Imagine that! Go on, do it. Imagine $75,000 in your pocket with no bills to pay.
Go on!
Grin!
Awesomeness on speed, I’d say. However, that’s what happened to me for two days and 12 hours this week. I believed, absolutely, that I had that kind of extra pin money to play with over and above my salary and other assets.
Wow!
Let me tell you the story.
My beloved uncle died two years ago after a prolonged, vicious illness that robbed him of the very sap of life. He had dementia. Alzheimer disease, to be exact, which is one of many forms of dementia and one of the most debilitating.
The disease consumed him. He lost everything, his ability to reason being the most horrifying. He lost his knowledge, his keys, his money, his connection to other human beings, his confidence, and his courage.
In his life before, he’d been a very wealthy man. In his last days, I had to take out multiple personal loans to care for his needs.
Two years in, I’ve finally found the will to deal with his affairs. He left a broken car with seven years outstanding on its registration. A few thousand rand in his bank, and words in my ear that he’d kept a few gold shares; those words made me sit up and be damn silly when I discovered that he left me 89 shares in one of the hottest gold mines on the planet.
A few days before finding my uncle’s shares I’d read articles in prestigious newspapers, such as The Daily Maverick, about just how amazing the astronomical rise in Harmony Gold Mine Shares WAS! It was all over the place!
Suddenly, I had 89 Harmony Gold Mine Shares.
I Googled it!
17 500 ZARc
Oh, wow!
17 500 * 89 = R1 557 500
So, obviously, I thought that I’m a damn millionaire. Oh, yes!
I Googled properties on the coast.
I Googled new car prices.
So vacuous and basically ridiculously sad, I know.
What I didn’t see is ZARc, which means CENTS, not RANDS!
Folks, this is 17 500 cents, or R175, which is an entirely different number.
The worst part is that I made my mother and brother believe in lush green lawns overlooking the ocean before I discovered my error.
Oh, how my once wickedly sane uncle would laugh!
Feature image is a collage of screenshots taken on my iPad