Got a call from a friend. She said she had a large envelope that had been delivered to my old address in L.A. A little unusual, since my mail had been reliably forwarded to Washington. And this envelope was from the UK.
I thought I might have signed up with the stock plan before I was laid off, so I asked my friend to open the envelope. It was a prospectus and an invitation to vote for officers.
Anyway, I’m back with my old employer. I found out the number to call about stocks. Yes, I did buy some stocks through payroll deduction once upon a time. Thought so. How much did I have? Two dollars? Three dollars? :rolleyes:
Nope. My shares were worth, at the end of the day, £446.46. :eek: (Or 44,646p to use their vernacular.) Over US$800. Okay, I’m not going to retire. But it’s still nice finding money you didn’t know you had. If the company offers a similar plan once it’s demerged, I’ll certainly sign up. (We’ll be one of the larger companies on the London Stock Exchange.)
Then maybe when I leave the company again I’ll forget about it and get a nice surprise later.
That’s terrific Johnny LA, had any good fortune cookies lately? Any on-the-spot predictions?
My husband used to work for a firm (ahem) years ago (before the Internet), that searched through various devious detective methods to find people whose stock had split, or who had come into money, without knowing it. For a share of the proceeds. (Small share, but there were enough of such people to keep a ten-person firm profitable.) He said it was like being a bill collector… in reverse. “Hello, is Mr. Smith there?” “No, Mr. Smith don’t live here any more; moved out months ago.” “It’s about money we have for him.” “Just a minute.” Pause. Same voice: “Mr. Smith here.”
Congrats on your little windfall! Windfallen money is more satisfactory than just about any other kind.
Except the Nobel Prize.
Or the paycheck for your first sold story.
And others I would know nothing about.
Oh, shut up Gabriela, let the man enjoy his surprising good fortune.
I found $2 in change in the couch Thursday and I was psyched (I’ve spent about $5,000 on improvements to my home in the last two months, so we’re dead broke).
I invested in stocks when I was really little and lost track of the account numbers (online trading) and forgot which stocks they were. Anyone know how I can track that stuff down?
It was one of the early ones, that was later eaten up by a bigger company. Started with a D, I think it was something like DLCDirect or something similar-sounding.
So, you and the new SO are going to use that money for a trip out East, and will be joining us at next month’s DC Dopefest, right? RIGHT?
(And I join Rube E. Tewesday in congratulating you on the job … but does this mean the movie is off? If not, you should update the thread that I asked for an update in 3 months ago!)
Yeah, the film is dead. Which is why I decided I’d better get a real job. The director/writer completely flaked. Basically packed up the studio and left town. Pissed a lot of people off and burned a lot of bridges. The hell of it is that the images looked great. We were halfway finished. We had a few thousand people ready to buy copies based soley on one of the actors who was in it. The director screwed us all. I hear he’s learning to be a tattoo artist.
Hey, John! That’s great!
Hubby had something similar happen.
Five years ago, the Big Airplane Company(BAC) started an employee incentive stock program. Hubby was given 12 shares of BAC. (big whoop) He had the option of selling it back to them, or keeping it. Since it took effort to sell them back, he did nothing, and got a check every quarter for $3.60. (second whoop)
Two weeks ago BAC announced the end of the 5 year incentive program. It seems that those employees who did nothing, were still in the program and would get the equivilant of the price at closing on June, 30 2006 of 60 shares. It will be about $5000.
It’s supposed to be in our hands by mid August. We’re going to 'Vegas.
It seems they’d been trying to contact me at my old address, and then turned my account over to a service that tracks people down and does whatever with their stock. They finally found me again.
Well, the stock went down. Lost about half its value, actually. Something like £249.61, if I recall correctly. After fees, VAT, and so on I got $295.81. I used it to open a new account at a local credit union, which I will use for saving up for a new camera.
This is why my motto with company stock is “sell early, sell often.” Sure, sometimes it goes up, but my experience has been that it usually doesn’t. I go with the bird in the hand and [del]kill[/del] sell it.
At least they tracked you down and you got something!
I don’t know what kind of camera you’re saving for, but $300 would seem to me to be a solid start. Happy for your good luck.
What kind of camera are you saving for? Trying to imagine what sort of camera I would spend that sort of money on, but not being into photo/videography or film-making, I have nothing, really, to draw on for comparison.
