Oh no! Not another learning experience!

That was my favorite mentor's bumper sticker in college. It was boldly displayed as the first thing you would see when you walked into his office. Many times after making mistakes, I would walk into his office and grimace.

So...ING Direct. I have been a very loyal customer for years now, and am sad to say goodbye. Today they closed my bank accounts, and will be transferring all the money back to Wachovia. It seems with all of this Bad Debt paying off, I have still not learned how to balance a checkbook.

This is something that will change today. I have never learned, but I know that I will.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had multiple accounts with ING with saving accounts for each item (car payment, car insurance, cell phone bill). Apparently, you are not supposed to do this. Oops. So anyway, with that being my first "offense" I then had some mishaps with the funds in each account.

For example, on Friday I made the last payment on my Chase credit card (which felt great!). I then went up to New Haven and bought some spiffy Yale clothing with my ING card. The money was crossed, I did not deposit enough to cover all of this (although it did exist in the individual accounts that were ear-marked for such things) and alas, no more ING.

I considered going crazy on them, after all, they said they wrote me unrequited letters (which I did not receive) and they told me that they sent one again, just yesterday!

The whole process has given me a bit of a headache. There are always growing pains, and if I am to be as financially intelligent and have the knowledge to be financially independent, this is something that I will master.

It sounds so silly, but at 24, I have no idea how to do this. I am looking forward to browsing my library along with the internet tonight.

I am searching for better ways to organize and keep track of this (I love mint.com). In addition, I will be looking for a new on-line bank. I appreciate this very much, as a lesson to learn now, as opposed to 5 years from now and messing around with more substantial figures.