Money talks
February 26, 2006

My mama likes to say that my lack of concern for money causes it to flourish in my hands. She says this based on the fact that through the years she has discovered wads of saved up allowances forgotten in some drawer, and the fact that I am often discovering stores of cash forgotten in pants pockets or in a purse I haven�t used in a while. Just when I think I don�t have any money I discover I have more than I thought.

For example�three years ago I was in a pretty dire financial crisis. Some of the loans I�d been expecting hadn�t come through, and I was too proud or stupid to ask my parents for the money (well, I eventually had to or they would have kicked me out of uni, and I am currently repaying my dad for that generous loan), but anyway�I had just come back from spending Thanksgiving in New York with my high school friends. My friend Johi, who had come to stay with me in Philly, and I went to the Wawa to stock up on some snacks. I went to take $20 out of the ATM. Denied. It suspected that I didn�t have much money in my account, so I tried to take $10 out. DENIED. Finally I just asked for a bank statement. I had a $0.85 (that�s 85 cents) in my account. I hadn�t picked up my work check, which was usually issued on Thursdays, the week before on account of the place being closed for Thanksgiving. It was Saturday afternoon, and I would have to spend the next two days living off the $5 I had in my wallet/borrowing from Johi. (Oh, the shame.)
But later on that evening I pulled a box of old photos out from under my bed to show Johi. In that box I found my old, navy filofax from 2001 that I�d used before stashing it in the box and heading off to Egypt for a semester of studying �abroad�. In that old, navy filofax I found about $300. After Johi and I did a dance of joy around my tiny room, I sat down and tried to figure out how the money had gotten in there, and how I could have possibly forgotten about it. And then I remembered the rainy late-May afternoon when I had closed my bank account in preparation for my seven months (summer and fall) abroad. I was all wrapped up at the time in the fact that I would be spending 7 months away from my two-day-old boyfriend (the same boyfriend only months before the filofax incident had written a check for $100 and left it for me on his pillow; talk about feeling classy), and I guess I must�ve forgotten about that money. Either way I�d gone from 85 cents to three hundred dollars in about an hour. That was pretty awesome.

So, I've been in a bit of a financial �crisis� lately, though nowhere near the one I was in those many years ago. As much as I can, I try not to withdraw money from my savings account, and rather set aside a wad of cash from my salary when I receive it at the end of each month, hand three-quarters of it to my dad, and then put whatever is left over in my savings account. But due to the extravagant purchase of a dress & shoes for a wedding last month, and paying exorbitant amounts of money to have my skin zapped, I have been dipping into the old savings account quite a bit lately. In an attempt to avoid further trips to the ATM machine, I turned my room upside-down looking for any forgotten or hidden stashes of cashes (or how about, caches of cash? Groan.) I only came up with 25 pounds in bills that I�ve been hesitant to part with, because they have sweet little messages written on them.