Dear friend,

I kept a list on my phone this week starting Monday morning. The list is called what showed up and it has six items on it as of Friday night.

The first item is $19 from a friend on Venmo. The second is a $14 Netflix refund I did not expect. The third is a $62 Etsy order from Tuesday night. The fourth is a $40 tip at a coffee shop appointment that was already paid. The fifth is the free bagel at the bagel place after my $4.75 coffee. The sixth is $17.99 the client paid me without me having to send the invoice twice.

So today's letter says one thing. These are the arrivals of the week. Not the big ones, not the dramatic ones. The small money that actually walked in through the door between Monday and Friday. Saturday is the day you count them.

I did not count them last week. Last week I remembered the overdue card and the gas and the $11 body wash. The $14 Netflix refund that came in September did not stay in my head because I was not keeping a list. This week I kept the list on purpose. Six items in five days.

I Almost Threw This Away

I know how it sounds:

  • A secret recording.

  • An accountant who broke an oath.

  • Results without meditation or effort.

I would have closed the tab too.

Then I pressed play.

And within 30 seconds, something happened in my chest that I couldn’t explain.

Hear it for yourself

This isn’t a guided meditation.

Nobody tells you to "breathe deeply" or "open your chakras."

 You press play.
You close your eyes.

And something happens in your chest within 30 seconds.

Goosebumps.
A wave of calm.
A physical response that has nothing to do with belief.

The man who shared this says the biggest skeptics in his circle had the strongest reactions.

I was one of them.

>> Give it 30 seconds. That’s all it takes.

P.S. The man who shared this is a retired accountant from Ohio.

No course. No coaching program.

It's a single audio track.

You press play and close your eyes. That's the whole thing.

WHAT A LIST DOES
THAT COUNTING DOES NOT

The list is not a budget. There is no column for what the money went to. There is only a line, a date, and a dollar amount. $19 on Tuesday. $14 on Monday night. $62 on Wednesday morning. $40 on Thursday afternoon. $4.75 and a free bagel on Thursday morning. $17.99 on Friday at 10:14am.

The list does something counting does not. Counting is the card is $3,840 and payday is seven days away. The list is six things walked in this week. One of those is a sentence about scarcity. The other is a sentence about arrivals. Both are true. I would rather keep the second one on my phone than the first one.

I made the list in the Notes app. I did not need an app for it. I made the list because I noticed on Monday that I had already forgotten what came in the week before.

WHAT I NOTICED
WHEN I COUNTED

The total of the six items is $152.74. If I had been asked on Monday what the week was going to bring in beyond my regular hours, I would have said forty dollars. I would have said nothing. I would have said the card was going to keep being the card.

$152.74 is not going to pay off the card. $152.74 is a small amount of money by any serious measure. But $152.74 is also three times what I would have estimated, and the only reason I know that is the list.

The scale of the error is the point. I was off by a factor of four on an easy week. On a week where I am not keeping the list I am probably off by more. Saturday is counting day because the week itself did not count.

Small amounts aren't worth tracking because they disappear anyway.

Small amounts tell me what the week actually did.

 

If I count what came in I'll feel worse about what went out.

Counting what came in is a different ledger than what went out.

 

Only the paycheck counts as real income this month.

Six small things on a list is still an answer to a Friday.

THE VAULT

Twelve lines readers have been taking all week.

01I count what showed up this week.
02I keep the small arrivals on paper.
03Six things in a week is still six. MOST TAKEN
04I was wrong about the week by three.
05The list is not the budget.
06I notice what came in on Tuesday.
07Saturday is for counting what arrived.
08I write the dollar amounts down.
09A free bagel counts on the list.
10I let the list contradict my mood.
11The small money adds up by Friday.
12I remember what I would have forgotten.

WHAT YOU'RE ALLOWED TO
RECEIVE TODAY

I am not going to tell you to start a spreadsheet or download an app or set up a system of categories tagged by color. That is a project and projects are not what this letter does.

What you are allowed to receive today is a count. Open the Notes app on your phone and write down what came in Monday through Friday. Not what went out. Not what the card did. Not what the bill said. Just what came in. Six items. Three items. One item. Whatever it is.

The number at the bottom will probably be smaller than you want and larger than you would have guessed. Both of those things can be true on the same Saturday. Mine was $152.74 against a card of $3,840. The ratio is not a victory. The number is still real.

Saturday is the day for counting. Not the budget, which is for Monday. The arrivals, which are for right now. If the week brought in $8 and a free coffee, write $8 and a free coffee. The list is not graded.

  Open the door. Expect more. Let it find you.

Keep the door open,

MONEY MAGNET

P.S. The $4.75 coffee came with a bagel because the barista marked the pastry case as closing out. I did not ask for it. She slid it across the counter in a paper bag and told me the butter was already on it.