Ever bounced a check?

[cj001f]

You are in good company!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/bu.../18donate.html

You Can Be Chief of G.E. and Still Bounce a Check
By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY, July 17 — Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and chief executive of General Electric, bounced a $2,000 check to the failed New York gubernatorial campaign of William F. Weld, according to a campaign finance filing released Monday.

Yes, rich people can bounce checks, too.

The Weld campaign filing said that Mr. Immelt, 50, wrote the check in May, on the same day he held a fund-raiser for Mr. Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, at G.E.’s headquarters in Fairfield, Conn.

So what happened?

Mr. Immelt, after all, earns $15.4 million a year, owns $190 million in G.E. stock and runs the seventh-largest company in the Fortune 500.

“He wrote this on a closed account, so that’s why the check came back and he has replaced it,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said. “Jeff made a commitment, so he’s going to keep it.”

Walter Breakell, Mr. Weld’s former campaign manager, said, “It’s not uncommon for something like this to happen.”

“It’s not common, but it happens, particularly for people like Jeff Immelt, who have business managers and finance people who take care of a lot of this stuff for them, and then write a check on their own,” he said.

Mr. Weld’s finance office had called assistants to Mr. Immelt to sort out the matter, Mr. Breakell said.

“It’s not something where we have Bill call Jeff, and say, ‘Uh, hey, buddy,’ ’’ he said. That was especially so since the Weld campaign raised about $50,000 from G.E. executives at the event.

Not that it helped. Mr. Weld suspended his campaign in early June after a former member of the State Assembly, John Faso, pulled off an upset at the Republican State Convention on Long Island and won the backing of the state Republican leadership. Mr. Weld had been the early favorite of party leaders and had the unequivocal support of the Republican Party chairman, Stephen J. Minarik III.

As for G.E.’s holding a fund-raiser for a candidate for New York governor at its Connecticut headquarters, Mr. Sheffer said he did not think Mr. Immelt and Mr. Weld had a longstanding relationship but the company obviously had an interest in the race because “we do business in New York State.”

On the matter of Mr. Immelt, one of America’s most powerful chief executives, bouncing a check, Lewis J. Altfest, founder and president of a financial planning firm with a Park Avenue address, said the oversight was no surprise. Among his own clientele, those with higher net worths often had the most trouble sweating the details of transactions with, say, less than six or seven digits.

“Some of our clients just have difficulties, the oddest difficulties,” he said, adding that one man found himself trapped in a parking garage with no bills available to pay his way out while another stashed currency in his suit pockets, and often lost it to the dry cleaner, because carrying a wallet was not viewed as fashionable.

“They have trouble because they aren’t exposed to the day-to-day small stuff,” Mr. Altfest said.

His advice for the rich? “Carry around some credit cards and a thin wallet,” he said. “Have some money on hand, then have either a bank card or the ability to call on somebody to help you out.”

And it does not hurt to throw away those old checkbooks.

[P_McPoser]

heh. Never on purpose, but it happened once.

[Danno]

William Weld was running for New York governor????

I bounced a check once in college, never again.

[Steven S. Dallas]

I sent Jeff Immelt a check after this because I felt so bad for him. But it bounced, too.

[frozenwater]

My wife wrote a check on a closed account years ago to pay for my daughters school pictures. Total of like $12.00

We moved and they sent us to collections. They never found us though so it went unpaid for years. Then just recently we bought a home and there it was on her credit report. It cost us a shitload in time and effort to get it cleared up, plus they had us on a rope and knew it. I think we ended up paying close to $100 to clear it up.

[Theodore]

Never. Auto overdraft protection has saved me a few times though.

[Shaggy]

Never here as well -- I only write 3 or 4 cheques a year.