Free Money for me and You

Free Money For Me and You

Today I am especially excited because I received an incredible email. It seems that a king in a far away country, which I never heard of before, has got many millions of dollars and he desperately needs somebody to take a bunch of it off his hands. I could barely believe that this wonderful man has selected me to share in his fortunes. I don’t know what I did to attract his attention, but I am not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. You may be a bit skeptical but when I tell you the following true story you might reconsider your position.

Sometime around 1992, I got a similar email. Computers weren’t very sophisticated then and my knowledge of them was even worse. The letter said that I had $2,700.00 in some secret hiding place. The sender of the letter left a phone number so I called it and spoke to a woman who said she could get the mystery treasure for me, but I would have to pay her 30% of the waiting funds. I almost told her to go fly a kite, but I had her send me her paperwork anyway.

The letter arrived a few days later and it had a little surprise. She was not asking me to give her anything up front. Instead, she said she would get the money first and pay me my share. Only then would she get her money. Well, that made me think that there might actually be something to her claim. I then proceeded to reflect on past years of my life to see if I could figure out what her offer was really all about.

I imagined all sorts of things including insurance policies, elderly relatives who might have left me something in a will and other fantasies. I came up with a couple of possibilities. Then I called her back and said I was going to try and figure it out on my own and if unsuccessful I would take her up on her offer.

That evening, I told my sons, who were 12 to 14 at the time, that I wanted them to do some research and if they could find my missing pot of gold, I would share it with them on the same basis that the lady wanted. They were both very familiar with computers already so they were willing to give it a try.

A couple hours later Justin found it.

All he could find out was it had something to do with stocks, which was weird because I had very little experience playing the market. I could not tell you the difference between the Nasdaq and the Dow/Jones Industrials I had a very modest sum in a mutual fund with Janus but there was no reason for me to have any secret money with them When we called the people in charge, we were in for an even bigger surprise.

As it turned out, the $2,700 that I was entitled to was only part of my new-found riches. In fact, that money was just the dividends that were paid on some mystery stock that I also apparently owned. I couldn’t help but wonder if the dividends are only part of the treasure, how much is the stock itself actually worth? The managers would not tell me any more over the phone. I had to go to their place of business and bring my identification.

Tomorrow, I will conclude the story

Your Comments are invited