To ask for your unexpected windfalls in life?

[strawberriesplease]

Lighthearted folks to give us some cheer as we waltz into December.

Mine was at a very expensive theme park.

Put money into vending machine for a Kit Kat and it released all the chocolate! About 30 different bars dropped. Kids were delighted and we gave some to the only other family behind us.

DH still talks about it as a life highlight

I won a dyson hoover in a raffle a few years, I was so excited :D

I enter competitions as a hobby. I've had some amazing wins through it.

Two overseas holidays and supermarket vouchers have been the best.

I've also had two lots of òunexpected inheritances. They haven't been life changing amounts, as in lottery size.

However, they have come at times. I desperately needed a bit of luck for various reasons. That has happened.

That's material! On a spiritual/emotional level, they are in abundance

Not a cash one. But your theme park story reminded me.

As a teenager, family had saved for years to take us to the theme parks in florida. On our way out of universal studios we were stopped and asked if we'd like free advance tickets to the new park they were opening to help with final tests - it was islands of adventure. Dad and I are roller coaster nuts and we went the next day. It was almost empty. We rode every coaster multiple times, no queues. They were letting us just stay in the seats and go round again if we wanted. It was amazing. Up there with one of the best days of my life, best freebie I've ever had!!

Years ago as a teenager, my best friend and I had saved £25 each for a ticket to a rave we had always been desperate to go to..on the way to buy the tickets in town we found a £50 note on the floor.
it was better than winning the lottery!

I won a fridge freezer years ago
this year I inherited £9k from distant relative completely unexpected

I started a job with an ESOP, (employee owned stock option) program. I paid zero notice when being told about this as Id heard all this stuff before at various jobs Id had over the years and nothing had ever come to fruition. I stayed at the company for 2 1/2 years then moved on. About 9 months after I left a girl I used to work with called and asked if Id gotten my ESOP money as the company had sold. This was the beginning of December and I had only been eligible for the program 6 months before I left, so I figured Id take the cash and the tax hit and make sure the kids had a decent Christmas. I assumed $5 grand tops. I called the company to find out

It was $162,000 !!!!!. This was not something I had contributed to or anything, had ignored it basically. I didnt take it out BTW I started a pension with it but only time in my life I got free money.

Mine was playing the claw grab game in a seaside arcade. I think it had been installed and filled with beautiful new plushies but not recalibrated to make it impossible.

It was just 20p a go and I won 9 times out of 10. I left with a big carrier bag full of plushies for the children.

A few weeks later I tried again, but the machine had been 'fixed', I won nothing that day.

I was in York on holiday about 13 years ago. I was just about to buy something and counting out my change when my dad reminded me to check my 20p's to see if any were undated. He had recently read that the Royal mint had made an error on a batch of coins and that these 20p's could have some value.

As luck would have it, I had one! I put it on ebay and got just over a £100. As a student at the time, I was very pleased with my unexpected windfall 😊

I entered a competition to win a holiday then completely forgot about it.

Just happened to randomly check the old email address I used to sign up for it months later when the email came in saying I'd won!

Best and biggest thing I've ever won in my life. My sister and I had an amazing trip together and made so many great memories 😊😁

Ordered a jar of ground coriander from Ocado. A plastic-wrapped pack of six arrived- obviously someone at the warehouse thought that was one pack. Coriander is on me!

I took my extremely ancient Apple PC to the Apple store as it had broken - they thought it was economically irreparable but agreed to take a look in case only was something easy to fix.

I had a phone call two days later to say they’d dropped it in the workshop and would replace it with the latest model !! I couldn’t believe it when I walked out of the Apple store clutching a brand new IMac !! I even got the receipt showing a 100% discount - can’t beat Apple for customer service.

My partner and I had quite a chaotic lifestyle. We had our own business so sometimes we were skint and sometimes we were flush. We split up around the time you could claim back your massive bank charges and I got two grand to furnish my new house.

Once I got a Henry hoover delivered instead of a suitcase by Amazon. Sorted it out and got the suitcase delivered but they kept not coming to collect the hoover despite my efforts. So I got a free hoover.

Such a lovely thread.

@WinterLobelia what an amazing DH you've got 😊

I also tried convincing husband to put in a claim..he just dismissed my comments insisting he has never had PPI !
My children were so dismissive when I applied but Mother had the last laugh 😆

Lovely 😊

‘Coriander is on me’
You win the thread @Eleusa 😃

Last year I got selected for the M&S sparks card shopping for free. It was for a tiny top-up shop but lifted my spirits for days.

My son found 48p in the 2p arcades at the weekend.

An elderly relative won a trip to NY on the QE2 playing Bingo in the eighties!

No windfalls for me. But still quite proud of winning the name the sheep competition at the village fete aged 7.

Where did it come from??

My DH won £1200.00 on a football accumulator bet on a Saturday afternoon he then decided to play the Irish lottery. woke up Sunday morning to find he had won £8k but without realising he entered the same numbers twice in the draw so won another £8k. 😁

I have had the same but it has become really complicated as it transpires I have millions of second cousins I never knew about. I think we will get about a quid each when it is eventually sorted!

Mystery deposit of £1400 into my bank account in 2008. No payee identification, just random letters. I knew I was due a tax credit so assumed it was that. Then a few weeks later I got a cheque from HMRC. Queried the £1400 with the bank but no one had reported it missing and there was no request to call it back. The person I spoke to said I'd probably forgotten about an invoice I'd issued — I was freelance and was issuing quite a lot of invoices at that point. My accountant tried and failed to find out where the payment was from and warned me that spending it was a criminal offence.

I added it to my savings account, thinking that at least if I had to pay it back I might earn some interest and forgot about it. Then in 2017 when I had a new bathroom fitted I used all the money from that savings account and only later realised I'd spent the £1400 windfall. Part of me is still waiting for the rozzers to come and get me.

Claimed PPI on a whim with zero bank details apart from name of bank and got £5000..bloody marvellous result 👍

After DH saying that he had never had PPI I told him to humour me and put in a claim…he got almost a 6 figure sum back!

A friend kept nagging me to do it as she had got back £5k. The only details I had were the banks name and address. We got £17k 😮😮😮