Picture this, you are 19 years old and go to a local bank for a loan to buy a car. Since you have no credit history, your father needs to be a cosigner to get the loan. Your father signs the loan document. You then receive in the mail your payment coupon book. When it is due, you tear off one of the coupons and mail it in with your payment. Shortly thereafter, you receive a letter from the bank thanking you for paying off your loan and letting you know you can obtain another loan WITHOUT a cosigner. You take them up on the offer. In fact, over the next six months, you get five loans, make one payment for each loan, then get letters from the bank thanking you for paying off your loan and offering another loan. In turn, you literally go into the used car business. You end up paying only $50 or so per car and sell them at $1,000 each!

As a matter of routine, your bank does a routine audit and discovered thousands of dollars unaccounted for. Checking deeper, CPA’s discover where the problem is. It all traces back to you! You borrowed $900, made one payment of $52 and somehow the loan got marked as paid off within the bank's computer. Since it was the 1960s and computer hackers literally did not exist then, bank officials are stumped. They call you in for an interview. They lay it all out for you and tell you that they are willing to drop all charges and let you keep the money IF you tell them how you did it. How did you do it? When the time for the first payment comes, you tear off the LAST coupon and mail in the payment. You see, at the time, banks were just beginning to use magnetic ink and readers on their checks and payment coupons. The last coupon also included magnetic ink instructions to mark the loan as paid off in the computer and send a thank you letter. As a result of knowing this, the last coupon no longer has the added instructions for the computer. Instead, the computer counts payments made and when the total number of payments reaches the total number for the loan, THEN the computer marks the loan paid and sends out a thank you letter!

While visiting the Washington Memorial in Washington, DC, there was a small group of tourists that appeared to be a family. One of the kids noticed that the bottom portion of the monument was lighter in color than the top portion and asked his father why. The father told his son that a long time ago, there was a flood in Washington, DC, and that the difference in color is where the high water mark was!!!!

While visiting the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial in Hodgenville, Kentucky, a park ranger was telling us that there are 56 steps leading to the memorial; one for each year of Lincoln’s life. Shortly thereafter, as a group, we went up the stairs. One girl of about ten counted each step as she made her way to the top. When she reached the top step, she was huffing and puffing and blurted out "Boy, I’m sure glad Lincoln didn’t live any longer!"