The other day, a tarot reading foretold of unexpected funds. Yesterday it may have come to fruition.

Last year at some point, we received notice of a class action lawsuit involving HSBC. I make it a point to examine all notices of class action lawsuits. There is a reason for this. SOME of them have a default behavior, if you do nothing, of including you in the class, and thus in the claim. This one, had we done nothing, would have excluded us from the claim. We completed the document and returned it, and promptly forgot about it.

We have received portions of class action settlements in the past. Usually they’re a few dollars, or ten or twenty. This one, likely because the default behavior was to exclude you from the claim, was different. The settlement was for a total of $39 million. Our checks were for around $100 each (Eve and I each received one).

Read the fine print, people. Sometimes it giveth.

Oh, and by the way, the settlement was for repeated autodialing of consumers without consent, and without regard to the Do Not Call registry.