Bail Money - I Got My Money Back!!!

Image Credit: Kangotraveler

This weekend, I was looking forward to doing a whole lot of nothing and pretty much just hanging around the house and catching up on my sleep.

Unfortunately, Saturday morning around 6am, my sleep was cut short by a phone call. The call came from an unknown number and I don't usually answer those calls. They called three times before finally leaving a message. Since they kept calling, I figured it may be important and promptly checked my voicemail.

It was a message from my cousin's girlfriend asking me to call her back ASAP and it was urgent. They have a one year old child and I figured that maybe something bad had happened and she needed me. I quickly called her back; only to find that my cousin had been arrested the night before and they needed $1300 to bail him out of jail.

My first thought was to say no. Over the years, I've adopted a pretty strict policy against loaning money to family and friends. I've done it in the past and it usually ended badly. This time though, after thinking about it for a little bit, I figured I needed to help him out. He just started a new job and I knew he had to work on Saturday afternoon. Having a young child, he can not afford to lose his job. Reluctantly, I rolled out of my nice comfy bed, got dressed and headed to the bank to withdraw $1300 from my Slush Fund and then head over to the county jail.

I am so thankful that I have a Slush Fund for things like this. This savings account is my first line of defense before hitting my real Emergency Fund. This account covers those minor emergencies, irregular expenses and things I just plain forgot about. I can withdraw money from this account and it does not disrupt my finances very much since I set aside a fixed amount each month out of my regular budget.

Finally, after waiting around for several hours, they released him. We got out of there around 3pm; just in time for him to get a shower and get to work and just in time for me to get back home and take a nice 2 hr nap.

When my uncle died about 10 years ago, he left my cousin a small amount of money in a savings account. I didn't realize he still had it until he came over yesterday to bring me back the $1300. I really didn't expect to get the money back; at least not all at once.

Luckily, the thing he got arrested for was a misdemeanor and will probably get his money back once he goes to court in November. Hopefully, this will be a learning experience for him and his first and last experience with the inside of a jail cell.

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