How much is your personal integrity worth? One dollar? One hundred? One thousand?
When we commit to living a certain way, it often seems that opportunities to cut corners pop up. Here is how it happened for me.
I have been teaching the DebtWatchers class in order to help participants improve how they manage their personal finances. Yesterday, however, my bank account received $1600 from an employer that I stopped working for a month ago, meaning that I was paid for an entire month of work that I didn't do. My first thought was, "Wow! Now I can buy/do _______!!!" But then I had to acknowledge that the deposit was probably a clerical error and not an unexpected bonus.
What do I do now? To be honest, part of me wanted to just accept the money and write it off as "their mistake." Why should I have to take action and write a check back to a huge organization that wouldn't really miss the money?
But I knew that anything that money was used for would always feel tainted or ruined because that money did not rightfully belong to me, regardless of how I came into possession of it. I know that my personal integrity is worth a lot more than $1600 and is hopefully priceless.
So on Monday, I will be calling my former boss to try and clear up all of this. An immediate benefit of this is that it will improve or at least solidify our already good relationship since I can continue to use him as a professional reference.
This experience has me thinking about other instances where money came into my hands that didn't necessarily belong to me. (Granted, finding money randomly on the street with no way of identifying the owner shouldn't make you feel guilty, although you could donate it to someone else if you don't need it.) Have you ever been given back too much change from a cashier? Or have a waiter that forgot to charge you for part of your meal? What do you do when you know that money won't be easily missed?
My hope is that we will all start thinking about how much we are willing to sell our integrity for and start putting a "Priceless" tag on it.
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