

Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar - ajg1977
http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2007/02/05/101141_the-best-place-to-hide-money-conversation-with-a-burglar.html

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delano
There's some choice advice in the comments:

 _My parents inadvertently had two strategies: 1) Have only one valuable
possession: an upright piano. 2) Keep the house extremely messy so that it is
a danger just trying to get through the place, especially while trying to
carry a piano._

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skermes
My mother used to run a daycare and she'd do something similar when someone
came to inspect the school to make sure it was okay for kids. She'd leave
something small (slightly overflowing wastebasket, some loose toys in a
hallway) that the inspector would notice in the first few minutes of the
inspection. She found that if they got to mark her down for one or two small
things quickly they were less likely to go looking for something later and
drum up a serious offense from nothing just to have something to write down.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Funny, I used to work with a copywriter who would always leave a simple
punctuation mistake in her work so her editor (me) would have something to do.
I think she knew if I had to struggle to find something I'd probably suggest
unnecessary rewrites.

~~~
baltoo
In graphical design I've heard this being mentioned as the "Pink Elephant",
i.e. "obvious misses" that the client can easily clank down on. This makes it
easier to keep the integrity of the overall design.

~~~
wallflower
In publishing, non-obvious mistakes are used to detect copying.

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
That's pretty cool...

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brk
Interesting article. Another tip I've heard mentioned is that when most people
are looking for a hiding spot, they naturally tend to hone in on areas that
+/- 2ft of eye level.

Other tips I've heard are that many burglars do not like ending up in "dead
end" places like basements. A well-hidden stash in the basement (if you have
one) is likely more secure that most 1st/2nd floor areas.

I found the comments about looking for the stash of money very interesting
though. I can say that at any given time, except for some spare change, there
is $0 in my house when I am not there. This is not because I don't have any
liquid accessible cash, just that I see no reason to horde cash at home...

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luckyland
Do most burglars really assume people store cash in the home in the first
place?

It makes me wonder if I'm missing something really basic about how most people
organize their finances and homes.

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kingkongrevenge
I keep a few grand in small bills stashed around the house. It's one of those
things you just might be ridiculously glad you have in the unlikely event you
need it. Imagine a natural disaster or a ten day blackout.

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lucumo
Or just losing your wallet with all your cards...

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Estragon
That isn't as disruptive as you might imagine.

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philwelch
I'd like to know how to survive for a week without my debit card, then. It's
my only really consistent source of money.

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profquail
I've got a much better idea. Find a room in your house that no one is really
going to see. Then, get some tacky "$100 bill" print wallpaper, and put it on
the walls in that room. Then, take your real $100 bills and carefully paste
them on top of the wallpaper so that they aren't noticeably different from the
rest of it.

Install a camera in the room to enjoy the sheer hilariousness of when someone
breaks into your house and enters said room.

~~~
philwelch
Personally, I prefer not to waste money on housing that includes unnecessary
rooms, even if I can think of hilarious pranks to play on burglars with them.

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derefr
I find the suggestion that people keep a smaller "fake" stash of money in a
more obvious place interesting. It would be nice if this could be
formalized—have banks offer a service where they sell packets of marked,
sequential and perhaps even non-legal-tender bills that you can put in these
obvious places. (Of course, the fact that they should be hard for a burglar to
recognize at first glance means that they might be used as counterfeits—so an
equivalent sum of real money should be kept at the bank as a "deposit" (not in
the banking sense of the word) to ensure good will.)

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frossie
Similar advice is given to travellers - keep a "mugging wallet" with a bit of
cash, a low-credit-limit or expired credit card, an old piece of ID, a photo
of an ex-girlfriend - you get the idea. When accosted, just hand it over. The
theory is that as long as it seems enough to be worth their while, the muggers
will take it and leave you alone.

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sounddust
This always seemed like a horrible idea to me. What happens if you hand over
your fake wallet and the mugger decides to search you and find your real one?
You will have seriously pissed off the mugger and will be more likely to be
roughed up or killed than if you had complied.

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HalcyonMuse
If you hand over a wallet with a reasonable amount of cash in it that appears
to be a used wallet, why are they going to decide it's a fake? How many people
really carry one?

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sounddust
I'm not saying they will think it's a fake upon seeing it. To give you an
example:

* A mugger asks you to hand over all your goods.

* You hand him your fake wallet and cell phone.

* He decides to reach in your pockets to see if you're hiding anything else (maybe an iPod or something else).

* He finds your real wallet and now is aware that you tried to hide it.

* He gets angry and shoots you (whereas otherwise, he would have just run off with your stuff).

Is a slightly increased chance of getting beaten or killed really worth the
difference in cash between the real and fake wallet? I think it's smarter to
just prepare for the possibility of a lost/stolen wallet and know how to
quickly cancel your cards and apply for new ones.

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khafra
The advice I've seen on fake wallets is to toss the wallet one way and run the
other, hoping that the money is more attractive than revenge for a petty
slight (and, let's face it, if he's going to take the time to kill you when
there's a wallet with cash in it in easy reach, he was probably going to
anyway).

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huhtenberg
It seems to me that the poorer the neighborhood the more likely it is to be
_more_ money in the apartment. Why would I need cash if I have a working
credit card ?

