Breaking the Bank

It's terribly expensive to be poor. That sounds like a simplistic, obvious statement but in fact, the sort of advice you hear about managing your "finances" illustrates that a lot of people really, actually, do not know that. Kind of mind boggling, really. 
Last month a simple transaction blew my entire, carefully planned budget out of whack with dire results that are likely to take a year to repair.
In February, I wrote a check to an individual in another state and sent it by the US mail. Simple enough. It was for $25.00, an amount I could afford, otherwise I wouldn't have written the check. I deducted it from my balance and forgot all about it. 
This is what happened; the recipient didn't run the check through the bank until June. The day it cleared coincided with a major debit card purchase (car repair), causing my balance to go to Non-Sufficient Funds, resulting in a charge of $35, causing my electric bill payment to be NSF, resulting in another $35 charge....and so forth. A chain reaction putting me in the hole to the tune of about $300. My paycheck comes every other Friday, so no replacement funds for two weeks and I also found out the "hard way" (by which I mean I didn't know they do this until it happened) my bank also charges an Overdraft Fee of $5 a day. 
So, in addition to running up my credit cards to pay the rest of the car repair, I had to use them to buy food for two weeks while waiting for the next pay check, thereby maxing out two credit cards which I have been diligently paying down for the past year. This is how the tiniest little mistake or a simple matter of timing can bust up the best of intentions and the most careful of plans. My credit score is ruined for the time being, I've got late fees, NSFs on my record and 18% interest to pay off. 
I found several well written articles describing just such problems on LifeHacker, you can read them here.