I was done. Totally and completely fried. Last Sunday I was sitting on the couch, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how I was going to cover this ridiculous car registration bill that popped up, and also buy groceries that didn’t consist solely of instant ramen. I needed about four hundred bucks, fast. The bank account was looking sickly.
I had been scrolling through some dumb news feed, the kind you only look at when you’re desperate and bored, and the headline popped up. It was one of those clickbait jobs: “What is the best day for Virgo money luck this week? Mark your calendar!” I’m a Virgo, right? And I needed money. The logic was completely messed up, but I clicked it. What did I have to lose besides another two minutes of my life?
The Terrible Set-Up and the “Lucky Date”
The article was pure fluff, all about Mercury trine Venus and some other nonsense I couldn’t be bothered to read, but they all kept landing on the same day: Tuesday. They said Tuesday was when the universe would align for Virgos to receive unexpected financial relief. Honestly, I laughed. I really did. But that car registration was due Friday, and I was running out of realistic ideas. So, I figured, let’s make a stupid little experiment out of it. I committed.
I decided that all day Monday, I would just prep. I would gather up anything I could possibly sell, try to apply for one or two short-term freelance gigs, and basically set the stage for Tuesday. Monday was brutal. I spent five hours trying to dig up old junk I had listed on eBay and Craigslist, stuff that had been sitting dormant for maybe six months. Old video games I swore I’d play again, a barely used waffle maker, and even a stack of beat-up punk rock vinyl from the nineties. Sent out a few feeler emails to local businesses about quick graphic design work.
The results from Monday were zero. Zilch. Nobody replied to the job emails. The online listings? Crickets. The waffle maker listing expired. I felt like a total fool for even trying this stupid astrology trick. I went to bed Monday night convinced I was just postponing the inevitable stress.
The Great Tuesday Action
Tuesday morning rolled in. I literally put on a specific, brightly colored shirt—something someone online said was a “power color” for this alignment. Again, I felt like a complete moron, but I stuck to the routine. The plan was simple: on this “lucky day,” I would take action on the riskiest financial moves I had been avoiding.
I refreshed my listings. Still nothing. I tried dropping the price on the waffle maker by ten dollars. Nothing. I sat there drinking lukewarm coffee, staring at my phone, trying to decide what the biggest, most overdue financial move was. It hit me.
I had lent my cousin, Mike, three hundred bucks back in February. He said he’d pay me back “next month.” That next month turned into ten. It was a stressful, uncomfortable topic, and I am the king of avoiding confrontation. I felt like if I asked him, he’d get annoyed, and I’d lose the money and the family relationship. But the bill was due. And damn it, it was Tuesday. If the universe wanted to give me money, I figured it would have to start with the money I was actually owed.
I grabbed the phone and fired off a short, slightly rough text. “Hey man, hope things are good. Don’t want to bug, but that cash from the winter? I’m totally underwater with a bill right now. Any chance you could send it over today?”
I clicked send. My stomach instantly dropped. I regretted it immediately. That was it. I was going to be short the money, and Mike was going to ghost me. I spent the next eight hours convinced I’d ruined everything. I kept checking my phone. No reply. Nothing.
The Wild, Unexpected U-Turn
The afternoon was a bust. I was sitting there, ready to delete the entire horoscope app trail from my browser history, when my phone buzzes. It wasn’t Mike.
It was a random guy named Gary from eBay messaging me about the stack of old vinyl I listed on Monday—the one I had totally forgotten about. It was maybe fifty dollars worth of records, tops. He wrote: “Hey, I’m a huge collector for this specific band. I’ll give you a hundred dollars, cash, right now, plus I’ll cover express shipping if you can get it out by tomorrow.”
One hundred dollars for junk I had valued at fifty. I accepted faster than I could type. It hit my PayPal within minutes. Okay, a hundred bucks, that’s something. Not enough for the car bill, but a start. I packaged up the records right away.
Then, around 9:30 PM, my phone lights up again. It’s a text from Mike. I held my breath. I opened it.
Mike’s text said, “Dude, my bad, I totally dropped the ball. Getting it over right now. I know it’s been months, so I threw in an extra fifty for the trouble.”
- The three hundred dollars I was owed.
- Plus an extra fifty dollars for interest/trouble.
Total transfer: three hundred and fifty dollars. Add the hundred from the vinyl. That’s four hundred and fifty dollars in unexpected cash flow, all on Tuesday.
The Only Real Realization
I paid the car bill Wednesday morning, and I bought good groceries. I looked back at the week. Was Tuesday actually a “lucky day”? Did Jupiter or Venus have a say in my bank account balance? Absolutely not.
What really happened was that I gave myself permission, based on some idiotic blog post, to stop delaying. The luck wasn’t the day; the luck was the kick in the butt I needed to finally take action on the things I had control over: asking a cousin for money he owed and putting in the bare minimum effort to sell junk I should have sold months ago. The “lucky date” just provided the flimsy excuse I needed to risk the uncomfortable conversation and actually get the ball rolling on my own financial mess.
I could have done that on a Saturday, a Monday, or a Friday. But I didn’t. I did it on Tuesday. And that’s the only practical record I needed.
