If I had a million dollars…

Okay, maybe not a million, but a few thousand. I didn’t catch the story this morning on CNN Headline News radio, as I had to come in to work, but the general idea is that a person found a briefcase literally full of money and returned it. From time to time these stories pop up in the news and it gives people a warm and fuzzy feeling. These stories go a long way to showing that goodness still exists in human nature.

Now, what would I do if I had found the money? I would have returned it. That is the easy thing to say when you aren’t faced with a decent amount of money that is yours for the taking. Can we all really know that we would return free and clear money?

There are a lot of ways that a few thousand dollars could make my life easier. Pay off my car, the little credit card debt, maybe even pay off my home. Sure would be nice to have that gift just pop up in your face one day.

I believe that returning the money would have to be done. Yeah, I might enjoy the short-term benefits of whatever I did with the cash, but returning it would do so much more in my opinion.

The person who lost it might not lose their job. They could deposit their life savings. They could buy their first home. They could stuff it in their mattress.

Whatever the “loser” decides to do, it would make both them and I feel much better to have the money returned.