Where Is the Best Place To Hide Money In Your House?

[fishy40]

I like to keep it in the vent..no one I know can reach it!

[veronak]

Gross but works

I had a thief break in once a missed a few $100s because I had a dirty old mop, placed the funds in the banks envelope and tied it under the mop placing the broom next to it

[littleangel2039]

Well, I would say that the best place would be where not many people go to. I'd say a place in your house which isn't so crowded everyday. Think of somewhere where only a few people go there every few days. You could pop your money in a bag or wallet and place it in the very corner of the room, which for most of the time is the hardest place for burglars to find it.

I hope that this helped, and sorry for the late reply to your question, it has been a while now. Though I hope that you can still read this!

[~bs]

First off, not in your house.

But if you absolutely must store money in your house, then a good hiding spot - definitely NOT a safe. Problem with so-called good hiding spots is that sometimes people come by that's unaware of the hiding spot, wife, brother, sister, kids, and dump the old PC, vcr, jacket, bag, etc etc with the money in it! Also people think ___ spot is "good", when in fact the thieves are all aware that people tend to hide money under the bed, around the dresser, in the bookshelf, etc, and if they think they have time, they will tear apart your entire house to look for valuables. All they have to do is case your house for a few days, find out that everyone is out of the house by 9AM and no one gets back until 6PM. Gee, you don't think they could find ransack your entire house in 8 hours? If you're looking for something that will withstand a natural disaster or fire, then you're looking at sinking a safe into the foundation, and storing the money there. You could probably cover it with a rug or loose floorboards to hide it.

Safes in general are horrible places to store lots of money or valuables because it's the first thing thieves will go after. Cheap safes are incredibly easy to break into or carry away. Hell, the thieves will even use your tools to break into it. And a $10,000 safe does nothing for you if you come home from work and some chronic has a gun to your kid's head.

Doomsday fanatics will claim that an emp pulse will knock out the banks or other various scenarios, but the far more likely threat is the money simply getting lost or stolen. Keep $500 or so in smaller bills for emergencies and natural disasters. Anything more is pretty excessive IMO and should simply be stored in a bank. You keep money in a checking account, and it'll lose value to inflation. You keep money at home, it'll still lose value to inflation, but can lose ALL it's value if it's lost or stolen. If you really want paper "cash", then dump it in a SDB.

[ua_guy]

I'm not a fan of keeping significant sums of money in the house in a single place, or anywhere other than a bank in a large quantity.

You are presumably doing this for emergencies, or because you distrust banks. I can't help you with the latter, but for emergencies, I have a couple pieces of advice. Keep money with stuff that you will need to replenish in an emergency. For example:

It may be a good idea to keep $150 or so in your vehicle in case you need to pay cash for gas, or as much gas money you'd need to re-join with family if roads were passable in a large disaster, or simply to fill the tank. Putting it in the owner's manual tucked away in the "filling your tank" page would be a good spot, or tucked away with the car's jack.

For food, paper clip some money to the back of a box of something you'll never use, like an old box of rice in a flavor you don't like, or taped to a top of a can of tuna, in a stack of tuna cans in the cupboard.

Or, you could keep some money tucked away in a first aid kit. I've "seen" a fully stocked first aid kit, with one of those little travel first aid kits (about the size of a wallet) tucked inside. It had nothing in it but $20 bills. Anyone else would just think it's full of bandaids or other worthless first aid supplies, jammed in with the rest of the first aid supplies.

Don't get too crazy, though...keep the spots to a minimum, and don't forget about it. I.e. don't trade your car in, without leafing through the owner's manual for that hidden gas cash, and don't give your kid the mini-first aid kit for his travels to summer camp ...and don't donate that box of rice to the food bank without unclipping the money!

[mekap04]

My mom hides her money in her bra and in her pillowcase lol. If I had to store money in the house in a safe place, I'd probably think of something creative like putting it a wallet, sliding it a slot in the toaster, and storing it away in the bottom kitchen cabinets out of sight.

[PSF]

depends on why you have the money at home:

If it's for an emergency and perhaps therefore only a few hundred dollars, I think the best spot would be up in the roof, not far from the manhole (we don't really have Attics in Australia so no one goes up there).

If you no longer have trust in the banking system, and therefore may be hiding a lot of money, I think the best place would be to bury it. I would not be burying just cash though, becuase as a previous posting mentioned inflation could hurt you, so I would convert a sizable portion to gold.

hiding a few dollars in the car like ua_guy said is a good idea too and I would probably do that for emergencies.

