Checking the post isn’t always the most enjoyable task – more often than not, all you see are bills demanding payment or advertisements trying to persuade you to spend your money. Apart from birthdays and Christmas, it’s rare that something arrives which genuinely brightens your day.
However, one Reddit user discovered something rather peculiar when collecting their mail. Writing on the social media site, they said someone had put £76 ($100) in cash inside their mailbox, with absolutely no clue as to who left it or the reason behind it. “On Sunday, my husband checked our mailbox (it’s attached to our house) for the first time in a while and found two $50 bills just sitting there,” they said.
“No envelope, no note, nothing. We were super confused. We have two kids and stable jobs, and we haven’t had any kind of hard times with finances recently, so it seems unlikely someone we know left it as a random act of kindness.
“We texted close friends and family, everyone denied it being them. I also posted on a local Facebook group asking if anyone was missing a sum of money. Lots of supportive comments, but no leads, no one trying to say it was theirs.
“At first I wondered if it was a Facebook Marketplace mixup (like maybe someone left payment in the wrong mailbox after picking up an item from a neighbor), but we checked and that’s been ruled out. So now I’m at a loss.
“Do I just keep it? Pay it forward somehow? Keep searching for the rightful owner? What would you do in this situation?”.
The highest-rated response advised they should “just keep it and spend it”. “The ‘rightful owner’ is you now,” they said. “Someone deliberately placed the money in your mailbox.”
In reply to that suggestion, another user wrote: “This. It’s yours to do with as you please.
“If you feel guilty for accepting it because you’re not in need, find a good cause to donate to. If you’re in the US, I recommend donating to a local food bank right now.
“But there is also no shame in keeping it and putting it towards your own uses. Do whatever you want with that money that gives you the most joy or satisfaction.”
Another person raised a potentially more sinister explanation for the cash, reports the Mirror. “Probably some teenager paying somebody for weed or something and they just left it in the wrong mailbox,” they said.
A different user responded: “That was another thought that crossed my mind. Someone in the neighborhood might be a drug dealer and one of their customers left their money in the wrong mailbox.”
Others recommended taking the cash to a bank to verify whether or not it is counterfeit before determining what to do with it.