A few Swiss bank accounts (to hide it from the Feds… you do want to hide it from the Feds right?), some gold bullion (so you have something tangible to cling to. You might even want to build a Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool and fill it with gold coins), and of course a traditional heavily-diversified mix of securities should do nicely.
Buy a large farm and become totally self sustaining. Then put the rest in CDs.
If things ever got so bad that banks wouldn’t or couldn’t honor your account, cash would probably be worthless as well. The financial systems of the world today don’t rely on gold anymore, so it would probably just be another barterable item.
I have a friend who would love to win a lottery, as she would take the innediate payout, that has the taxes already paid … and keep it in safe deposit boxes so she doesnt get any interest on the money so she can piss off the tax people … her entire value in cash, not making any taxable interest. She would remove her annual allowance and deposit it into a non interest bearing checking account.
I asked her once why not just put the entire amount into a noninterest bearing account, and she said that she did not want her entire worth to be able to be hacked out electronically, this way she would only lose a portion.
<shrug>
I would prefer to go with the managed route, with an annual allowance going into an interest bearing checking account, or perhaps 2, one for master card and one for visa debit cards, and an accountant that would pay off my american express account every month. I am not too worried about paying taxes.
Though with the obvious undependability of finance people lately, I am rethinking the investment accountant. I couldn’t do much worse, at least I am honest.
Have you raised the question of keeping the money all in one safe deposit box? If the unthinkable happens, like the bank burns to the ground, then she’s out of luck.
Think it can’t happen? She’s already defied the odds by winning the lottery.
Nobody guarantees deposits/investments better than an FDIC savings account. Everything else, be it stocks, bonds or commodities like gold, you are depending on the word of much less reliable entities than the federal government, and you will be exposed to greater risk, but probably receive a higher return as a result… So from a safety standpoint, there is nothing that meets your criteria.
Eh? Treasury Bonds are guaranteed by the Feds, which also backs the FDIC, and so are presumably as safe as a (US) savings account. And there’s no upper-limit to how much you can invest that way.
Under a mattress. A REALLY REALLY BIG mattress. 
This article sums up the advice given to Google employees when the company was about to IPO in 2004.
Point taken re: US Treasury bonds. But there are many other types of investment bonds, which do not have the backing of the US government.
OK let me ask this, assuming all $100 bills, how big of a storage area would you need?
$1,000,000,000 / $100 = 10,000,000
So that is 10 million one hundred dollar bills.
Anyone want to figure out how big of a storage case you’d need?
There’s some very good advice here…with the big underlying assumption that the US remains status quo in terms of the world economy. While the US Treasury Bill is still considered to be the “risk-free” investment, it’s definitely become less risk-free than in decades past, if that makes any sense. In this everchanging world, there’s no guarantee of anything. What good is $1 billion backed by the US government if a new Honda costs more $1 billion? Extreme example I know, but I hope you understand my point. In 50 years (or earlier), you might not want to live in the US and your US dollars may be worthless relative to other currencies.
My point is that in this day and age, you’d want to diversify globally. Personally, I’d keep 30-40% in the US in mostly low risk investments. I’d spread the rest around the world in various low risk investments, in countries and currencies that treat all investors equally. There are some countries that have different rules for foreign investors. You might have a hard time getting liquidity in these countries at the exact wrong time.
All you’d need is one thousand "5 inch Zero Halliburton Premier Attache Cases. Buying that many cases would set you back more than half a million dollars, though.
You can have a 3600’ tall container if you want to put all billion of them in one stack.
Well, assuming that you get that money at 20 years old, you can spend for the next 70 years $14,285,714 each year. That is $1,190,476 each month. This is without any interest. Just need a place to store the dollars.
What would it mean for the US to “default on its currency”, since it’s not on the gold standard (or any other commodity-backed system). Hyperinflation could make the US dollar virtually worthless, but would that be described as a “default”.
The solvency of a currency is the balance between issuing a currency (essentially, making a promise), and accepting that currency back, either as payment for debts owed the issuer or paying back debts of that currency the issuer owes (essentially, keeping one’s promises). If the United States defaulted on it’s debts, then no one would ever invest in US government securities again. And those are usually bought with dollars, so world demand for dollars would go way, way down.
If you’re looking to similar safety as a savings account, then U.S. Treasury Bonds are exactly what you’re looking for, and there are various ways to store them that are extremely safe. You can have them in physical bonds spread around in a bunch of safety deposit boxes. TreasuryDirect.com lets you buy bonds and in exchange you receive basically an account with them that verifies you have a right to the bond (but you can’t get a physical paper version this way.)
Only problem is buying directly from the treasury makes it difficult for one person to get $1bn in bonds, there are strict limits on the amount an individual can purchase in a year and the dollar value is vastly below one billion dollars. So you’d probably need to buy actual bonds on the secondary market. I wouldn’t invest in funds that attempt to “track” the performance of savings bonds, if you’re looking for the general safety/return value of a savings account actual bonds are the way to go.
Some posters have suggested gold, but I would ask what you’re insuring against there. Gold makes sense as part of an investment portfolio, but if you’re just looking for similar safety to a savings account for a huge sum of money gold doesn’t make sense to me. Firstly, where will it be stored? Any answer to that question will involve some percentage of your wealth being lost to storage costs. Trying to store it yourself with your own private security would probably cost even more. How would you convert it into liquid assets that you can actually use to buy things in today’s economy? As a billionaire I’m sure you can have people who work for you that take care of all this, but then again, that cuts into your wealth even further.
The truth of the matter is, a simple U.S. savings bond is far more practical and realistic. What would you be insuring against with $1bn in gold?
If things are so bad that a person holding a billion dollars in U.S. savings bonds would be rendered a pauper, then the whole world is in serious financial and societal trouble. At least in the context of any living person’s foreseeable lifetime.
If mass wars and general apocalypse hit the planet, how exactly is gold going to help you? No amount of gold will equal what truly matters in such situations, which is force, and power. No amount of gold can stop a marauding band of post-apocalyptic Road Warrior extras from taking it from you by force.
Tsar Nicholas II was one of the wealthiest men on the planet in his day. His wealth dramatically exceeded that of any other European monarch. He controlled something like 10% of the world’s land mass, and all the wealth that entailed. He had entire rooms made of gold, he had more gold than you could ever imagine. He had one of the largest military forces on the planet, as well.
At the end of the day, him and his family got put against a wall in a basement and killed, all their wealth taken. People that act like gold is some sort of magical metal that will make you powerful and rich in the face of societal collapse are not students of history. Gold has been valued throughout history, and will continue to be so, however the people holding it have not been well protected by history’s vagaries. Roman Emperors to Russian Tsars have found out the hard way that wealth alone is no safety net if things get really ugly.
Well you say you don’t care about growing it, but that’s actually the safest option. If it’s diversified into owning multiple businesses, property, stocks AND treasury bonds then in any case other than a complete economic meltdown you’ll still have your billion dollars (and more).
Eg if your overall investments are averaging 7-9% return it doesn’t matter if one business goes bankrupt, or one property loses value.
With a billion you’d get a wealth management company and you’d advise them to go for growth or stability. A good company would advise you on diversifying the money across so many areas that you’d easily good a nice safe return and be in no danger of losing more than a small fraction no matter what happened. Thats safer than US treasury bonds (IMO)