When is the first day of the month really the first and when is it the last?
This seems to be the vexing question facing customers at First National Bank.
Cape Town reader, Dave Chambers, believes, as most of us do, that the first of the month starts on the 1st, and that the last day is either the 30th or 31st, except for the odd month, February, which ends either on the 28th or 29th.
But when Chambers wanted to make a withdrawal from his home loan account on February 1, he found he could not do so, because he is only allowed to make three withdrawals a month from his home loan account.
Quite so, Chambers told his bank, but that as he had done this in January, he was entitled to another three withdrawals in the new month, it now being February 1.
In a written reply, Louise van der Merwe, manager customer service at FNB Properties, told Chambers that the bank's "month" runs from the 2nd to the 1st, with the first being the last day. The reason for this is to facilitate the month end and to balance procedures, she said.
One wonders whether FNB employees get their salaries a day later and have their birthdays a day later? Then again, with the millennium bug due to strike on January 1, 2000, if you bank with FNB, your finances should be okay for one extra day!
Ann Bramhill, spokeswoman for FNB, says (with tongue in cheek, we think), that the first of a month can only ever be its last day.
"Only an illogical, emotional, free thinking human being would expect it to be the first day of the new month.
"Think about it. If it's the last day of the month, you have a day's grace to pay your bills and it's a day closer to the next pay day.
"If you're born on January 1, you were actually born last year and you can retire a year earlier.
"FNB is cancelling the first of the century next year so we can all escape the Y2K problems. So, if the first of the new century, now cancelled, is the last of the old century, then FNB will vault the Y2K problem without even noticing it and go straight into debiting home loan accounts on the second of the month, which then becomes the first of the month . . . or something."
And don't forget, Bramhill says, that tomorrow never comes anyway. It's so simple!
Standard Bank limits you to three withdrawals a month from your home loan account, Nedcor to two. Absa has no restrictions on the number of withdrawals.
These banks all stick to the normal calendar month.