04/30/2025
I just had a personal experience with a collection agency that highlights why you should never (ever) make assumptions when it comes to financial matters, and why itโs important to stay grounded and not panic when receiving a scary letter or phone call! ๐ณ
This morning I received a voicemail from CMRE Financial, which is a debt collection agency, stating that they were calling to collect on a debt and to call them back.
โWhat in the world? No wayโ, was my immediate thought. I was more baffled than anxious. ๐ค
As a financial coach I keep very diligent records of all finances, and have an extremely organized budget both in my own custom spreadsheet and in my Monarch Money app. I know what I owe, to whom, and when, down to the dollar.
My money scripts are both Money Vigilance and to a lesser extent- Money Worship, with the former being more along the lines of hypervigilance due to a long history of financial anxiety and financial trauma. So the Money Vigilance would never let something like this slide by me no matter how much โlifeโ is going on. (And boy was there a lot of โlifingโ going on for me in 2024 ๐
.)
Younger me would have nearly had a panic attack receiving that voicemail, wondering โoh my god how much is it?? Who is it for????โ I would have had visions of becoming homeless, losing all my cash, or maybe even going to prison if the amount was high enough.
For a long time I had Money Avoidance Money Scripts, which is where those irrational/unhealthy reactions would come from. I never had any financial education growing up or in school, so I didnโt know how to manage it. You donโt know what you donโt know, KWIM?
But current me is wiser, so I went directly to the CMRE website to get their contact number (in case the call had actually been spam/spoofing), and made my first phone call.
The bot that answered quickly confirmed my name and address and told me I owed a medical imaging company that I had been a patient of $40.
I hung up and started looking through my medical billing receipts from the medical imaging company, which I keep as PDFs in a file folder on my computer thatโs backed up to DropBox.
I quickly found two receipts for the medical company. One for $100, and the other for $40, both for services received in 2024.
I then looked in my medical file and found the two billing statements that matched the receipts for those services. I found no other bills from that company for any other services in 2024.
Then I made my second phone call: this time to the medical companyโs billing office.
It turns out that the whole thing was a technical error on their part. ๐
They applied my $40 payment for service dated 4/18 to a different bill for service dated 6/7- a bill they confirmed *they never even mailed to me*.
So the $40 bill that I paid for service dated 4/18, whose money went elsewhere- went to collections; while I had a $15 credit on my account for โoverpayingโ the 6/7 bill I never even saw. (Make it make sense ๐.)
We were able to quickly prove this happened because each bill has itโs own unique account number, and you canโt pay a bill (by phone, online, via check, etc) without knowing what the unique account number is on the bill you are paying. (And yes, they call it an โaccount numberโ, not a โbill numberโ or some other number.) Since they confirmed that they never sent me the 6/7 bill that they attributed my $40 payment to, it would have been impossible for me to pay it.
SO, they will be issuing and mailing me a bill for the 6/7 service, with a balance still due of $25 (which I will of course pay), and recalling the debt from the collection agency. Actually, they stated that while on the phone with me they had already recalled the debt from CMRE collections.
This whole thing was a mistake on their part, and Iโm glad my persistence and curiosity got it resolved.
It would have been far too easy for me to pay the $40 when I called CMRE, and to have felt bad that I let a bill go to collections. To have felt guilty and irresponsible. To question all of my education and experience as a financial coach. To allow it to affect my self esteem. To assume they were right, and I was wrong, despite my best efforts at being financially responsible.
Or I could have just paid the $40 to the medical company when I called them, knowing it was for legitimate service that I received.
But ultimately it was my sheer curiosity that had me needing to understand โwhat in the actual worldโ, that helped me easily clear an erroneous bill from collections that should have never even gone there.
The moral of the story here is this:
When faced with a potentially scary financial situation: ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS.
Get ALL the information.
Make all the phone calls.
Advocate for yourself.
Be kind to the human on the other end of the phone. They are just doing their job.
Create a document and record dates, account numbers, names of CS agents, dates of phone calls, confirmation numbers, methods of communication/payment, addresses, contact information, etc.
Donโt hang up the phone until you are very clear on your, and their, next steps.
Write it all down.
And most importantly, donโt panic.
It may just be a simple technical error after all.
And if itโs not?
*Financial issues do not define you.*
Your character and self-worth are NOT determined by how much you owe, to whom, or how many financial mistakes you have made. Or how much money you make, or have. They just arenโt, FULL FREAKING STOP. ๐
You are simply a human being doing the best you can in a challenging world without an instruction manual and likely- no formal financial education.
Itโs always possible to grow and change and become more financially self-aware. I am living proof of that.
Have you ever had a scary financial situation that, upon further digging, turned out to be a big fat nothingburger? Drop it in the comments below! โฌ๏ธ
