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 found a pair of new condition Valentino shoes in a charity shop- a perfect fit for me! £6. Will be wearing them to the work Christmas party next week.

Love this thread.

Recently received an unexpected couple of grand after being underpaid for 4 years - something to do with contract changes.

Moved house and won £1000 on the postcode lottery.

Won a New Year's Eve gala dinner and overnight stay at a hotel - only downside was I was very pregnant and exhausted!

Was with a friend at a casino - having a laugh with the people on the table, lost and was going to leave but a 'high roller' said he was having too much fun - gave us £100 chip each, we said we couldn't accept - he insisted so we said anything we made we'd give back - made £1000 between us and he wouldn't take the money back, said he'd done well that night and told us to enjoy it.

A shiny red 4 piece toastie maker in a school raffle.

2 weeks holiday touring north India.

£20 worth of francs in France 40 years ago….bought us all huge ice creams

I've recently got the letter of the week in a Sunday newspaper and I've won a two night bed and breakfast stay in a very upmarket group of hotels... £500 a night is the cost of a room, hotel has gym, spa etc. Very excited!!

I got a free £60 pair of walking boots off Amazon recently. I only ordered one pair but they sent a duplicate and told me not to bother returning the second pair.

The first time I bought a scratch card I won £70 which was an absolute fortune to 16yo me.

Before DH and I met, his parents loaned him 6k towards a house deposit. When we got married, they told him not to worry about paying them back 🥰

When our DCs were young we struggled financially. One Christmas I won a prize at DD's Brownies of a Christmas hamper full of goodies: chocolates, biscuits etc.
Then a week or so later I won the school's Christmas raffle prize of a 'barrow of booze'. They filled a wheelbarrow full of bottles each year and raffled it.
There must have been about 25 bottles of alcohol!
We had a great Christmas with all the winnings.

Got a £3 bonus from an online slots website, turned into a £300 win... brought our ninja air fryer with it and still had £150 left.

Found £20 wedged in a wall at the top of all the steps in Whitby. Paid for our fish and chips.

Years ago my friends and I went to a branch of a middle-market chain restaurant on the first night it opened. At the end of the meal the payment system didn't work and they said its on the house. We said flipping heck we should've had more drinks! But thank you and we'll be back. We still talk about that.

I ordered a very expensive duvet once, then changed my mind about it and ordered a different one from the same place. I cancelled the order in time but they sent it anyway and I emailed them to let them know. They said they'd send a courier to collect but never did, so a year later I sold it on eBay for £200 😀

I’m not very lucky most of the time but I have had a few exceptions.

I won tickets to see a comedian through work.

My now husband and I were checking into a hostel we’d booked on holiday years ago. Apparently they had allocated us to separate rooms, so they upgraded us to their penthouse, which came with a double bed, balcony and it’s own kitchen (that we didn’t end up using).

I sold something on EBay but the buyer didn’t receive it despite me posting it. I refunded them and put a claim in Royal Mail. They paid out and then the buyer contacted me to say they received the item and wanted to pay as well. It wasn’t much money but I was on maternity leave so really needed the extra.

My first car was in really bad shape and not worth very much when someone pulled out in front of me and the car was written off. The insurance payout meant I could afford to buy another car that I had no hope of getting on my minimum wage job at the time.

Bought a big tub of jelly beans for DMiL (she loved them) tub arrived broken. Contacted Amazon who said they didn't want it back and sent a replacement as well.

Took in a gift delivery from M&S for a neighbour. Eventually worked out that the neighbours had moved on. M&S said we could keep the gift: pink champagne and chocolates.

In the same month found out that I could sell back a week's worth of holiday to my employer and also won £1400 on the postcode lottery.

I seem to be very lucky with winning things - my favourites:

A 6-week holiday touring the USA
A lawn mower
Henry Westons cider & glasses
Weekend trip to London
Land rover mugs
And a life changing £377,000 lotto win.

Bought a bag off eBay for a fiver, it arrived, I was looking through the pockets, and found a fiver

When I was little we didn’t have much spare money for treats. I won the three-legged race at the local fete with my friend. We won 3 cans of fizzy pop and a can opener ( pre ring pulls) I was so excited.

The stamp duty cut came in about a month before I completed on my house purchase. £2500 that I wasn't expecting to have and means I can take DS on holiday next year.

That’s the best news ever! 💐💐

Once won a weekend in Sherwood Forest which was lovely.

I responded to an online questionnaire by a recruiter for the chance to win an iPad and promptly forgot about it until they called me a few weeks later to say i had actually won the iPad.

In an old job I sometimes had to travel overseas to carry out work for clients and we would get spending money in cash per day. One time the client — in a lovely location — was having a party the evening after my visit and asked if I could stay to attend it. I said yes so my stay got extended by a day and I got an extra day’s spending money. In the end the ‘work’ only took about an hour so I got a free trip to this lovely place, a party invite (with free booze and food) and a stack of cash spending money for the sake of an hour’s work. I hardly spent any of the cash and I banked it when I got home. I miss that job!

A tiny one, but once we were going over the Severn bridge and it didn't recognise some of the coins at the toll thing, and we didn't have any more change. I pressed the return button, nothing happened but put my fingers in the returned coin bit anyway and there was £1.50 in there as three 50ps (not what I had put in) which saved the day

My lovely grandpa won a Humpty Dumpty at my school raffle when I was 7. He swapped it with me for a box of Turkish Delight. I still remember being nervous incase he said no !

DH and I were on holiday in the Dominican Republic and went to a casino. DH won £19 and the manager was v cross. He gave us our winnings and barred us from there for life. We laughed all the way back to the hotel.

Litigated against my ex regarding assets. Against all odds, he settled. I wasn’t going to go to trial as it was a highly risky case and the odds were stacked against me. I got an amount that will enable me to have a secure future and far higher than I could have imagined. It’s a process that broke me mentally, but it was worth it. I can finally move on.

I left a horrible job with a decent payout. 2 years later I received a cheque from HMRC along with a letter saying that the company had messed up the taxes on the payout and I was owed £10k! The companies finances were in a shambles so I wasn't surprised they'd messed it up.

Another one: I took a company to small claims court asking for partial refund on some shoddy work. A few days before the first court hearing I received a check for the full amount in the post - £3,600! Couldn't believe it. I was only asking for a few hundred back.