Thursday, May 21, 2009

If I Were In Your Shoes…

Who among us hasn't fantasized about winning the lottery? What car would you drive? Would you build a new house or renovate your current one. What would you spend all that money on? Every once in a while my wife and I talk about this. Usually the conversation occurs when the jackpot reaches 35 or 40 million dollars. What would we do for ourselves, our family and the community. In our case this fantasizing is really just that, because I can count on one hand the number of times I have bought lottery tickets in the last 4 years. It is not something we usually do. But it is fun to dream.

All this begs the question – What would you do if you suddenly came into a large sum of money? What would you do if that money was placed into your account by mistake? What would you do if both happened at the same time? With one couple the answer to all of these questions seems to be RUN! Apparently this couple applied for a line of credit at the bank and for some reason the bank mistakenly deposited 6 million dollars in their account. Did they call the bank? Did they call their friends? No. They disappeared! Packed up and left their home, business and friends and are now in the wind.

This, quite obviously, wasn't the most honest thing to do. Should they have called the bank and reported the error? Probably. Would they have gotten the line of credit or a reward for their honesty? Who knows. (Given the seeming greed of the banking industry, probably not.) They probably should have taken the course of action that says that honesty is the best policy. But obviously this couple took the advice of Steve Miller instead – "Take the money and run."

No comments: