Seriously — where is your cousin at now? My schadenfreude desperately wants to hear that his indiscretions have left him in massive debt or something. Did he invest in Madoff’s ponzi scheme or buy Enron stock or anything?

I had 2 ‘friends’ in the same street and at about age 10, we all got cashflow cards. Without thinking, we shared our pin numbers. I was never very careful with my card, and would go for months without knowing where it was or thinking about it. A long time later, I went to the bank with my mother to withdraw for my first big trip on my own, to visit my grandfather. The account was empty. (And the bank teller accused me of taking it without telling my mum – luckily she had more trust in me than that). Looking at the statements, it seems that one of my ‘friends’ had given herself a $20 weekly allowance over about a year and a half – about $1700, gone.

That experience definitely made me a lot more aware of trusting people with my money – whether access to it or lending/giving it, and most importantly it taught me a lesson I desperately needed: to know where my card/money/wallet is! I have lost a wallet a few times since, but usually in very out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.

There are many ways to get “justice.” I’m not so enlightened as to believe in waiting for karma. Because the fact is, it doesn’t usually offset the damage (can you say Bernie Madoff?)done by thieves and crooks.

I think there are times when people have to be made to pay for what they do. Where the regular judicial system fails to fix things.

One way or the other.

Sadly, too many people are still far too trusting with friends and family. One can’t live life seeing everyone as a potential thief, but you do have to be aware that human nature is such that all kinds of people will steal what they can. We see this in business all the time, where ideas, reputations, promotions and such are “stolen” by unscrupulous types whose primary focus is getting what they want.

What’s often very interesting is that the people who take something don’t need it or could afford it on their own. The stereotype in society and business (where having bad credit often means you can’t even get a job!)is that poor people are the thieves or potential thieves, the ones you gotta “watch out for”.

Where I grew up, there were lots of rich kids. You know who shoplifted? The rich kids. Who had huge allowances and could have afforded anything.

We “poor” kids would never dream of stealing anything. From anyone, let alone friends or family. (No matter how much I wanted something it simply never occurred to me to steal it. I guess that Catholic School education and those years with the nuns had some good ruboff!)

I’m glad you were able to finally pull some lessons out of it… Although honestly, I just wish it had never happened to you in the first place.

She ran to her room and brought down her little tin piggy bank and put it in with her other money that she’d saved since baby-hood. Birthday, Christmas and chore money. She’s twelve, so it added up and was about $150.

When my “sister” left so did the money. My daughter was devestated. It never occured to us that we would have to be secretive in front of a relative.

What happened to that cousin? Has he perhaps gotten back some of what he gave out?

I got into college on a partial scholarship, and saved money all summer to pay the rest of my expenses. I moved it into a checking account so I could have access to it on campus, and my mom was the co-signer on the account cause I was only 17. As co-signer she had an ATM card, which I did give to her because you never know, there might be an emergency and that way she could put money into the account.

So, off I went to the other end of the state. Living off my checking account until my reimbursement came through. Between books and fees, I had no money for the campus dining card, but planned to get it as soon as the reimbursement came in, and then I’d have a couple hundred to get me through until Christmas. Well, the reimbursement came, I put it in the bank, and went to the dining hall to write a check for the card.

You know where this is going. By the time the check reached my bank at the other end of the state, my mom had taken the money out. Yes, it was for a necessary expense, but now I had no money for food, for. the. whole. semester.

Financial aid found me a part time job on campus, I earned just about enough to feed myself. I could not buy a campus dining card though, because although the financial aid added up to enough to do so, I was only receiving a tiny amount of it as pay each week. The job was in a campus daycare, I loved the days when my shift coincided wtih snack time: a tiny cup of milk and a few saltines—and every drop and crumb I could manage to eat while clearing the childrens table and the teacher not looking!

Sometimes, I’d even say my lack of grocery money
led to my pregnency late in the semester. The guy kept inviting me to dinner, I kept saying yes, I became his girlfriend, and I became pregnant. He wasn’t the sort of guy I ever would have dated, I didn’t intend to date at all, I knew from my upbringing I wanted a degree the income it could get me. But a full dinner instead of a can of soup always sounded good and after a few weeks of that, well, you are a couple. But only sometimes do I go so far as to think of it this way. It may have been a contributing factor, but being too shy to go to student health and ask for the pill, or to insist he find his way to a drugstore and ask the pharmacist for condoms (for in those days, they weren’t on display) were both way bigger factors!

Still in all, losing that $400 changed everything about being at college and getting away from the household I grew up in. The household reached out and grabbed me back.

That’s because we hunted, fished, and grew vegetables for most of our food.

God Bless and Healing to All!