Spend, spend, spend.

There's been a discussion on a website I read recently about whether, if money is credited to your bank account in error, you can go ahead and spend it or not. The answer - in law at least - seems to hinge on the legal definition of theft, which requires you to be acting "dishonestly". One of the classic examples always given is if I walk out of a restaurant with someone else's umbrella, say. If I honestly believe it to be my umbrella, then that's not theft. So it would seem that if I believe the money to be mine, or simply don't notice it, and spend it, then that's not theft - although the rightful owner may well be able to sue me for its return. What this means of course is that it may well pay you to be one of those people who simply file their bank statements without looking at them - that way you are more likely to be able to convince the Police that you never noticed that money had been credited to which you weren't entitled, rather than if you were someone, like me, who balances their books to the penny. Sloppiness might well pay, you see.