Someone mistakenly made a deposit into your checking account, would you return the money, or keep it? Let's say it's a fairly small amount, under $50.00.

I probably wouldn't notice.. I don't look at my account regularly... The bank would find it though, and eventually they'd take it back...

Banks have ways of finding these things out.

If you spend it, they may take it back again.

I would wait at least a few months.

wow i have a checking account with money in it dang thought i didn't have one lol

Let's say you didn't notice it until 4 months later. Would you still keep it?

probably not, unless I knew it was a mistake, I have family who occasionally wire money for things for the kids so I would probably at a glance assume it was them,,,

I have , however, had a clerk mistakingly give me a money order for 700 dollars when I only wanted and payed her for a 70 dollar money order

I returned it right away

One time I withdrew from an ATM $100.00

One of the $20 was a $50.00

Ooppsss

If there was a discrepancy in the teller's drawer such as a check being added for the wrong amount or incorrect change being given to the customer, it would have been found out long before now.

I was a teller for four years and we had to "prove out" our cash drawers every night before we left the building. One night a fellow teller added a check for $100.00 as $1000.00 and gave the customer back $900 too much. It took us two and a half hours to find it, and when we confronted the customer she tried to deny getting the money....she claimed her husband got a pay raise and THAT is why she got so much extra money.... I had to drive to her house and get the money because she wouldn't return it.

The Bank Will find thair mistakes!Leave it for a few months. If it is still there? Spend it!

Let's say it was there for four months and nobody said anything.

Then you can buy me a small present!!

no I would not

it belongs to someone else who may be much needier than I
it also might come out of the bank teller's pocket or cost them their job

so there is much good to be done by returning it

the bank will find it eventually so your reputation for honesty can be made or broken at this time also

I would not notice unless it was in the thousands....

same here and maybe not even then...

Chances are it was not a mistake.

Go figure: Fifty years ago there was about a trillion dollars in the world.

Now there are at least a billion trillion dollars.

They must have got here somehow.

It is a well-known fact that the feds increase the money supply from time to time. This has to be done, no way we can go around this.

Remember, this is not the increasing amount of wealth, which incidentally also increases in the US nation, but the increasign amount of money. Money is not wealth. You could have an army with a billion pounds of gold, but no food or water in the middle of the Sahara, barenaked and without any footwear or gucci watches, and you could not buy even a big mac with a million dollars, if there were no big macs. So be careful, money =X= wealth.

But the fact is there is more and more money in circulation and in banks.

I often find an extra $50 in my bank account. I know it's the work of the feds, increasing the money supply.

When money was not as common as today, the feds employed agents like the Tooth Fairy who fattened the cash reserves by exchanging fallen baby teeth into quarters.

I predict that in a hundred years, you go out, buy some bread and milk and ammunition to last you the following two or three days, and you go home with five times more money than you spent in the store, as the store gives you more change than you give the clerk to buy the stuff.

I know it's all very theoretical now, and it gives you headaches and an urge to vomit, but it's economy, which involves statistics and other lies and incomprehensible stuff, so don't get too surprized.

What I said here is the gospel of tomorrow's economic theorists.

Oh, in two hundred years from now, we will have surpassed the age of relativity in economics and money management, and we shall have entered the age of quantum economics. This will mean that the cheaper something is, the more expensive it will be, and the half-life of different currencies in the world will be predictable, but we can't pinpoint out exactly which bill or paper money piece will be sucked out of existence in the cosmos in an instantaneous moment.

Let's say it was an obvious mistake, not on the banks behalf, but on the one who deposited the money, perhaps sending it to the wrong account? Would you return the money after 4 months?

Well my sister in law works at a bank for over 20 years if money is put in your account by mistake and you spend it ,you will just have to pay it back sooner or later cause maybe at the moment the person didn't know its missing and a teller could of put it in a wrong account ,but curious why did you get extra money in your account?

Yes without question.Keeping it is stealing .I don't take, or keep, what isn't mine,if it wasn't given to me deliberately and freely.

If it's through B of A definitely leave it alone. . .

first you can't deposit money in a wrong account lollll unless they got your card and had your code and put it in there and second only the teller can make the mistake cause they ask you to use your card most of the time, now if you put a blank envelope and deposit in your account 50 dollars they can try and charge you with fraud unless you report it right away and say you made a mistake and forgot to put the cash in :)