The Eighty-Eight That Keeps Showing Up

Dear friend,

The number this week was 88. I saw it three times in six days, and one of those times was a $88.00 Venmo from a client I had written off. So today’s letter says one thing. You are allowed to notice the number. The money follows the noticing.

Last Tuesday the grocery total was $88.14, and I took a photo because the ring light I bought that same morning cost $88.00 flat with the discount code. Wednesday a sticker on a parking meter said 88 cents a minute and I laughed out loud in the car. Then Monday morning, two days ago, Venmo chimed with $88.00 from Allison K., for an invoice I had sent in July and given up on by August. She wrote ‘so sorry’ in the memo and I believed her.

I am 34, and I have been paying attention to numbers for about six years. I used to think a number showing up three times was a coincidence waiting to be ruined, a joke that somebody would eventually take back. Now I think a number showing up three times is a number asking me to notice it, nothing more mystical than that. Just a nudge.

WHAT 88
ACTUALLY MEANS

The number 8 lies on its side and becomes the infinity symbol. Two eights are two infinities, side by side. In the numerology I was taught by a woman in a purple-painted salon in 2019, 8 is the number of money moving in and out, two 8s doubles that, and 888 is money arriving three times.

I was skeptical for years, so I kept a note on my phone where I logged every 8 I saw in dollars. Not pennies, not change, only whole-dollar 8s. In the first month I had 11 entries, in the second month 14, by the sixth month 61. The entries did not stop, and the dollars did not stop either. I kept a column for how much came in next to each sighting, and the column adds up to $12,484 over 18 months. That is not nothing.

I do not say the number is magic. I do not need anybody else to call it that either. I say the number is a flag.

THE RULE
I USE NOW

When I see 8 in a dollar amount now, I do one thing: I say thank you under my breath. I do not count it, and I do not announce it. I used to post everything on my Instagram story, and the sightings dropped from 14 a month to 3. I stopped posting. The sightings came back.

I think the number does not like to be used. The number likes to be noticed. There is a difference. A friend who runs a candle company calls this the shy money rule. Money shows up more when it does not feel watched like a child at a recital.

So when 88 arrived from Allison on Monday, I said thank you, and I did not post it. I bought gas and I came home and I wrote the next paragraphs because I needed to tell three women who would not roll their eyes.

WHAT YOU’RE ALLOWED
TO RECEIVE TODAY

I am not going to assign you anything today. I am not going to tell you to count sightings or screenshot your gas receipt or make a note on your phone that you will forget to look at in two weeks.

What is on offer today is a sighting of your own, maybe a number that keeps showing up for you. It may be a 7 because 7 is your number, or a 22 on the microwave clock at the moment your friend texts you about a job, or a 44 in a grocery total, or an 11 on a license plate at a red light. It may be nothing, and that is fine. The number comes when the number comes, and the money comes when the money comes. You do not have to pull it in with your teeth.

You are allowed to receive an invoice payment that is six weeks late, a refund from a subscription you forgot about, or a $20 that falls out of a coat pocket in October. You are the one who gets to notice it, and you are the one who gets to keep it.

Keep the door open,

MONEY MAGNET

P.S. The ring light I bought with the discount code died yesterday, after 23 days of use. The brand’s return window is 30 days, so I need to look up the policy before Thursday. I keep forgetting at the moment I am near the receipt.