My Double Life

I live a double life at the moment.

By day, I am mild-mannered spreadsheet guru, working my way through tables and formats and formulae, working out thousands of meaningless numbers that I can then spew into a pretty graph.

By night, I am spending almost every waking minute answering security questions, in a desparate effort to prove that I am really who I say I am, and that these towels I am buying are for drying myself with and not for concealing weapons of massive distraction.

As a result, I finally have some tips for people who are considering moving house and therefore spending a chunk of money.

1. Try to spend as much money as you can out of the money that you need to spend before changing address. The first time you try to use your card after you've moved will almost certainly trigger a check and a temporary suspension of your credit. This is easy enough to fix, but it's not pleasant and mildly embarrassing when you're holding up the queue at the chemist.
2. Never try to get store credit a week after you've moved house. They'll almost certainly decide to haul you in to the back office and grill you.
3. Never try to make large withdrawals from your bank without memorising all of your direct debit details and your last eight transactions before you go in. It just makes your life easier. If you don't know the answers then you can say "pass" and go on to the next question, but it just takes up more time.
4. Always be nice to these people who are threatening to cut up your cards. It's not their fault that the computer says no - and these checks are there for your protection.

That last one's crucial. The banks would love to be easier to deal with, really they would. They've got better things to do than check up when you were last on the electoral roll, or get you to try to remember who supplies your electricity. The reason that they have to do this sort of check is a consequence of some criminals, a few stupid people, and massive pressure from consumer bodies. Think of that, the next time you are trying to get your bank charges waived.