The Found Money Dilemma – What Would You Do?

When we buy a home, and finally begin to move in, its pretty common to be faced with unexpected hidden costs. What’s even more unexpected is finding hidden cash during the move in or renovation under your floor or in one of your walls. And during your move in, you unexpectedly put a hole in the wall, and during your clean up you discover $5,000 cash neatly wrapped. So, what do you do?

How about you’re en route to your buddy’s house for some beers, the elevator opens up, and as you walk in you notice a bag. The elevator door closes, you got 23 floors to go to your destination floor, no camera in the elevator, and as you open up the bag to discover a $1,000 rolled in ten one-hundred dollar bills. What do you do?

Good Samaritans come in all shapes and sizes, but may primarily fit into two groups: those that will do the right thing in public, and those that will do so when no one’s looking. For example, you may be likely to hold a door or help a senior cross the street, but what if you found, say, a bunch of cash and nobody was around to see?

Would you take it and run? Would you turn it in? What would you do?

Your Options

Give It Away – Money you find is a gift, so why not pass it on to something or someone worthy? You can take the money, even small as $10, and donate it to your favorite charity. Another option would be to take the money, and donate it to your religious group. Not only will you exercise your gift giving ways, but you could be blessed with good luck through your religion, especially if you’re a big believer of a power higher above.

Finders Keepers -You can just keep the money. You found it, and its not your fault someone else lost it. They should have been more careful. So, what’s wrong with keeping the money? Nothing. It’s purely just good old capitalism. You ended up in the right place at the right time. Its like playing Monopoly, and when you draw the “bank error” community chest card, you take the $200 and go on your merry way.

Enjoy Your Luck – Rather than over thinking the situation, you can simply enjoy your new found luck. We all know what happens when we over think things – our mind begins to play games with us, and possibly we wonder if we made the right choice.

Money Finding Stories & One Experiment

A Dentist in Massachusetts -  A dentist in Mass. buys a home, and decides to do a little good old renovation. During the renovation process, the crew discovers $2,500 in of the walls of the house. Here’s what happened – Finding $2,500 in Mass.

Finding $60 – A young-er boy reflects on his story of finding $60 at the corner store. Here’s what he did, and he shares his story 25 years later, and what he’d do today. Here’s the $60 story – If you found $100, what would you do?

Casino Cash – You’re playing the slots, and the machine breaks down. Here’s another lost money story in the casino.

Mistaken Cash – Let’s say one day you log into your online banking, and you notice there’s thousands of dollars of extra money in your account. You do some searching around, and can’t determine where the extra money came from. What would you do? Here’s a $69,000 story of found money, and what one man did with the finding.

Lost & Found Experiment – Here’s an great experiment conducted by “Mr. Lucky” himself, who’s had a lot of luck finding money. On his last find, instead of keeping the money, he decides to run an experiment by posting a “lost and found” on Craigslist. Here’s what happened in his lost and found experiment.

Here’s What I Would Do

There’s a difference between finding money lying around, and keeping money when a cashier gives you back too much change. Eventually the cashier will be responsible for the cash at the end of the day.So, I would return the extra cash back to the cashier. Its simply the logical and right things to do if you have a heart. And I definitely have a BIG HEART, because karma is a bitch.

If I ever found money, and there was no reasonable guess as to who the money belonged to, well guess what? I’m keeping the cash. I’ll simply enjoy my luck.

Readers, what would you do if you found money, and you can’t trace where it came from or who it belongs to?

Eddie