ZM's Bree & Clint - What are you supposed to do when you find cash on the ground?

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

It's a real moral dilemma - when you find cash (like, actual notes) on the ground, are you supposed to hand them in or are you allowed to keep them? Bree Tomasel & Clint Roberts on ZM - find us @breeandclint on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You tapped it, so we're playing it. It's ZM's Brian Clint, the podcast. Claudia said to us today that she found some money in a public place. My favourite pastime. Finding money. Yeah. Honestly, if you know me, you know what, I love a coin, I love a note. Yeah, or finding a note.

Do you guys know I bought, you don't know because I haven't told you. I bought a jacket off Trade Me the other day, like a secondhand blazer of Trade Me. Nice. And I was like, I'd better get this dry clean. Someone might have died in it. and I took it into the dry cleaner and I was like, I should check the pockets. Wait, I haven't even worn it.

Why should I check the pockets? No, I should check the pockets anyway. $5 note in the secondhand blazer that I bought. So you really got $5 off it? I got $5 off it. That's the best day ever. Honestly, put a real peep in my step for the rest of the afternoon. Although you kind of butt hurt, you like, oh, I feel a note.

$5. It would have been 50, man. No, I feel like, oh, 50 would be fantastic, obviously. Yeah. But there's something about a note. You know, finding a note. It's just the best. I am always worried when.

I see a note on the ground though that it's going to be attached to a string and someone's going to be pulling my leg though. I feel the same about a coin on the ground. I'm worried it will be glued to the ground. And then I'm going to be on a reality TV show called Ah-huh. Ashton Kutcher is waiting to jump out from behind a bush.

Claudia, tell us where you found the money and how much money you found. Okay, on the way home yesterday, I made a very last-minute decision to go to the supermarket, right? It's the one I go to every week, walking in the front door. Behind another group of people, by the way, so they stepped over what I have found.

Right at the entry, I look down, and I can sniff money from a mile away. I can see it at the corner of my eye. I know it's there. I look down, I see green. Ooh, that's good sign. Oh, a twin. Green. Fold it up.

Yeah. So it's obviously been in someone's pocket. Yeah. So, of course, I bend down and pick it up. Unfold it. I see orange. $25 in cash. $25 in cash.

Not the bonus $5. I'm not going to lie, when you said orange, my man. My mind went to 50s or hundreds, but damn, $25. Yeah. But this is a pretty public place like a supermarket. Did you look around? I did. Yeah, and everyone was just mining their own business.

Even the security guard wasn't like doing anything about it. It definitely didn't fall from the people that entered the supermarket before you. I saw them step over it. They didn't even look at it. Okay. Yeah. So I've picked it up. And my immediate thought is, well, this is a gift from the universe.

Thank you so much. I will be keeping that. But then I held on to it for about 10 seconds. and then I was like, no, I need to call my dad and I need to get a moral compass on this. Okay. So I called my dad in the middle of the supermarket whispering just in case someone overheard me, go, I found some money.

And I said to him, if you were in this situation, hypothetically, what would you do? Can I assume what your dad said? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't call me unless it's emergency, keep the money by Claudia. Yeah, my dad would have said take the money and run. Yeah. He would have said, buy some beers. Yeah.

My dad said, What if that was someone's last $25? Oh, Buzz killed, Dad, Bo, Dad, Boo, Dad, Boo. And I don't always listen to my dad, so you know what I did? What? I handed it in. Oh, my God. Because you're a good person.

Fortier. You know that my issue with handing it in is that you rely on a good person chain of reaction. You rely on the person you're handing it into to be a good person. But actually, that doesn't matter. No, it doesn't. It doesn't matter because in the eyes of the universe, you've done the right thing. And the reaction I got. And you have the good karma.

And you have, because you're never going to get it back anyway, but you know that you did the right thing. I've got the moral high ground. What if that was the universe trying to reward you for doing something good and you just keep handing it back in? Yeah. I was like, I put that there for you, Claudia. I did consider that too. But when I handed it in, the reaction I got was, oh, a guy literally five minutes ago was looking for that. Dude.

