Random Acts of Saving

Last month the Canada Revenue Agency sent me a letter about taxes.

I claimed quite a host of deductions for 2007, mainly moving expenses and tuition payments. The end result was that I got most of my prepaid tax refunded. Now CRA is revisiting that decision, and would like to see all of my documentation. I knew this might happen, so I saved all my receipts and paperwork. Still, it takes quite an effort to get everything together and mailed off within the 30 day deadline. I think I will be able to send it to them today. Now I just hope that the results come back favourable, and that I didn't make mistakes that are going to cost me.

However, I have had some good fortune to offset any bad news from CRA.

Two nights ago, I was going through a file of receipts and stumbled upon a government cheque that had been issued to me last summer, but I had never cashed. Lucky for me, these government cheques can still be cashed long after regular cheques would have gone stale -- especially since it's a cheque for $750. When I came out to the living to show R, she shook her head and said, "How is it that we didn't miss something like that?"

What makes this more amusing is that it's happened before -- last year in fact.

Last summer, as we were getting ready to move, I made a big pile of clothes that I was going to take to Value Village. As I went through the pockets of a Russian leather-ish jacket that I don't wear anymore, I found another such cheque, this one a reimbursement payment for a business trip that I had taken 1.5 years earlier. It was a most pleasant surprise, because the cash windfall corresponded with the unexpected cost we paid to have our air conditioning repaired in our car (see post from May 10, 2007).

Some might call me absent-minded for misplacing large sums of money for months and years at a time. Maybe. But these random acts of saving have now twice had the effect of producing cash at times when we encounter unexpected expenses.

Now I wonder where the next cheque is going to turn up, and whether I want to the know the financial misfortune that will accompany its discovery.

[August 26, 2008: As it turns out, the misfortune was a fairly hefty speeding ticket.]