Wow. I guess pigs may just fly after all. Because, believe it or not, the goverment is actually paying out the economic stimulus checks ahead of schedule. And that means you could get your cold, hard cash as early as Monday, depending on your SSN.

You may already have read my article outlining the amount of money you're likley to get back. If not, check it out here . Well, the original deposit schedule was outlined to begin May 2nd, as you can see from the IRS table below.

 

Direct deposit payments  
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are: Your stimulus payment should be sent to your bank account by:
00 - 20 May 2
21 - 75 May 9
76 - 99 May 16
Paper check  
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are: Your check should be in the mail by:
00 - 09 May 16
10 - 18 May 23
19 - 25 May 30
26 - 38 June 6
39 - 51 June 13
52 - 63 June 20
64 - 75 June 27
76 - 87 July 4
88 - 99 July 11

 

I paid my taxes electronically and chose the direct deposit option. And the last 2 digits of my SSN indicate that I'd be getting my money, all $1800, around May 9th. But in an unprecedented act of efficiency, it looks like the money is actually going to start getting deposited around 1 week earlier. I suspect the message is starting to hit home that out economy really, really needs that boost.

According to CNN , some 800,000 of you will actually see the money as early as Monday, April 28th. And by Friday, around 5 million rebates will have been deposited or mailed. Of course, if you filed an extension or "decided" not to pay your taxes this year, this doesn't apply to you I'm afraid.

This means that of the $110 billion dollars set aside for rebates, $50 billion will have been paid out by the end of May. Now, whether this will actually help the economy at all is another question. Some people have already said they'll just give the money straight to the credit card company, others plan to save it and, of course, a few plan to blow the whole thing. 

Personally, I'm using our stimulus check to landscape our hellhole of a backyard, which right now could be used as a set from a World War II trench. But let's just hope that the government is right...with gas skyrocketing, food prices through the roof and housing pricing in the toilet, we could certianly use some good news in this country.

Happy Monday to you folks that get the money. And for the rest of us...the wait is almost over.