So they know it's lost. Okay. They may come back for it. Oh, that feels good. Yeah. So at least they didn't see me pick it up and walk away and laugh. I feel like you should get $25 for doing the right thing. At least.

I would say even $30 for doing that good deed of handing that $25. I don't know who from. I think the universe will reward me in other ways. From the government? Yeah, it will. From the government. Yeah. I feel like had you have spent that $25 on something not sinister,

like, I don't know, like a healthy dinner, I would feel all right to sleep at night. That's just me personally. Yeah. So you are the charity? Well, just because if I brought something bad, I'd be like, oh, I feel guilty for spending. this money on that naughty thing.

But if I spent it on something good, I'd be like, okay, I can sleep at night. Okay. It's what you spend it on that matters. Right, okay, that's an interesting way of justifying it. Also, I lost $25 at the supermarket. Oh, interesting. Well, I know where you can find it. It's at the service desk at the countdown.

I once found 16,000, 16,000 Thai Bart. Oh, yeah, no, nevertheless. What's the conversion rate on that, though? It was about 800 bucks at the time. That's heaps. What'd you do? I handed it in because I found it in. Oh, wow.

at the place that I was working. And so I was like, oh, if I don't hand this in, this is stealing. What's the threshold of keep versus hand in? It's a great question. It's a great question, Claudia. $10 keep, $50 hand in? One note, keep, two notes hand in? Can I know?

My financial status, good keep, bad keep. Yeah, fair enough. Can I say the Thai Bart? I got it back. Wait, really? Yeah, I handed it into my workplace. and they said, all good, because it was a tourist place that I was working. They said it's unlikely anyone will come back for this.

And if they don't, you'll get it. We have to keep it for three months. Oh, sheesh. And then it came back to me. Perfect. That's epic. Yeah. Was it in a briefcase?

No, it was in a crummy envelope. Oh, wow. That's really suspicious. Yeah, it was in like a half-torn envelope. My friend and I once found 100 bucks. Yes. Kept it. Why not?

Probably the best day ever for you and your friend. Yeah, I were children. It was awesome. How big can we get in the finding money stakes? Yeah, finding a note is fun, but I want to talk to people who found real money, and what did you do with it? What happened to that money? I assume if it was really big, you handed it in, you may not have,

and we won't judge, and we can keep you anonymous. But what did you do? Can we find the person who found a decent amount of money, and what was the eventual outcome for that? Remember that story that we had a little while ago about those people in Christchurch who found 125 grand in their ceiling? Yeah. Yeah, and it was drug money.

Oh. And the police were like, you've got to hand that in. And then they ended up going to them and being like, hey, if you can't get it back to the owner, we should get some of that money. Fair, because it's not theirs. I think it made a pretty good argument for it. ZDM's Brie and Clint Podcast.

Claudia's cash conundrum today, she found $25 at the entrance to the supermarket, folded up a 20 and a 5, and she did the right thing after calling her father for advice, and she handed it in. Yeah, I'm so nice. You could get it back. Someone's text in and said that was 100% someone's tinny money

That Claudia found Call me out of the game But a tinny's $25 now I don't know Have they gone up? 50. $50? Yeah, I assume just from word on the street.

I'll say a lot of these texts on 9-6-96, I'm like relieved that Kiwis are like, yeah, I handed it back in, I handed it back in. And it restores your faith in humanity a bit there's a little bit of people who handed it in that got it back too. So your good personness has been returned to you.

We'll get to those, but first, Anonymous. Hi Anonymous. Hi, how are you? Good. Did you find some money Anonymous? Yeah, I found lots over time. Okay, you're a bit of a magpie. Must be, eh? Yeah.

I've found lots of wallets and things and I always hand those in. Yes. You know, because they've got people's personal details and things like that. and I would never think about taking money out of somebody's wallet. But I found, when I was living in the UK, I found like 20 pounds in a cigarette packet.

