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Overdraft fees from the past week now total over $200, because a client missed my invoice ... and then my reminder ... and then finally saw and responded to my messages ten days after the bill was due, over two weeks after the invoice had been sent.
Not deliberate, but disastrous.
$200 is MORE THAN THE ORIGINAL INVOICE TOTAL.
What this means is that every bit of money scheduled to come in is worth less when it finally does get paid, because it goes to paying off the financial institution before it can go toward any of my own bills that are already overdue.
This isn’t an uncommon story. If you know anyone else who freelances, I guarantee you that you know somebody else for whom this post rings painfully true. It’s the nature of precarity, of earning a living by the skin of your teeth.
And that's the difference between being late paying a small business vs. being late paying a major corporation.
The corporation will cut off your lights/internet/whatever and move on.
The SBO will watch their own lights/internet/everything get cut off instead.
This is how corporate monopolies win.
It's also something to keep in mind when you are deciding which bills get paid first.