In and out

My finances are seemingly held in place by a strange set of cosmic rules I only vaguely comprehend.

Rooting through some paperwork this evening I came across a cheque I'd previously missed for a few hundred pounds. The cheque was a dividend from some shares, and should have come as a pleasant surprise, but I recognised it immediately for what it was: a portent of doom! Ok, so doom is putting it a little strongly, but, despite my usually optimistic bent, I've encountered situations like this entirely too many times to be wholly enthusiastic when money falls unheralded into my lap. In my experience, receipts of unexpected sums of money are surprisingly often followed by demands for an amount typically equalling or exceeding the incoming monies.

I wasn't going to be caught unawares this time though. I could feel it in the air - somewhere in my finances was an hole previously unknown to me that this cheque would fill. I set about on my witch hunt, pulling out my bank statements for the last few months and sifting through them for something that shouldn't have been there. Nothing untowards captured my attention. Could I be wrong? Could it be this money came without strings? I remained suspicious. Where else could it be? Credit card perhaps? My last couple of statements were lying unopened since I'd previously paid of the balance in full and hadn't used it for anything since. Or had I? I ventured over to the unopened envelopes, plucked out the most recent one and opened it. And lo, there it was.

It was my own fault. I'd paid my excessively large phone bill (built up over 6 months after the phone company decided to stop debiting money from my account without telling me), using my credit card (since aforementioned phone company refused my debit card) and forgotten about it. The sum outstanding on my credit card wasn't for exactly the same amount as the cheque, but it was within 1% which I feel is pretty good going.

I feel a bit more relaxed now, knowing that my fiscal scales of karma are temporarily balanced once more. It would have been nice to have had the money to spend on fun stuff, but at least there's no nasty surprise in store in the future.

It's times like this I dread to think how my karmic scales would balance were I ever to win the lottery...