~~~
10ren
My local cafes with the best coffee don't take credit cards (nor EFTPOS).

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ryanwaggoner
And you never know when you'll need, say, 500 cups of coffee, right?

~~~
10ren
Needing _some_ cash does not necessarily mean needing $3 x 500 cash. e.g. I
drink about 2..3 espressos per day, 14..21 per week, that's $42..63 per week.

Unless, of course, I've badly misunderstood the intended meaning of needing
cash. btw: Oddly enough, I seem to have gotten karma from your upvotes.

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Gormo
A good hiding place is an exterior-mounted metal box with a sign reading
"Danger: High Voltage."

~~~
dkokelley
It would be more effective if you rigged a harmless current to the latch to
scare people when they tried to access it.

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pavel_lishin
It would be even more effective if you rigged a dangerous current to the
latch.

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ajg1977
Also very interesting and worth reading is the followup - Where NOT to hide
your money!

[http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2007/03/06/101152_dont-
hide...](http://www.savingadvice.com/blog/2007/03/06/101152_dont-hide-money-
in-the-toilet-more-conversation-with-a-burglar.html)

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jrockway
I keep my money in the bank. Am I missing something here?

(The only thing I buy with cash is beer at the pub.)

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wmeredith
I was thinking the same thing. At any given moment the total sum of cash in my
own home is about $20. I don't use cash for anything.

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ajg1977
Ditto, though now I'm thinking of stashing $250 in a drawer or something to
hopefully dissuade any burglar for trashing my place trying to find the non-
existent hidden cash.

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jrockway
I dissuade burglars by, you know, locking my door.

(I live on the 16th floor, so they probably won't get in through the window.
If they do, they can have my stuff.)

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paulbaumgart
Inside your walls: [http://www.hulu.com/watch/2905/burn-notice-ask-a-spy---
burgl...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/2905/burn-notice-ask-a-spy---burglar-
proofing)

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I'm surprised this isn't more common. If i have to have an item of really high
value in the house, it goes in the space next to a light switch box.

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karzeem
The main takeaway from this is that anything you simply cannot afford to lose
should be locked up, either in the bank or in a safe that a burglar can't
feasibly breach or carry away. It'll take a burglar a lot less time to toss
your _entire_ house and find damn near anything you've hidden than it will for
him to breach a serious safe.

