I was recently reminded that I once used to dish out bad advice in the spirit of high sarcasm. It might be the lowest form of wit – but it’s fun to write. And because it’s Friday, why not.

PS: the original post: Apple, why aren’t your products cheaper? #Questions

So I went onto Quora and I found this:

Let me assist.

Help! I Want To Spend An Unexpected Windfall At My Bank’s Expense!

Dear Rolling Alpha. I’m just an honest hard-working citizen like all you other hard-working citizens. But good news! My bank balance just ballooned. Some clown at my bank clearly inserted some inadvertent zeros – and frankly, I think it’s about time someone did. They charge me a fortune in bank charges, and I never get anything from them. But this time, it seems that their incompetence is finally working in my favour – and I’d like to celebrate with a couple of fancy cars and a lear jet. What do you reckon? Ta, and best regards – WinningAtLife

Dear Winner

Yup – you go, girl. Spend it. *snap*

Personally, I too have always lived by the philosophy of finders-keepers. I find that it keeps things simple. What’s yours is yours, unless you’re careless. Because if you really couldn’t care less about keeping it safe, then you didn’t really want it anyway. I’m just there to help you toward that particular self-realisation.

It’s like my friend Carl. He used to have this great R8, but then he left the keys in the ignition. So I took the R8 for a spin, all the way to a chop shop. Like I told him afterwards, he’s the real chop here for leaving his keys in the ignition – because if he’d kept the keys on his person, then I’d have known that he hadn’t recklessly abandoned it. My lawyer tells me that I shouldn’t really be talking about this right now, but as I told her, no one tells me what to do.

But the real point here is that this is your bank account, and whatever is in there must be yours. It just stands to reason. I mean, you pay bank charges, which obviously means that any money that goes missing from your account is the bank’s problem, not yours, and any money that fortuitously lands in your account is also the bank’s problem, not yours. Heads you win, and heads, you win again. Tails are for bankers, those losers. Especially the kind of losers that lose a million bucks in someone else’s bank account.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? They can’t arrest you for having spent money that wasn’t yours. How were you to know that the money wasn’t yours? 

Although you were a bit foolish to write this letter, because that’s what people in the banking business call a “smoking gun”. And they know all about those. 

But actually, YOLO. Carpe diem and carpe whatever you can. That’s the ticket. 

And tickets are important when you’re on the run.

Happy travels to you.

Rolling Alpha posts opinions on finance, economics, and the corporate life in general. Follow me on Twitter @RollingAlpha, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rollingalpha.