I’d hide it as well as possible, never make a single outrageous purchase or show off, and just use it to finance a bare bones lifestyle without working.
Honestly, that is totally what I’d do. I have no desire to show off to anyone, I don’t care what anyone thinks of me(in fact I get lulz making people think less of me!) and my greatest desire is to hide or dissappear which is why I love anonymous urban living.
I am the only person I have ever met who would do this if they found millions in cash lol.
I would not buy a yacht, or a jet, or a mansion. But I would rent them for a few days, to get it out of my system. After that, I would follow the example of Hetty Green.
Invest it so that I could continue to live off of it in the future and not have to worry about someone finding it under my mattress or have it burned down in a fire…or eroded by inflation. Your plan has some major flaws in it if you really want security with this money.
Well perhaps a flawed hypothetical, I assumed a priori that there was no way for you to convert the cash into legal income and keep it. Think like a drug lords haul lands on your roof after he throws it out of a plane etc. See No Country For Old Men.
A couple million dollars isn’t really Lamborghini without consequences money unless you are already close to being able to retire on savings as it is. Spending 3-4% a year is in the suggested range for living on retirement savings without eating up principle and running out of money. On a 3 mil windfall that gives 90-120k gross income before taxes.
A couple million is comfortable for the long term without other income. It’s not Robin Leach narrating over top of your life stupendously wealthy, though. It doesn’t mean some won’t think they can splurge without consequences. Many lottery jackpot winners prove people can blow a windfall and end up broke.
OK – you got the cash and buy a gun safe to hide it in since a couple million is going to take up some space. You don’t want to be noticed so say you make $30-60K per year - you are maybe going to be able to spend at most $30K without tripping someone’s alarm. That means you should be in your 20s and its going to take almost 70 years of that to empty out the safe. You could replace the cash with actual guns or gold or something that can be bought off/under the grid but remember that it was this level of laundering that got Capone; not all the blood and dead folks.
Me? Guns and ammo, guns and ammo. I love shooting and at todays prices ----------
We’ve all seen the movies. It does seem like priority one is not getting tortured and murdered by the drug dealers the money belongs to. You better make damn sure that no one saw you take it, and that the drug dealers don’t know you.
Even if you’re robbing drug dealers, it does seem morally questionable to keep the money.
It could also be bait. Apparently, the cops can leave something valuable lying around, and arrest you for stealing if you take it. Not sure if this applies to a container full of millions, but it probably does.
Pretty much, anytime you find a chunk of cheese that’s worth millions of bucks, you better check around for the tripwires.
Ah, I must have missed that part. Sorry. My advice in that case would be to turn it in for the reward. Being alive with less money is preferable to having a lot of cash that you probably would never be able to spend anyway and dead, at least IMHO. No one is going to misplace that amount of cash and shrug it off…they will be looking for it until it’s found. If you turn it in to the authorities THEN they will basically stop looking and write it off, but if they know it’s still out there they will look for as long as it takes. Even if they don’t find it, it’s going to be a pain in the ass to store and use, even sparingly…assuming it’s $20s it’s going to be a pretty large pallet of bills, and bills don’t last forever. If you are going to only spend the cash and stay under the IRS and gangster thugs radar you won’t be spending that much, so the reward from the authorities would probably actually give you more usable money in the long run anyway…and without the prospect of a sudden bloody death if anyone finds out you have the money (or jail if the authorities find out instead, which would suck pretty bad too).
Pretty sure they will outlast your lifespan. Even if you aren’t brutally drug murdered, as long as the paper money isn’t being handled and is kept in a dry place, it should last indefinitely. The Feds will honor it in any case, so long as it remains practical for them to count it. (for example, they will honor a pallet of bills burnt in a fire so long as, say, the corners of each bill is left so they can count them and tell the denominations)
They might last if they are left in a reasonable place, but the thing is I doubt you are going to be able to go back to the Feds and ask for them to replace the money if you have a flood or a fire or any other mischance with your pile of cash. And if you use the money to make improvements on your place you could very well draw attention to the fact you have this money. You will also have to hide it from basically everyone, and most place you could hide it with a reasonable certainty that it won’t be found are also probably not going to be conducive to the money lasting ‘indefinitely’. Sort of a catch 22 there.
Like I said, I think you’d be better off turning it in for the reward. You might only get $10k from the authorities, but it would be $10k you could spend without worry.
How suspicious is throwing down $10k bets on roulette? You could just do that until you won. Don’t report your losses, but report your win. Pay your taxes, then invest the rest.
You’ve seen too many bad movies. Look. Do you personally know or have seen a group of drug gang members? (or corrupt politicians, or whatever). Then don’t lay a finger on the cash.
But if, I dunno, you were exploring an abandoned urban area 30 miles from your house, and you just happened to bumble into someone’s secret cash and drug stash in an abandoned building…how are they gonna know it was you? If you manage to get away with the loot and back to your house, you probably got away scot free.
Drug gangs aren’t the FBI. Unless they already know your identity, they are not going to find you. They do not have the power to say, set up a computer search for the serial numbers of the bills you took. (vs if you robbed a bank and stole a pallet of sequential, new currency). They don’t have the power to fingerprint the scene or find a hair you left and DNA or fingerprint match to you. They don’t have the power to subpoena every security camera recording, or check the cellular tower records, and so on. There’s an enormous list of things they just can’t do.
Your main worry is the IRS. And this is only a worry if you spend the cash on things they can easily track, such as buying a bunch of property, depositing it in your bank account, etc. If you use the cash to buy a bunch of home electronics at a store (using cash of course), a bunch of stuff online (using debit cards bought with cash, of course), pay some contractors to refurbish your house (more cash), and then buy a bunch of hookers, blow, and booze…they don’t have any realistic way to track any of this.
You could also fly to a foreign country and spend the cash directly on various services without the slightest worry. There is no practical way for the IRS to find out about these transactions.
One quick addendum. Don’t try to cross an international border with a bunch of cash. Convert it to $500 gift debit cards or something instead. The cops on both sides of the border see large quantities of cash as basically an invitation to steal. (you know, seize it, then make you prove in court at your own dime that it’s yours)