The problems with a safe are that it's expensive to set up and, as the article
says, the frustration it inflicts on the burglar won't put him in a mood to
keep your place tidy.

~~~
jws
Sounds like the burglars should pass out leaflets along this line...

========= How to Ensure a Positive Burglary for you and your Felon!

Remember, your burglar is a hardworking entrepreneur in a high-stress field.
In order to make your burglary as efficient as possible for the burglar and
minimize the unavoidable mess to your premises, keep these helpful tips in
mind:

1) Provide a means of entry which does not involve expensive and possible
dangerous breakage. Many burglars and homeowners are needlessly injured each
year when untempered windows must be broken to gain entry. Windowless doors
seem ideal, but the damage to the jam when forced is expensive for you and
they can be hard on the burglar's shoulder. _Consider replacing the pane
nearest your doorknob with an easily replaceable tempered pane and label it as
break-safe._

2) Though your home may be familiar to you, it is a new and possibly dangerous
environment for your burglar. Please leave some lights on. Lights in the
windows are best since they illuminate the work area while also blinding
potential witnesses.

3) Your burglar probably has a full schedule of felonies, please respect his
time. Everyone keeps valuables, please keep them in one of the 12 well known
and documented "hiding" places to minimize search time and also keep the mess
to a minimum.

4) Odds are your burglar has a substance abuse problem. You may wish to keep
your stash someplace other than the bathroom, cereal boxes, or refrigerator to
avoid unnecessarily fueling his addiction.

Thank you for ensuring a successful burglary experience for us all.

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crsmith
"if you do hide money someplace around the house, make sure that your
significant other (or someone close) knows where your hiding place is."

Reminds me of the laptop that was cooked in its hiding place, the oven

<http://www.luckywhitegirl.com/2005/11/medium_rare_ele.html>

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HalcyonMuse
A lot of people have left a comment complaining that they keep their money in
a bank. This seems to be missing the point - do you also keep your fine china
in a bank? How about that jewelry you like to wear on Friday nights? That copy
of Adobe Photoshop? Laptop?

There are plenty of things that are exceedingly valuable that AREN'T cash that
you may want to hide from potential burglars. The advice in this article is
just as salient when it comes to hiding those things as it is to money.
(Granted, larger objects can't always fit in the same places as bills, but
that's really not the point.)

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notaddicted
I hate the suggestion to leave some money in an obvious place for the burglar,
like tax for nuisance idiots. It isn't like some kind of professionalism is
going to keep them from tearing up the place anyway they obviously don't give
a shit.

Would you leave some easy to access credit card numbers out on your server to
keep them from going after the rest?

Security is a difficult problem because of the nature of the game. They
attacker only needs one opening. That doesn't mean you should give up. If
people had better home security that kind of petty theft wouldn't be viable.

~~~
thwarted
_I hate the suggestion to leave some money in an obvious place for the
burglar, like tax for nuisance idiots. It isn't like some kind of
professionalism is going to keep them from tearing up the place anyway they
obviously don't give a shit._

If the goal is to get in, get something of value, and get out, then quite
possibly. My car was once broken into and they took a blanket and some cheap
sunglasses that were visible, leaving about $30 in change in the door storage
and ash tray. Although, obviously value is in the eye of the beholder, Chicago
winters are pretty cold, so the blanket maybe had more value, and was easier
to carry, than cash.

 _Would you leave some easy to access credit card numbers out on your server
to keep them from going after the rest?_

Quite possibly; this is called a honeypot, and is often used as a early
warning system and a way to keep intruders busy with the not-obviously-not-
valuable stuff while you monitor them and track them down.

~~~
HalcyonMuse
Fake financial accounts are pretty common among corporate companies for
detecting database breaches as a sort of last line of defense (or awareness,
anyway), aren't they?

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giardini
Keep an extra $500 ready cash in my top right cabinet drawer along with my pet
Australian funnel-web spider. He's usually pissed off and hungry so, before
making a withdrawal, I always toss in a few grasshoppers and wait until he's
busy.

Not sure if any BGs ever figured out what the grasshopper cage was all
about!8-))

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jerf
This is another one of those "reeeeeeally stretching the meaning of 'hacker'"
stories, innit? He's, like, hacking your conceptions of your house and
socially engineering your hiding places and stuff, right?

(No, I'm not complaining this isn't HN-worthy, I agree it is. This just sort
of amused me in light of the usual complaints about the definition of "hacker"
that show up.)

~~~
snprbob86
I'd say that this "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". It is interesting
that the traditional thought process of "hide it really really good" is wrong.
This is about understanding personas and motivations.

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RyanMcGreal
House Burglar: hide your money and valuables where I can easily find them.
Thanks!

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savrajsingh
how about somewhere in view of the highlightcam webcam? ;)

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kingkongrevenge
Chris Rock says to hide it in your books. 'Cause books are like kryptonite to
a, um, burglar.

~~~
joe_fishfish
True. When my house was broken into while I was at university, by far the most
valuable things there were mine and my housemates' textbooks (a couple of my
housemates had law textbooks worth over £200 each, this was back when £1 = $2
btw). The burglars took all our cash, jewellery, CDs, DVDs and they even did
the covering-the-floor-with-cereal thing mentioned in TFA. Amid all that, not
one book was even disturbed from its shelf.

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apgwoz
While this makes sense to me from the illiterate angle, book safes have been
around for ages. it seems unlikely that a burglar wouldn't just throw all the
books off the shelf and see if on impact one of them exposed some cash,
jewels, etc.

