters | be no more than 12 characters | not be consecutive numbers or letters (for example 1234 or abcde) | not be numbers or letters in a series (for example 11111 or aaaaa) | not contain your SSN | not contain your phone number | not contain your name | the password cannot be recently used | not contain the word 'password' | not contain the word 'Fiserv' | not contain special characters other than '! # $ * ? @ . - _' | contain at least 3 of the following character types - uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and special characters '! # $ * ? @ . - _' |
I can work with this, except for the insane twelve character limit and the limit on special characters. These rules are counter-intuitive. For over two years I've been unable to come up with a secure password I can remember.
So here's what happens when I go to pay my bills: I go to balance my checkbook and I can't remember my password. I tell the website I can't remember my password and because I'm on a Mac, it gives me an error message. Then I have to call and get my password reset. This can take several days, depending on when I start the process. I've gotten to where I dread paying bills and very often they're late and I'm stressed out and anxious about it all the time.
So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I've tried talking to them about it at the credit union but they treat me as though I'm mentally unbalanced, and by the time I'm talking to them, I usually am fragile and emotionally unsound with frustration. Apparently I'm the only one who has this problem
So what else is new?
*Miss Jean Brodie
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Whenever I find myself in a quandary—which is far more often than I like—the first thing I think of is Robert Benchley's book My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew and I wonder if I ever read it. Then I think of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and I wonder if that's what I read when I was in San Antonio when I was thirteen, because I certainly read something like that and I'm sure it wasn't Mary Poppins. Well, reasonably sure. And then I think of the interlocking watermarks on my aunt's dining room table and wonder what book that came from and how that one series of Agatha Christie books had marks that looked like interlocking watermarks on the covers, and usually by that time I've forgotten what the problem was and I'm thinking about something else, which might have something to do with why I so seldom accomplish anything.
The latest quandary is what to do about my bank. I've been a member of this credit union for a really long time and I'm mostly happy with them except that they've started charging fees for things and also giving credits for things and it all pretty much comes out even, but it's annoying. It's particularly annoying that they're calling the credits fees; there's a reward fee for direct deposit. This makes me want to slap someone, preferably whoever came up with this remarkably stupid term.
I could deal with the fees. I could deal with the stupid terminology. What I can't deal with is the password bullshit.
This is what I know about online passwords: long and strange and filled with symbols is better. For this reason, I have a system for creating passwords. These are my credit union's criteria for passwords: Your password must meet the following criteria: not contain your user ID | be at least 8 characters | be no more than 12 characters | not be consecutive numbers or letters (for example 1234 or abcde) | not be numbers or letters in a series (for example 11111 or aaaaa) | not contain your SSN | not contain your phone number | not contain your name | the password cannot be recently used | not contain the word 'password' | not contain the word 'Fiserv' | not contain special characters other than '! # $ * ? @ . - _' | contain at least 3 of the following character types - uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and special characters '! # $ * ? @ . - _' |
I can work with this, except for the insane twelve character limit and the limit on special characters. These rules are counter-intuitive. For over two years I've been unable to come up with a secure password I can remember.
So here's what happens when I go to pay my bills: I go to balance my checkbook and I can't remember my password. I tell the website I can't remember my password and because I'm on a Mac, it gives me an error message. Then I have to call and get my password reset. This can take several days, depending on when I start the process. I've gotten to where I dread paying bills and very often they're late and I'm stressed out and anxious about it all the time.
So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I've tried talking to them about it at the credit union but they treat me as though I'm mentally unbalanced, and by the time I'm talking to them, I usually am fragile and emotionally unsound with frustration. Apparently I'm the only one who has this problem
So what else is new?
*Miss Jean Brodie