The Joke Is On Me: Traveler's Checks

The first time I traveled abroad, I went equipped with several hundreds of dollars worth of traveler's checks. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, or forgot about these (it has been a while!) they are a check that you pay cash for and when you get them from the bank, you sign them once. Then when you want to exchange money, you give the teller in a foreign country the check, you countersign and date and they give you foreign currency in exchange. If I recall, they were a little safer than cash because they had a serial number so if you lost one or it got stolen, you may have been able to get your money back. I think this is true. 

Anyway, I did not use all of my travelers checks and I came back to the US and put them somewhere safe and then proceeded to move a few times, travel for work, move again and travel more until finally I bought my house and unpacked some boxes that had been sitting in storage for well over a dozen years and guess what I found? Two hundred dollars worth of travelers checks. So I put them in the "paperwork that needs attention eventually" pile and they sat there for about seven more years. I would look at them from time to time and think that I should probably just take them to the bank, but I was not in a rush, since they were issued by my bank where I still bank and hey, they are the equivalent of cash, right? 

Finally I decided to cross some of those long standing tasks off my eight year old to do list (there are still some things on it. I am looking at you, front yard drip system) and I put the checks in my purse with the intention of taking them into the bank as soon as I had the chance. First I tried the bank near my house, which I found out had been closed down about six months ago, which goes to show how often I go to the bank. Then I decided to take the checks to work with me with the intention of taking a lunch break and finally depositing them. You are probably not surprised to hear that they sat in my purse for another week before I finally made my way down to the bank. By the way, do you know how hard it is to find an actual bank that you can walk inside of and talk to a person in San Francisco/Oakland? It is hard. There are tons of ATMs but an actual person is rare! However, I had to take these to an real human, as they had to be countersigned in front of a person in order to be deposited. 

The first time I went down and got in line (where there were no people) I was told by the teller that their systems were down and they could not do any transactions. I felt like maybe someone was plotting against me. I went back the next day and wonder of wonder, the systems were working, the line was short and I was at the teller before you knew it. And then I deposited the checks and walked away whistling Dixie. As Borat would say, this story is NOT true. First of all, the teller had never seen a travelers check. No joke. Never. So she had to get her coworker to come over and explain the process. Then she had me countersign them. 

Then she looked at the two signatures and said that they did not match. I did not disagree with her. One was signed when I was not even legally allowed to drink yet and one was signed....a few...years...or decades....later. My signature is not the same as it was. I used to perfectly swoop every letter and write in perfect cursive; now my signature looks like I am a harried MD with a hot date. So she brought the coworker over again and the coworker said that they could not take the checks. I asked if they could look up the serial number and then verify it against my ID and she said that they do not keep records that long. She finally said that she would check my signature on file and would compare that. Unfortunately, the signature on file (from when I opened my account, which was opened before I could legally vote, or maybe even before I could drive) also did not match. 

She went into this big spiel about how she is doing this for my protection and I was thinking in my head, "lady, I work in finance; you are using MY LINE!" and I made affirmations about how I totally and completely understand, I work in the same industry, I have to tell people the same thing all of the time etc. We finally got around to a point where she said that she would attempt to deposit them if I crossed off and initialed the co-signature I had just done and then signed again but tried to copy the original one, BUT she was not making any guarantees that it would go through, she said. I thanked her profusely, signed again and left the building. 

I know that $200 is not chump change, and I know that I was an idiot and I should not have waited so long to deposit the checks and I know that now I need to go into the bank to sign a new signature card because my signature has changed a lot from the time I was 14. I also really had no expectations that they would get successfully deposited. However, imagine my surprise and glee when the next day I saw that I was $200 richer! 

Verdict: Don't be an idiot. Deposit your checks on time. BUT if you happen to be an idiot, but things end up working out in the end anyway, enjoy the small victories, because they are awfully sweet. 

Have you ever done something silly like this? If so, what was the outcome? Did you end up being successful in the end?