A million bucks (in hundreds) fits in a largish briefcase, and weighs ~20lb.
Gold of the same value has a much smaller volume, but weighs ~60lb.
Gold transactions costs might eat up ~10% doing small amounts locally and anonymously.
So, interesting question - what’s the most efficient way to hold a million bucks if you want to stay off the grid, and you might want to hike crosscountry?
Medium size city for sure. I’d probably go to Winnipeg, because who would move from Vancouver to Winnipeg? I’d get a part time job as a nanny or caregiver, under the table work, preferably a live-in position, which would eliminate pesky things like leases etc that might leave a trail.
I’m pretty ordinary. Get some decent quality fake ID. Live quietly. Burner phone. Live off line as best I can.
Except I can’t fathom doing this without my son and I have no idea how to incorporate a 12 year old into this.
Simply put, $1,000,000 isn’t enough to make things happen in my head. Therefore I agree that the best course of action is to go on the offensive and try to bring down those coming after me. I have the advantage in that I know that they’re coming and who they are.
So try to splash the baddies using the money and figure everything else is gravy.
Did you get a name change, Skald?
I’m willing to gamble that decapitating the organization will set the underlings to fighting over control and that will occupy their attention to the exclusion of old business like me. In the real world, there is no great history of mooks carrying out the orders of dead dons when they could be spending that time grabbing power and wealth for themselves.
While I like your reasoning, it’s kinda hilarious that upon becoming a secret millionaire you think “Step One, Get A Job: Not The Kind You Pay Taxes On.”
(You don’t even sound like you want the money; it’s just that you apparently can’t interview for a live-in position without routinely asking for a paycheck.)
The purpose of the million smackers is to make it possible to run and hide. The reason it’s not a BILLION smackerts is that, if you’ve got that kind of cheese, running’s too easy.
What kind of group are these “bad people” and what sort of resources do they have? Are we talking about a shadowy government agency here? An organized crime family? A half dozen illiterate rednecks with shotguns?
I dunno. I mean, if you could pay cash in advance for an inexpensive room at one of those extended-stay discount hotels that throws in a continental breakfast, just how many years would it take to spend the million by simply living there low-key?
Ah, crap, I can’t but them off?
Ah well, I can always buy them off.
Kidding, kidding. I would fly to a random country that I decided on by rolling one of those twenty-sided di’s. If I don’t even know where I’m going until the roll, they probably won’t either.
I’d definitely need a fake identity, but then I’d move to some obscure corner of the world and do field linguistics. I’d be more or less happy, though my husband would be pretty devastated.
This is the key question. If it isn’t a group with easy access to governmental information, then I’m going low-key in Middle America. If it is a group that can easily access that sort of information, then a deal with Witness Protection might be in order. I have to assume the only reason this group wants me personally dead is because I saw something.
So your answer to the OP is get police protection, publish more novels, go to high society parties, get married and divorced a couple times and hope for a knighthood? They’ll never find you!
That was kind of my thought, but I’d go one better: when I used to work as a resident manager, part-time work from home was paid for with free rent. It’s legitimate that this free rent is not reported as income, so that keeps you off tax records.
Having taken care of rent, $1 million could easily cover a comfortable lifestyle for quite some time.
If you lose the resident manager gig, you can always fall back on the hotel plan as a more expensive alternative.
I’ll go public with my plan since I’m certain I’ll never have to use it: after getting a fake (Canadian) ID that matches a changed appearance, I steal away in the middle of the night to Pelee Island. It’s a large island in the middle of Lake Erie, a 90 minute ferry from either the Ontario or Ohio mainlands, and simultaneously about as remote and comfortable a place as you can find around these parts. Easy enough to buy off locals’ silence since there aren’t a whole lot of them.
Plan B is to try the same thing in another remote island: Key West. I’d probably get found and killed but at least I’d have a good time until the bullet went through the back of my head. Heck, I could hole up with the drag queens and really alter my appearance…
Buy a Honda Goldwing 1800 or a Harley CVO limited (both around $25,000 each) and do short stop-overs in each state.
If you insist on fleeing to another country, don’t fly-too easy to trace. Travel by freighter.
edited to add: Many stops to hop off of randomly.
I subscribe to the hide in plain sight idea. I’d find a middle-sized obscure town somewhere in a flyover state, find a rooming house or some other public housing that didn’t ask too many questions about identity and origin, change my appearance and usual habits as much as possible, perhaps volunteer at the public library or a charity where I could disclose a few vague elements of my personal origin to mislead any curious folks around me and otherwise just live life as a somewhat eccentric retired woman of limited means.
Hookers-n-blow in a fancy hotel until They catch up to me, then cyanide pill.
Eh, fly to Southeast Asia and hit the upscale backpacker trail for a while. It’s easy to get lost.
“But what are you going to do with the cash? You may get ripped off?” Oh, I have a plan for that. It involes ATMs, but it’s more clever than you think. No more details - I’ve said too much already.
Ooh, Pelee Island that is quite nice. Manitoulin Island would work too. Or if I wanted to stay on the West Coast, and since money isn’t necessarily a problem I could maybe hide out on Lasqueti Island.