About twenty years before the lecture, a friend (since deceased) gave Neville's daughter Vicki a small gift of stock, a hundred shares worth about ten dollars; she kept it in a safe deposit box over the years. About two weeks before the lecture she received a notice from a bank that the stock, since absorbed into a larger company, was being redeemed, worth roughly $2,000 -- enough, Neville notes, to support her for a few more months while she tried living as a writer.