Why being an honest person is important

While walking my dog this morning we came across debit cards, State ID, and other various cards. I didn't need to call CSI to figure out the person whose face was on the State ID was the victim of a theft. After finding the stash my wife and I had to make a decision.

1) Ignore it and keep walking

2) Help return these items 

We ended up taking the cards back home to return return to the local secretary of state office once it opened. My wife objected to this and wanted to return the whole stash to them. To my surprise I found a business card with the persons name on it and decided to reach out only to find that he lived 2 blocks from us at the house we walk our dog by every day. Now you are probably asking, why is this feel good story being published on a Blog space for financial independence and real estate?

After some small talk we found out that the person works in the trades and is able to help us on a rehab project that we have coming up. More importantly, for helping return his items he is going to give us a discount on his hourly rate. 

To recap, because we chose to take 5 minutes to collect this persons items and do the uncomfortable thing and reach out to a stranger. We were able to 

1) Find someone hyper local to our property in i ever need a hand with small house projects, maybe just to borrow a tool

2) Give us a discounted rate on work that we were paying for regardless

3) Help us on future small rehab projects.

4) use his network for other tradesman.  

He said his car was broken into Tuesday evening, we found the stash Friday morning, along the main sidewalk people use to walk to the local commuter train, which is also a popular dog walking route, by a park, next to a school that hundreds of parents walk by every day! Easily 1,000 people walked by and choose option 1, now we are able to benefit.