I reckon that was some dodgy money. I was on a cafe table. And when I found $100 on the dance floor in a nightclub one. $100 on the dance floor. And I found $120 Australian in a bottom of a washing machine at a hotel. Geez, you've got good luck. It makes me wonder if you've lost a lot of things in the universe. It's just like, here's your chance.

Here's your money that you lost. Here's your chance. And then the biggest one. Okay, yeah, go on. Sorry, the biggest one I had was I went up to a cash point machine. There was $300 sticking out of it. At some point. So that one makes me nervous.

It makes me nervous, too, I've got to say. But there been, there was nobody around. There was nobody, as I was walking towards it, there was nobody there. What did you do? I asked a friend who worked in a bank and they said, no, because if they hadn't taken it, it would have swallowed the money up. Right, okay.

Gone back to the big man. And hopefully it would have gone back into their account, though, Anonymous, if I got swallowed back up. Well, I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. And I didn't know what to do about it. So I took it.

There's no judgment here, anonymous. I think you and a lot of other people would have done the same thing. Also, you've gone to an ATM to get out money and you don't take the money out of the ATM. That's what I'm saying. At some point you go, okay, maybe this person doesn't need money. They need brain cells.

No, no. I don't know. Someone who has gone to an ATM to take out money forgets to take the money out of the ATM. If I can get in my car with out the car keys, I can leave an ATM without the cash, you know? You know, it's just if your brain's not in it, your brain's not in it.

Anonymous number two, you were in the police. Hey, how's we going? So what's the deal? If so, if this, use that. We just said a bunch of incriminate. Yeah, yeah. Let's use that. Allegedly. Oh no, first day I need to know. How much is the tinny these days? Oh, this was going back a few years. I've been out of the place for a little while now, but yeah, you can, depending how good quality you're talking.

Right. Okay. What's your experience with finding money? So going back a few years, this is going back out West Auckland as well, so no surprises there. We'd been chasing a guy around that night. Lost him, but then we got a call to a property. later on about a random rubbish bag being in the backyard. Yeah. So we went there, grabbed that, and it was just over 100k in the $100 notes in it. They just bifted over the back.

Yeah, so they got rid of it at some point when they were being chased. And the only reason we knew it was linked to that guy is because he had his mail in there as well. Not the money bag and the mail bag. That's Rule 101 of money stealing and laundering. Don't put your mail with your address in the same bag as the money that you're laundering. Yeah. Yeah, wow. I'd be terrified if a hundred, if a bag with $100,000 ended up in my backyard,

I'd be like, if I touch this, I'm going to wake up with a horse's head in my bed. Right. Who's going to come looking for something that they left behind? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just as a policeman, can I get an opinion? If Claudia had pocketed the $25 that she'd found on the ground at the supermarket, what sort of area is she in there? Well, something out of the police now, I can easily say this.

Yeah, the time and effort going into trying to find the person that owns the $25 is most way not worth it. But, you know, if she did hand it and stuff, would be the whole holding onto it for the three months. And then if the owner didn't come forward, it would be going back to her. You guys don't want people to show up to the police station with $25, though, eh? No. That's a waste of your time. Okay, thank you, anonymous. it. Some quick text. I found

400 bucks beeping in an ATM as well. I handed it to the security guard. I found US dollars in a plastic bag at a mall. I saw it drop from some guy's pocket. It was a solid amount of $100 bills. I gave it back to him and he didn't even say thank you. Oh, at least. Say Clint, I handed your wallet back

that you'd been scrambling looking for and there was four-twineys? Yeah. Four-twenties? There's four-twenties, isn't it? How much? I'll give you a 20. Okay.

Yeah, that's fair. If there was 10-20s? I'm just checking to say you haven't got my wallet and this is some kind of stitch-up. No, focus on the question at hand. If there was 10-20s? I'd give you a 20s. Just one?

Yeah. Oh, okay. How many 20s in your wallet right now? How much cash? Wait, yeah, how much cash is in your wallet right now? None of your business. Nah, worth a shot. Play ZM's Brian Clint on Insta, Facebook, TikTok,

and live weekdays from three on ZM. Thank you.