When is money on the street free money?

[amadeus]

A few years ago I found our equivalent of a bennie on the ground and no one saw it. I picked it up and registered at the police station. 10 minutes of filling out a form, and I was back on my way.

Three months later, I got a letter from the same police station—the money was unclaimed, so legally it became mine.

Now if this had been a ¥100 coin, I wouldn’t go to the station. It’d go in the pocket.

So what’s your bottom line? I think anything around forty or fifty bucks should get turned in. Below that, it’s not really make-or-break cash.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Once upon a time back in Grade 12 (winter of 1980), there was a debate tournament hosted at my school. Normally I wouldn't have paid any attention to it, but they were short one judge.

The teacher in charge of organizing it went around to her colleagues, asking if anyone wanted to give up their Saturday to help judge this thing.

They said no. So she came to the library, and literally begged the librarians.

They said no. And then one of them pointed to me (I was sitting there, minding my own business, typing card pockets to glue into the newly-purchased library books). She said, "But here's ______, I'm sure she would be happy to help."

How could I say no? It was the supervisor of the yearbook club asking, and she already knew I was good for staying after school for days on end, working on layout and typing hundreds of students' names onto stencils before the whole mess went to the printer.

I did tell her I could only do the morning (I was not going to give up my weekly book-hunting rounds at the bookstores downtown and at the mall; back then I was extremely dedicated to building up my science fiction collection), and she'd have to find someone else to do the afternoon. She said that would be fine, and thanked me.

Well, it was an interesting experience, and by this point you're likely wondering what this has to do with finding money.

The answer is this: I lived about the equivalent of 3 blocks from the school, but usually cut through several yards to pare the distance down. It turned out to be a profitable decision that day. As I was about to go from the street to one of the yards I always cut through, I saw a $5 bill sticking out of the snowbank.

$5 was a lot of money to me back then, as my grandfather did not believe in allowances and spending money came from babysitting and working in the school library. It represented 5 hours' babysitting or just over 6.5 hours' working in the library (we were paid a lot less than the cafeteria helpers, a situation that was remedied the following year when we were bumped up to $2.50/hour).

That $5 was probably dropped when someone stepped out of a taxi. I did not feel even slightly guilty about pocketing it. I figured it was karma of some kind for having spent the morning listening to some truly boring debates on a topic I knew nothing about, but did my judging based on how the debaters presented themselves and how well they explained their position. I was the only judge who was a student, which bothered some of the debaters (also students), but the other judges didn't have a problem. Fun fact: One of the other judges turned out to be one of my history profs 15 years later when I decided to take classical and medieval history.

But in 1980, that $5 paid for 2 or 3 books and a lunch of egg roll and juice at the mall.

 

[EnglishEdward]

A few years ago I found our equivalent of a bennie on the ground and no one saw it. I picked it up and registered at the police station. 10 minutes of filling out a form, and I was back on my way.

Pardon me, but how much is a bennie?

 

[Bruhmoment]

I don't care, however much money I see on the ground is free money to me. I rarely see them anyway so I don't think it would matter if I turned it in

 

[Gelion]

Pardon me, but how much is a bennie?

I would guess its less than an annie, but more than a cennie?

 

[tjs282]

Pardon me, but how much is a bennie?

Guessing: bennie = Benjamin Franklin? i.e. US$ 100?

 

[amadeus]

Pardon me, but how much is a bennie?

Tis a half-guinea, two shillings, and a sixpence.

$100
Bennie = Ben Franklin

 

[Gelion]

Tis a half-guinea, two shillings, and a sixpence.

$100
Bennie = Ben Franklin

Quite.

 

[El_Machinae]

Like, when I own a stock and then it becomes a meme-stock, I cash in on my free money.

 

[The_J]

mmhh.... if I find 50 or 100, I might consider reporting it. Less not. More certainly.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Is there any way of identifying it?
If its a purse or wallet or some other form of container I'll hand it in.
Loose money lying on the ground probably not.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

Find a bennie, pick it up. All day long, you'll have good luck.

 

[El_Machinae]

I find hundred bills all the time, because it's never worth Bill Gate's time to pick them up when he drops them.

 

[FriendlyFire]

A few years ago I found our equivalent of a bennie on the ground and no one saw it. I picked it up and registered at the police station. 10 minutes of filling out a form, and I was back on my way.
Three months later, I got a letter from the same police station—the money was unclaimed, so legally it became mine.
Now if this had been a ¥100 coin, I wouldn’t go to the station. It’d go in the pocket.
So what’s your bottom line? I think anything around forty or fifty bucks should get turned in. Below that, it’s not really make-or-break cash.

I turn over keys, wallet that has some form of id to the police station regardless of how much money is inside
Small coins, aka lose change with no identification go into my pocket

In Japan people leave expensive laptops in restaurants to answer a call or to the toilet without worrying that it would be stolen. That would be considered risky behaviour as someone could well steal it in most places. Including Australia

 

[Zardnaar]

Loose cash is going into my wallet.

