Prosperity flows to and through me.

On the 28th the money lands, and by the 3rd it has gone again — rent, a school trip, the man who came about the boiler, somebody's birthday.

It is easy to read that as failure, because the balance is the number everyone was taught to watch. A balance is a photograph of one instant. What actually happened is that a considerable sum passed through your hands and did things: kept a roof on, fixed the heating, put a card on a mantelpiece.

The passing-through is the part nobody counts. Money that reaches you and moves on is the system working rather than the system leaking.