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Found Money Well Spent

It's not Brewster's millions, but a $50 pile of fives, ready to be distributed on the city's streets.Emily S. Rueb/The New York Times It's not Brewster's millions, but a $50 pile of fives, ready to be distributed on the city's streets.

What would you do if you found $100 on the ground?

Last week at a coffee shop near work, I found two crisp fifties staring up at me from the white stone floor. After making an honest attempt to find the owner, I decided the money was mine to spend as I wished. But how? A thoughtful discussion on City Room followed a prompt for your advice.

“I think it is O.K. that you just keep the money for your own use,” said Jason Shannon from Jersey City. “As my father used to say, ‘Don't lo ok a gift horse in the mouth.'”

But as a lapsed Catholic, I felt that keeping it all would be greedy.

“Why do you feel guilty?” asked RMC from New York. “Because you didn't earn it? Because someone else lost it?”

She continued, “If I found $100 and didn't need it to pay a bill, I'd take my husband out for dinner.”

Since there were two bills, I decided to keep $50 and take the advice of @NYTFridge:

After treating a friend to a meal, I would give the rest away. Many readers suggested lofty causes, like Hurricane Sandy relief, The Times's Neediest Cases Fund or helping pay down the national debt. But I wanted to return the money to the streets from which it came.

Betty from Shrewsbury, N.J. suggested handing out five-dollar bills to homeless people or others in need. “Spread a little unexpected joy around,” she said.

“To be able to brighten the day of a handful of people, at no personal cost to you, seems a bit of a gift in and of itself!” said C.Gadd of Bethlehem, Pa., who had the same idea.

So on Wednesday, I walked the streets and subway platforms with a pocketful of bills, seeking a mix of people who seemed in need of a small boost. I met a man listening to soft rock on a portable radio as he collected bottles, a woman digging through trash cans in Times Square, an opera singer whose lovely voice floated above the din of subway commuters and a blonde crouched on a sidewalk near Grand Central who said she was pregnant and needed to get home to Maine.

Only one person, a woman sitting in a pedestrian plaza near Macy's, refused my offer.

But 10, included in a series of tweets below, received the small gesture with wide smil es, nods and even the jingle of a bell.

[View the story "$50 Well Spent" on Storify]

One of last week's commenters, bklynbar, worried that a homeless person might spend the money on “booze or drugs,” but if I'm using my share on empty calories, who am I to judge what others do with theirs?

In one afternoon, I put a little good karma out in the universe. But there were so many others out there â€" mostly men clutching small signs, lying on cardboard padding on subway grates and in doorways â€" who were in need, too. It was all I could do.

Giving is a matter of feeling, wrote Felicia from Dallas. “Whatever your heart moves you to do, you should do.”