Monday Money Funny - Spending Mis-Deposited Money

One of the regular features on my blog is "Monday's Money Funny" which are humorous (at least to me) articles/jokes/just about anything that I've discovered over the weekend when I catch up on all my on line reading that spark a need for knowledge. For example last week's was on Why People Believe Weird Things about Money and a very interesting article from the LA Times.

This week, I ran across too very similar articles, one from the Chicago Sun-Times and the other from the Boston Globe. Both are articles about men who used money accidentally deposited into the their bank accounts and are now charged with the crime of using this money.

Highlights from the Chicago Sun-Times Article:
"A man was charged with withdrawing $2 million from an account after a bank confused him with a man who has the same name. Benjamin Lovell was arraigned Tuesday on grand larceny charges. The 48-year-old salesman said he tried to tell officials at Commerce Bank in December that he did not have a $5 million account. He says he was told it was his and he could withdraw the money [...]"

Highlights from the Boston Globe Article:
"A La Vista man was charged with felony theft after he spent $80,000 his bank deposited by mistake in his account.
George J. Costa, 45, is charged with theft of lost or mislaid property. It is a crime to take money that's been "delivered under a mistake. More than $106,000 was deposited into Costa's account between August 2006 and February after a Pinnacle Bank employee mixed up account numbers, according to the Nebraska State Patrol. [...]"

Now, I realize that both of these men, most likely new that this money was not theirs to spend, but what if it had only been an extra $200 deposited, do you think they would have realized it was not their money?

I ask this because I know so many people who don't keep track of their financial papers (recipets, CC statements, etc) or balance their check book. Honestly, would you know if an extra $200 had been deposited in your accounts?

This promted me to do a little research, if you're like Albert Einstein and struggle balancing your check book I found a how to guide for you at ehow (personally I don't balance mine on paper either, I use an excel document to balance my checkbook - so much easier and less work).

Also for those of you who are struggling to figure out what to save and what to shred as far as your financial paper I found a good chart at bankrate.com that tells you how long to keep your documents. And when you're ready to get ride of your no longer needed financial documents, make sure to use a shredder. Kevin over at No Debt Plan has an interesting post about shredding documents.

This year I finally got tired of all the paper I keep and decided to embark on a paperless filing system. I scan every document that comes in, save it on my hard drive in a password protected winzip file, with a back up on a USB drive. So far its worked wonderfully I can shred pretty much all of my documents and since I save everything with the name of the institutes, a description, and a date I can easily access it all.

Well that's it for this Monday. Stay tuned for next week's Monday's Money Funny. Also if you run across any Money Funnies please email them to me at future.millionaire.blog@gmail.com and if I use them I will give you credit and link to your blog.