Mad at your bank? Answers (but not solutions) are here

Yesterday, after waiting and waiting, and then waiting some more, for the postal service to bring me a paycheck -- such is the glorious life of a freelance writer -- I finally received a nice, big, fat check for some magazine articles I had written. It could conceivably pay for about a month's worth of bills, which is good.

Not so good is the fact that, despite having written plenty of magazine articles, accounting departments have been hanging onto their money, and it's been a few weeks since a check last arrived.

So imagine my surprise and joy when my wife called me from her cell phone to inform me that our bank was holding our newly arrived paycheck for an entire week because the check was too big. I was especially surprised because while I knew that banks sometimes hold checks over $5,000, my own bank hadn't held funds earlier this year on the one or two occasions I deposited similar amounts from the same publishing company.