Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar | Hacker News Reader

Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar

savingadvice.com

72 pointsajg197760 comments

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.

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.

These example resemble anecdotes I would typically find in a Dan Ariely talk.

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.

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

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

That's pretty cool...

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.

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...

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.

A lot of the economy is still cash-dominated, especially among immigrants, the poor, and people with under- or un-reported income sources. That's where a burglar really hopes to score. (See also how part 2 of the article mentions a burglar's hope to find hidden drugs.)

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.

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

That isn't as disruptive as you might imagine.

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.

Or imagine the FBI freezing your bank accounts. If there's a 10 day blackout, odds are you're not going to able to buy much, anyway; ditto for natural disasters - and you can usually drive far enough away to get money from a place with power. If your assets are locked, you're screwed no matter where you go.

I think most burglars would be after possessions over cash, since they're harder to hide and more likely to be left out. (I don't lock my computers up, and they are out in the open, though we do have 4 vicious-sounding dogs.)

well I've contemplated such acts myself, and while Cash is one of the main goals, high value items such as jewelry, computers, and various electronics are the main target... If I was going to actually rob a house, I would make 2 quick sweeps, the first for the high value items stated above, and the second for weapons and money. And it's not always high value items that are taken, I once had a friend who had his electric razor stolen, it wasn't terribly expensive 50-60 dollars at most, but apparently the thief needed one.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

Do muggers generally search their victims? I would imagine that they'd want to avoid getting too close, to avoid getting into an actual physical confrontation.

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 ?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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.

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.

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.)

It is your demographic. You probably don't use payday loan shops in strip malls either.

I used to keep bail money for "youthful indiscretion" grade offenses for certain relatives, but learned how to use an ATM this year and don't have to do that anymore. (yes, it was a stupid hiding place. Under an object a burglar would steal, but it kept it out of sight. )

Where do you keep your laptop when you're not using it? Also at the bank?

Renter's insurance covers the unlikely event that someone breaks into my apartment and steals everything I own. And I don't even need to hide anything inside shit-stained underwear.

Inside your walls: http://www.hulu.com/watch/2905/burn-notice-ask-a-spy---burgl...

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.

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.

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.

"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

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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-))

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.)

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.

Well being a "hacker" isn't just about computer related stuff, it's a lifestyle... interested in a little bit of everything, looking to learn all you can stand about something.

Ever seen "Hackers Are People Too!"? It's a great documentary and sums it up beautifully.

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

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

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

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.

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.

You just have to remember which books you put the money in. Every now and then I open a book that I haven't read in years and there are five 20s pressed between the pages.

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