May 28, 2013 by
J.J. Luna
When I lived and worked in Spain under the regime of Generalissimo
Francisco Franco, cash was king. When I later moved back to North
America, I continued to use cash whenever possible. You will not find me
downtown with less than $500 on my person; and if I’m on a flight
overseas, I’ll have much more. Here are a few advantages to paying cash:
- Temptation avoidance: You will not make impulse purchases
that you cannot afford. (It is much more difficult to make an “impulse”
buy if you have to take cash out of your pocket to pay for it.)
- Savings: You will pay no monthly payments on loans, no credit card interest and no overdraft fees from your bank.
- Lower prices: You’d be surprised at how much
you can save by asking for a discount in return for paying with cash.
For example, the next time a self-employed mechanic, plumber or
electrician quotes you a price of, say, $1,200 plus sales tax, make a
counter offer of $1,000 cash. More often than not, you’ll get that
discount.
- Protection against identity theft: Obviously, if you don’t
use a credit or debit card, you won’t be asked for a driver’s license
that may (horror of horrors!) display your home address.
Furthermore, here are five reasons to secretly (repeat: secretly) keep major amounts of cash on hand:
- When the banks in your area eventually shut down due to a power
outage, terrorist attack, catastrophic computer malfunction or any other
reason, you’ll be like the one-eyed man in the Kingdom of the Blind.
- If you spot the used car of your dreams at night or on a weekend,
you’ll be able to beat out any other prospective buyers by offering cash
on the spot.
- Should you be caught far from home when all airports shut down (as
they did on 9/11), rent-a-car agencies will run out of vehicles in a
flash. But with cash you can pay a taxi driver whatever it takes to get
to your destination, or you can even buy a used car and get there on
your own.
- If your former or current live-in lover turns against you (yes,
Virginia, this has been known to happen), he won’t be able to go after
your cash when there is no clue that it exists.
- Suppose you get a heads-up call from a friend at 2 a.m., telling you
that someone is out to get you. Time to get outta Dodge! You grab your
passport, all the cash you’ll need, laptop, cellphone and hit the road.
(Don’t forget to either remove the cellphone’s battery or wrap it in
aluminum foil that so it cannot be pinged.)
As long as you can maintain silence, you should
keep some major cash at home for any coming emergency.
There is, of course, no such thing as a burglar-proof home, nor is
there a security system that cannot be bypassed. However, the average
burglar is inside a house for less than 10 minutes. Your goal will be to
prevent your cash from being found for more — much more — than that
length of time. Burglars will almost invariably head straight for the
master bedroom, so I suggest you keep a small amount of cash there,
perhaps hidden beneath some underclothes in the bottom of a chest of
drawers. Leave enough to pay for a drug fix or to make the intruder
think that he’s already found whatever cash you keep in the house.
Burglars aside, your goal should be to hide money from anyone who
might be after it — whether visiting relatives, party guests, repairmen,
babysitters, a kleptomaniac parent, a teenage son or daughter on drugs,
or a spouse who attempts to exercise iron control over every dollar you
spend. Can safes are a great way to hide money from all such persons.
Can safes, also called diversion safes, are for sale all over the
Internet. They are manufactured from actual cans of such items as Yuban
coffee, Heinz Baked Beans, Bon Ami, Ajax, VP Spray Starch, Scotch Guard,
Pledge, STP Oil Treatment and JB Radiator Stop-Leak. The bottom of each
can unscrews.
In addition, if you have a tightly-packed three-drawer file cabinet,
use one or more of the file folders for holding cash. Title them with
dull names such as “old tax receipts” or “travel brochures.” Or if you
have a lot of books, use a box cutter or a single-edge razor blade to
cut the center out of some dull book you no longer want. (Outdated
computer books or AAA travel books are ideal for this.) Mix them in with
others in your bookcase, or store them in a box of books kept out in
the garage.
For smaller amounts of money, bills can just be scattered among the
pages of a heavy and uninteresting book. Here’s an interesting example
provided by Ellen who is 88 and lives in Kalispell, Mont.
“I have a grandson who used to come and visit me in my apartment
sometimes, but I couldn’t trust him because he’d once stolen some money
from me. I had a very old Bible, one of those big ones that take up half
a coffee table. I knew my grandson would never open a Bible, so I hid a
dozen $100 bills in the pages of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. One
night, some crazy old coot in the building fell asleep while smoking
and the whole building caught fire. By the time the fire was put out,
everything was damaged by fire or water. My old Bible was scorched
around the edges and waterlogged, but my money was still OK.”
If you have a freezer, another great way to protect your cash is to
open a bag of frozen vegetables. Stuff the empty container with
rolled-up bills, glue the opening shut and put it in the bottom of the
freezer.
You can also hide bills inside window shades, water hoses, fuse
boxes, fire-alarm bells, dog houses, abandoned plumbing fixtures,
ironing board covers, plastic rolling pins, wall clocks, paper towel
tubes, clothes hampers, kitchen containers, wall phones, clothespin
bags, bed posts, upholstery, golf bags, toys, stuffed animals, board
game boxes, false-bottom baby carriages, Christmas decorations boxes,
trophies or even hollowed-out stairway posts.
All of the foregoing assumes, of course, that you have some cash to
hide. If you normally live from paycheck to paycheck, something is
terribly wrong. But that’s a subject for another day.
–J.J. Luna
