Makes sense. I was focusing on “government insured” vehicles, based on my direct experience with that type of investment.
If you do lose money on the government securities as you describe them, then we’re all in a great deal of trouble.
Bitcoin is an extremely high-risk “investment” though. I’ve got a tiny amount - mined over several years on a phone app and later a desktop app. It was worth nearly 300 dollars at one point. It was under half that a few days ago; it’s now at just over half that. Woohoo - I’ll try not to spend it all in once place.
I can’t imagine there are many vendors who would take it for a purchase, and of course selling it assumes the venue you use to sell it is also trustworthy and won’t steal your money rather than transmitting it to you. Plus, even if all that works, they’d just wire it to your bank.
The IRS is beginning to pay attention to such currency as well.
All in all, I would not count on that as my main means of stashing cash.
The person who mentioned cash caches: The issue I see there is that if Things Go To Hell and banking institutions are shut down, that cash is not necessarily going to be useful. I’m imagining a complete meltdown of the financial system, the government, and the world economy.
I guess my question is if you received $100 million in cash legitimately (and assuming you plan to pay your taxes on it), why on Earth would you need it to be all that liquid?
Anything you wanted to purchase, you could obtain credit almost immediately. You could invest it and borrow against those assets (Google “securities based lending”). Hell, just use your Amex Centurion Black card and pay it off later.
Maybe you keep a couple hundred thousand in actual cash in a wall safe or something for emergencies or …whatever.
Convert it into 100,000 $1,000 cashier’s checks. $100 million in basically $1,000 bills would fit neatly in a single classic hardshell briefcase.
With all that wealth maybe they’re trying to live off the grid as much as possible and pay everything in cash.
Between a safe deposit box, a home safe, and a personal safe I have at a business I own I have 30 grand squirreled away that’s off the books, so to say.
Nothing illegal about it, it was earned honestly and taxes paid. But you never know when you need a chunk of cash and don’t want a trail when you use it.
Maybe to pay for a hotel when cheating on a spouse, but I have a hard time coming up with another (legal) scenario where I’d need a chuck of cash and didn’t want a paper trail.
Just curious; what denomination do you have that money in? I have a couple thousand at home for use in an emergency (such as a blackout where the ATMs are unavailable). Originally, it was in hundred-dollar bills but few places accept those so now it’s all in twenties, though that’s bulkier.
If you really want to keep all that $100 million in a single account at your local bank, you could buy private insurance for the account. Corporations insure all sorts of financial assets in order to mitigate their risks. There’s no reason why an individual couldn’t do the same. You’d just have to find a specialist financial insurance provider to arrange the coverage. A quick Google search didn’t come up with anything specific, but I’m sure Allianz would take your call.
However, Google did come up with the following alternative that for accounts that exceed FDIC limits:
https://www.difxs.com/DIF/Home.aspx
Depositors Insurance Fund (DIF).
The DIF is a private, industry-sponsored insurance fund that insures all deposits above Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) limits at our member banks. The DIF has been insuring deposits since 1934.All DIF member banks are also members of the FDIC. Each depositor is insured by the FDIC to at least $250,000. All deposits above the FDIC insurance amount are insured by the Depositors Insurance Fund (DIF).
When you hide $30,000, it can just disappear. But when you hide $100 million, they will find you. Unless they think you’re already dead.
So for $100 million in $20s, you could load it on two standard pallets and keep it in a standard 20’ shipping container. Probably want to keep it someplace dry.
I had no idea. Is this the first mention of it in 87 posts? I’ve been reading about FDIC strategies on message boards for decades and you would think private insurance would be the second and last post in all of them.
Upthread I mentioned the Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service that lets you deal with only one bank but have money spread around various FDIC insured banks so you’re not exceeding the $250,000 insurance limit at any one bank.
I don’t know anything about cash in bulk, but I do know pallets and containers. A 20’ container holds ten pallets. You could put your 100 million in the 8 footer below and still have room for a 100 million more.
https://www.cboxcontainers.com/img/cache/img-20131009-102328-350x225.jpg
For that matter, you could stack two pallets of cash. It’s not as if the money is going to crush.
I assumed people might also need the extra room for guns and stolen art.
???
I never have a problem breaking a hundred in the big city. And if I buy something that’s, say, $505 and I give them 6 C-notes nobody bats an eye.
Some stores have signs that they don’t accept notes larger than twenty dollars.
What if it’s $5 and you give them a hundo?
I would think it depends on the average/median price of things in the store and their daily cash sales. At a generic convenience store, you are going to make a major dent in their ability to make change for the next guy who buys a candy bar, especially early in the day.
Manning the high school concession stand, you’d always worry early on about people throwing $20 bills at you for a $2 popcorn during the JV game. Once you’d been open a bit, people needing less (or no) change would start to build up your reserves.
Rough rule of thumb, from stuff I saw years ago - the clubhouse would get fresh stacks of $1 bills to pay the caddies (long time ago).
A stack of 100 crisp new bills is about 1/2" thick. If you don’t want new, serially numbered, a used stack will be 1".
So, working with fresh bills - $100,000 in more negotiable 20’s is a stack a bit more than 2 feet high. $1M is 10 of those, so about 4 bills long edge (24") by 5 bills short edge (15") by 25 bundles high (about 1’) so maybe a moderate sized suitcase.
If you’re willing to take $100 bills instead, that suitcase holds $5M of course.
Double these numbers for used, unmarked bills.
In a filing cabinet, under ‘C’ for cash.