My Recession Miracle

I’m probably not the best personal banker in the world — I don’t log on to check my checking account on a daily or even weekly basis. And since my expenses are fairly static and most of my deposits are direct deposits, I generally know how much I have. Since I still only use a bank in Princeton and make car payments through my parents, they can usually see my balance too.

As a result, I was really shocked today to get an email from my mom asking if I realized I had $X amount of dollars in my account. Without being specific about the amount, just know that $X was exactly 10 times the usual amount.

Sure enough, I logged into my account and saw that she was right. On June 24, somebody that wasn’t me deposited enough cash to help me breathe a LOT easier during this bout of unemployment. I looked at my balance and wanted to cry in relief, thinking “Wow, God really DOES work in mysterious ways.”

I started to imagine who my anonymous benefactor might be. Perhaps it was an undercover Robin Hood type, one who bears a striking resemblance to George Clooney, who stole money from my last employer’s coffers and used my direct deposit information to give me a cash infusion. Or maybe it was a merry band of guerilla do-gooders that infiltrate banks in the middle of the night to plump up the bank accounts of the recently terminated.

In my head I mentally started writing another essay I would inevitably send to Chicago Public Radio about my Recession Miracle. Other listeners would call in and share their stories of finding a bit too much money in their accounts. Eventually, word would leak that it really was the doing of the Obama administration’s secret Random Acts of Kindness provision in the stimulus package.

But, alas, this isn’t the kind of banking irregularity that can go unchecked. If someone out there had my account number, they could withdraw as easily as they could deposit. The more likely scenario was that my dad goofed while depositing money from the hardware store. So I called and told him to check his account balance, and sure enough he had deposited into the wrong account.

My hopes were crushed. The giant sigh of relief I had started to breathe deflated. My healthy, vital bank account would have to go back to being pathetic once the banking error was fixed. I thought of all the different ways my life would be different if I always had that much money in the piggy bank (for better or worse). So maybe it’s not an altogether good thing, but it sure was nice while it lasted.