I was working in a stadium once for some post concert tidy up and one of the guys found an envelope with $2000 in it and pocketed it. There was a lady looking for it as well.

Most cash I've found is $20 or $40 bucks something like that. Wallets and purses get handed in with all cash.

 

[tjs282]

When it comes to stuff found on the street, I would hand in wallets-plus-contents (or call the owner myself, if their phone number was attached), and probably also anything over a 10-note. Dropped coinage will generally be(come) mine, though.

Back when I worked poolside (in my early twenties), one of the last things we had to do on the late shift, after all the customers had gone home, was scrub and hose down the changing-rooms. There were usually a couple of us to do this, and after we were done, we would routinely check all the coin-operated lockers for unclaimed deposits (50p, later £1) on the way out. We'd usually find a couple of coins each — which would usually then go into one of the snack/soda vending-machines, to reward our diligence.

Half-empty bottles of shampoo and shower gel would get likewise salvaged (I don't think I needed to buy any shower gel for the entire year-and-a-half I worked there full-time), but durables like towels, swimming goggles (often broken), or umbrellas would all get logged into lost property. Sometimes that stuff would get reclaimed, but anything which was still there after 3 months, when it would have been tossed out anyway, was also considered fair game.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Find a bennie, pick it up. All day long, you'll have good luck.

So close. Find a bennie, bick it up, and you will have good luck.

Your cold may even clear up.

I found a $20 the other day by a roadside. There was no chance of anyone identifying that it had come to be there (blown there). So I kept it. But I have reservations about spending it. What if it's counterfeit? Every other $20 I have I get from the ATM, so I could tell authorities how I came by it (and presumably the ATM owner could verify? or counterfeits would have been weeded out?) What If I go to spend this and those little pens or little machines that stores now use identify it as a counterfeit?

 

[DeepSoul]

When it comes to stuff found on the street, I would hand in wallets-plus-contents (or call the owner myself, if their phone number was attached), and probably also anything over a 10-note. Dropped coinage will generally be(come) mine, though.

Back when I worked poolside (in my early twenties), one of the last things we had to do on the late shift, after all the customers had gone home, was scrub and hose down the changing-rooms. There were usually a couple of us to do this, and after we were done, we would routinely check all the coin-operated lockers for unclaimed deposits (50p, later £1) on the way out. We'd usually find a couple of coins each — which would usually then go into one of the snack/soda vending-machines, to reward our diligence.

Half-empty bottles of shampoo and shower gel would get likewise salvaged (I don't think I needed to buy any shower gel for the entire year-and-a-half I worked there full-time), but durables like towels, swimming goggles (often broken), or umbrellas would all get logged into lost property. Sometimes that stuff would get reclaimed, but anything which was still there after 3 months, when it would have been tossed out anyway, was also considered fair game.

Imagine going to the police with a bottle of shampoo and saying you found it in the shower, hope they can return to its rightful owner. xD

 

[warpus]

According to the urban dictionary "bennie" is slang for amphetamines. It also apparently seems to be a reference to $100. Not a term I've ever heard used anywhere.. But with that out of the way..

I'm not going to bother the local police with $100, are you kidding me? They don't seem to have time to respond to theft, breakins, and many other crimes. If I find random cash lying around, I pick it up and put it in my wallet and buy some bennies with it.

Okay, so that last part was a joke. I'd put it in my wallet and probably end up buying food with it, or whatever. If there's ANY sort of identification associated with the money though, such as it being in a wallet with ID in it.. I would return the wallet with everything in it. Taking cash out of the wallet before returning it seems common, but at this point it feels too much like theft. I've never stolen anything in my life, so I just wouldn't do it, especially a small amount like $100. And if the wallet had a substantial amount of cash in it, like let's say $10,000... Would I really want to invite the wrath of some rich douchebag on me by stealing any of his precious money? "Oh, I found it without any cash, I dunno" seems easy enough to say, but.. I mean.. I still probably wouldn't do it. If I get a reward when I return the wallet, so be it. if not, ah well.

Now, if I find a suitcase without any identification whatsoever.. a nd it's got $5 million in it. I am running away from that thing. People with guns are probably going to be looking for it at some point.

Where do I draw the line? If I find a $500 bill on the ground, if such a thing even exists.. and there's no identification I could use to locate the owner.. then hey, free money! If it's $100,000 in cash though, I would probably leave it alone. See: men with guns. If it was $20,000 though.. it'd be temping to take a bit. I am not sure what I'd do in that case.

 

[Bugfatty300]

This is why I write my name and PO address on every single bill I get a long with a brief summation of one's legal and ethical duties to surrender lost money to the authorities and the consequences for failing to do so.