[CashUp Sammy]

in a retirement home a la Tony Soprano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y58cKLSQdj4

[moneymaker100]

In a fridge :-)

[JulieAlbright]

Funny topic

Most of the cash and jewelry of value here is in a safe bolted to concrete. I really worry more about fire or something like tornado damage than burglary.

I made a project one year of making "hollow book safes" for people as Christmas gift. They're books which are cut and glued to create hiding spots, and then they go right onto your bookshelves and blend in. I tried to match the book to something you'd actually find in the person's bookcase ... my son got a converted World War II History book and his girlfriend received Ayn Rand. They're all big enough to hide a small amount of cash and a few pieces of jewelry or a watch. Instructions for making the books can be found all over the internet.

I had such a fun time with it that I made myself a few too. It's convenient to keep stuff in my bedroom rather than having to carry it down to the safe. I also use them sometimes to hold the usb drives that I back up important financial documents to, before I get them carried down to the safe bolted to concrete.

I read an article once by a reformed thief and he said that if you have thousands of dollars in the house, to always leave a few hundred out somewhere that seems hidden but is pretty apparent, like a sock or underwear drawer. He said most thieves are in a big hurry to case, grab and go and once they find the couple hundred dollar bills they'll assume they found your secret stash of money and move on.

[JoeP]

In a fridge :-)

How about in a plastic bag, buried in a couple pounds of ground beef, and then frozen? It would look like your standard big pack among the rest of your frozen foods.

[Fishindude77]

Some good ideas here.

I'm old school and still use cash for most day to day transactions, only use the card for gas, mail orders and a few other purchases. Write checks for my big bills.

I like having some cash laying around. Every now and then you run across somebody in a pinch that is needing some quick cash and is willing to part with something you're interested in. Have picked up a few guns, tools and other things at a steal of a price.

When dealing with strangers that don't know you, they don't want a check, banks are closed on the weekends, and they often don't have time to wait. Also might decide to take off somewhere on short notice to do something. All you have to do is grab some cash and go.

Just don't hide it so well you lose track of it yourself. When my aunt died and we cleaned out the house, we found little stashes of cash in quite a few places I'm sure she had forgotten about due to old age. Good news is she bought us one more round of diner and drinks

[electric_mikey]

I like having some cash laying around. Every now and then you run across somebody in a pinch that is needing some quick cash and is willing to part with something you're interested in. Have picked up a few guns, tools and other things at a steal of a price.

When dealing with strangers that don't know you, they don't want a check, banks are closed on the weekends, and they often don't have time to wait. Also might decide to take off somewhere on short notice to do something. All you have to do is grab some cash and go.

this is a very good point. i never really thought about it that way, even though ive done some quick cash deals like this.
like you, ive always been a cash man.

it feels so disconnected when the money just flies away from your account.
just a bunch of ones and zeroes moving around, instead of something physical in your hand.

i find it easier to keep up with my spending, or rather, keep it in check. when i have a set amount of cash for a week, its easy to see how much there is, and how real it is when you spend it.

[DecisiveParadox]

In older days long gone, the rich used to have hidden, reinforced secure rooms in the estates called silver rooms.
I used to travel in some third world countries for work that didn't have ready or reliable infrastructure for banking. as such much of the economy was still cash. The older style counting houses and clearing houses were still prevalent.
Keeping and securing large cash amounts is a skill we have lost with the security and conveniences of modern electronic banking.

Rule No.1 - secrecy. If you are moving any amount of money you don't talk about it. like fight club. There is desperate people out there who think nothing of shooting you or a child for $50.00. People would be amazed at the millions of dollars that gets moved discreetly around cities these days by "discreet couriers". They look like uni student with back packs but they have millions in cash/gold/jewellery. They are cheaper then full armoured cars and as long as you don't tell anyone they are probably more secure.

Rule No. 2 - Nothing is totally secure. In engineering we say if it can be made, it can be un-made. Given enough time and they right tools anything can be cracked.
It become about deception. false walls with safes in then. security should be layers. don't rely solely on a safe. have a dummy safe, security cameras and high security doors.
Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. have some money in a safe, some buried in the ground.

Rule No. 3 - Don't keep it all at your house. if you look like your money you will be robbed.
Stealth wealth is a common term.
I remember a news story about police being called to a house that was being renovated to find 19 million in the walls. Previous owner was of dubious employment with certain central American entrepreneurial community groups/cartels.

People sometimes feel uneasy about keeping cash but in places where banking is for business (central Africa, remote south America, middle east and the shadow economies in 1st world nations) people keep millions of dollars in cash.
I have cash in the bank but if I'm honest its almost 1:1 on gold/silver and small notes I have 'secure' in places only I feel safe knowing.

I am distrusting of banks and the system.