My brother wrote up a pretty clever “life plan” for himself the other day (which is quite interesting in itself), and under his finances category, he jotted the following:

“Stop worrying about money – you’ll get it when you least expect it, and you’ll lose it when you least expect it.”

My brother, getting philosophical about money?! I couldn’t believe it! This is the same brother that needed to borrow money to help finance his condo, and whom needed help erasing his debt – i love it! The teacher is now learning from the student ;)

I really think there’s something to that quote . DOING something about it instead of WORRYING is the ultimate way to go in my opinion, but on a general level (say, after you’ve already put a game plan in action), I believe he’s got it right. Get ready for word vomit:

Last Friday I opened up my mailbox, and there was a lovely card from mom in there. Now, usually she sends me stuff for holidays, birthdays, etc in the mail, but i couldn’t quite figure out what was coming up. I tear open the envelope, and out drops a check! WTF? She already gave me her wedding gift (for $1,000!) so I was confused. As always, i wanted to read the card first before seeing how much was written on that bad boy. This is hard to do, mind you, but it’s always important to read it first ;)

It turns out it was a thank you note! A what? What have i done lately that didn’t require anything selfish? haha….Wellllll, it turns out to be a thank you for helping her win a potential lawsuit! You see, my late grandpa had some pretty shotty care over at a nursing home last year, and the facility didn’t seem to care. There was a lot of back and forth talk between my mom and the managers there, but ultimately they told her to just F off (they didn’t put it that way, but they might as well have!)

All my mom wanted was a sincere thank you, and half off one month’s rent there – about $1,200 I believe. I told her to basically say she’ll sue (in hopes they meet her request), but they just shrugged it off. My mom was pissed off, but wasn’t about to push harder as it was becoming too stressful. Well, I personally wasn’t too happy with that.

It just so happened that Mrs. Budgetsaresexy worked directly FOR a lawyer, particularly one who manages unlawful injury cases, so we had her run it by her boss to see what he thought. And what do ya know, he thought we *might* have something here! He promised to draft a letter (which Mrs. Budgetsaresexy actually did for him), and said that the nursing home’s legal representation could either throw it in the trash, OR they could rebuttle and try and settle this thing w/out going to court – something the letter mentioned, but something we def. weren’t gonna do.

Well, with everything in life, you never know unless you try right? And that we did. And a few months later, after a few back and forths and a LOT of heavy researching by the Mrs., the “case” settled! Would you like to know how much my Mom/Grandma got out of the whole thing? $75,000! Can you believe that? All my mother had wanted was that sincere apology with a measely $1k credit, and they snubbed her. But look who got it now b*tches! haha…

So yeah, it was a thank you for the Mrs. and i doing all of that for her ;) I kinda went overboard w/ this post a bit here (at least i warned you), but it does have some points!

1. Ask for what you deserve. You may not always get it, but it sure doesn’t hurt trying. And you might even get surprised every now and then!
2. Encourage your family members and friends. Even though your parents are your parents, they don’t know everything out there, and sometimes we can help teach THEM ;)
3. “Stop worrying about money— you’ll get it when you least expect it, and you’ll lose it when you least expect it.” That check my mom sent us? It was for $500 smackers!!! Woo-hoo FREEEEEEEEEEE Money! he he…we, of course, tried to refuse it, but you know how moms are…so here we are, $500.00 richer and another mark down for growing a pair and speaking up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be posting this before i get off on another tangent….which is very bad considering i’m at work right now and couldn’t tell you a thing that’s been going on around me in the past 30 minutes. Yikes!