Pile up debit and credit card receipts on the computer desk next to the monitor for two months. Don’t worry about this because it’s tax season and you’re busy. Besides, you got your refund in January and it can’t be all gone yet.

When tax season finally ends, put off the mess further because Gather has done an upgrade and it’s ruined your life. Besides you have to go out of town to take your mother to lunch for her birthday.

Remember to check the snail mail box on Friday. Find a bank notice in there that looks suspiciously like an overdraft notice. You don’t get paper statements any more, so any news from the bank is probably bad news. Uh oh. Hide the incriminating mail from your husband who counts on you to stay on top of these things.

On Saturday, get a call from AT&T who is turning off your cell phones if you don’t pay your bill. Now.

Decide that today might be a good day to get the checkbook balanced and the bills paid no matter that the weather is beautiful and you’d rather be planting your tomatoes.

Open Microshaft Money 2007. Enter receipts in the appropriate accounts for several hours. See lots of red numbers. Cuss. Wonder why you went out to eat so much when you’ve clearly bought enough groceries to feed a small 3rd world country. Cuss some more.

Log on at the bank. Cuss because your password has disappeared out of auto-complete and you don’t remember what it is. Begin checking little boxes to mark items cleared. Make a list of things that cleared that you have no receipt for. Send husband on receipt hunt in cars, on dressers, and in the dumpster. Cuss. Find direct deposits from Amazon, Google, and Linkshare. Think that at least one good thing has happened.

Finish balancing checking account. Take some pride in the fact that you have done this against overwhelming odds and without using the Adjust button in Money. Thank Charles for overdraft protection.

Fight with Gmail which hasn’t been working right for days. Finally get it open. Start digging through 2853 emails in your inbox looking for the utility bill which hasn’t come via snail mail for years. Find it. Open it. Cuss. Tell your husband that we’re all going to die and the world is ending. Cuss. Gripe at the kids for leaving stuff on all the time. Cuss.

Dig through 2852 emails looking for the cable bill. Find it. Cuss some more. Tell your husband that we really need to consider DSL.

Dig through 2851 emails looking for the phone bill. Give up. Tell husband to dial *PAY before they shut you off.

Open mail from the mortgage company. Find a bill for escrow shortage. Cuss. Discover house payment is going up. Cuss.

Still, it can’t be that bad since you set up all your credit cards on auto-pay through your bank. Right? I mean at least there won’t be any $39 late fees.

Wrong. You set Sam’s Club up to pay $100 per month. Meanwhile, you ran it over the limit and the minimum payment went up to over the $100 you had set up to go out automatically. It’s now too late to pay the extra amount on time. Repeat this basic scenario for two more cards.

Cuss. Change all your automatic payments to send more next time. Blame yourself for not opening any of those credit card statements for two months and for using the credit cards you had sworn to never use again. But, hey, you were depressed and it was cheaper to go buy new stuff than it was to go to the mental health care provider. Besides, your tax rebate is coming soon.

Go to your blog and whine about it.