Needed: Personal Finance Educators

For: The City of Portland. Not me. I might be broke right now, but I wouldn't say it's because of poor money management, other than the giagantic tax refund we're getting this year. That could be chalked up to poor money management. Or it might be genius. Maybe last January, I foresaw all of last year's developments, and knew that I'd need a little kicker in March. I didn't.

The people of Portland need a lot of help in the area of money mangement. That's the only explanation I can come up with for the fact that I'm finding so much money here. The day I got here, and I found my first penny, I thought to myself, 'wouldn't it be neat if I found a penny everyday I'm apart from Scooter?' And guess what? Once you add in the dollar I found in Dec or Jan and the loony (canadian dollar) I found a few weeks ago, I'm up over $3.65 - even more, considering the Canadian dollar is doing well against the US dollar right now. Next Sunday, I'll have been here six months.

That's kind of ridiculous. I'm not particularly lucky (although maybe I should face the world while walking, and quit staring at the ground), and I'm not wandering all over the city, picking up loose change that has been lying there for weeks. I'm walking the same mile between the train stop and my work place and the same 3 blocks from the other train stop to my home (where most of my heart is). Almost daily, people are walking those same blocks and dropping money. With Oregon's unemployment the way it is, you'd think people would be holding onto that stuff.

Earlier this week, on the same day that both Ben and I found a penny each, one of my coworkers found a cashier's check on the sidewalk for nearly three thousand dollars. Yeah, she could live here for 2 thousand some odd years and never find another penny and still come out ahead of me. Everytime I pick up a coin worth more than 1 cent, I wonder about what kind of person would drop that. A cashier's check for $3,000 really makes me wonder. Obviously, the kind of person who would drop that is the kind of person in need of some education. My coworker promptly called the bank and returned the check (she is, after all, an employee of Good Samaritan), so hopefully that person will have learned a lesson by the time they get their money back. If not, I need to get their name and address, so I can start following them around.