You are bang on. The question comes down to whether or not you can produce something in exchange for fuel, textiles, shelter, food, medicine, law, and the protection of violent men. If you can't, you have to rely on stashed currency. In the current system, stashing currency slows down the market returns of the people who designed and own the system, so every single facet of life is designed to making stashing currency difficult or ineffective.
The only way to care for unproductive populations is to make personal sacrifices and care for them, at a loss/to the detriment of your own possible financial and lifestyle returns.
There has got to be another way at beating the system but as it stands how does one get over the fact that inflation would wipe away the value of the currency you are holding? Some argue that bitcoin is the answer but who knows really.
My personal feeling is that current currency system is fatally flawed and set up deliberately to not be stable. The plan for continuing market gains is to import consumers, import low-wage labor, and continue to consolidate production into hyper-corporations. I think that eventually something is going to happen that the system really can't account for (famine, plague, war, etc.) and it will be broken down and built "anew", with new norms for behavior and lifestyle expectations.
There's no way to beat a game by its own rules when the rules are set up specifically to allow certain parties to take advantage of the game. Apologies for sounding like a high school libertarian, but I can't think of any simpler way to say it than that.
The only way to care for unproductive populations is to make personal sacrifices and care for them, at a loss/to the detriment of your own possible financial and lifestyle returns.