UPDATE: Ok so... I THOUGHT I had $10k in cash stolen from my house, but I didn't. I found it. Yes I really am an idiot.
I was right to be in denial before, because I actually still have the money.
I am… very shocked and embarrassed (and confused) to report that I actually found the money today (and took it to the bank, so don’t get excited thieves!)
I found it in some random basket near my kitchen, wrapped in a plastic bag, sitting on top of a nebulizer.
I still don’t fully understand. I have no idea when I moved it there. Or if I even did.
I have no clue.
I was in major organization mode earlier today, procrastinating writing, of course. And as I spent time organizing my linen closet, the one where I thought the money was stolen from, I thought… ugh wouldn’t it be so great if it just turned up somehow. Oh well. I gotta let it go.
Then, 30 minutes later, I was downstairs moving things around, and decided to move a wicker basket from the top of a shelf. There was a plastic bag sitting on top. Huh, what’s this? OH ——
What.
I kept saying Holy Shit over and over and over.
I was in denial before (for good reason). And, I’m in denial now.
… I’m so glad I never accused them of anything. I wasn’t going to, but people were encouraging me to. And I’m so glad I never called the police. LOL. (I was never going to.) Because I knew there was a chance they didn’t take it. I just didn’t know where it freaking was. And I remember being nervous about it being in that linen closet while they worked so… when did it get moved?!?! Who moved it? Me? An angel? I don’t know.
Why am I updating? Well. Because, I told you it was stolen. And… I was wrong. I remain, an idiot.
This was the story I wrote a few weeks about about it, if you missed it…
However, it’s all moot at this point...
I had $10k in cash stolen from my house, because I am an idiot
And I’m still in denial about it
I literally removed my parents from from my email list so I could send this out without them finding out about this travesty. “Caroline I told you you didn’t hide things well enough!?!? You are too trusting!!!! UGH!”
Actually, my mom is a paid subscriber so she can’t be removed easily.
So: yes mom, yes you did. And yes mom, I am.
This entire saga happened back in summer of 2022. But… horrifyingly, I didn’t even realize I’d been stolen from until early February of this year. And when I thought back to when it would have happened, I realized… woa… I would have been stolen from the exact same time that my friend was crypto-scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars...
You can that saga here, if you haven’t: The Catfish of Prosperity. It’s a crazy story. And now even crazier that it lines up with this story…
So—
Why did I have $10K in cash sitting around, you may ask?
Great Question. Let’s get into it.
Back in 2022, I was still actively worried about imminent cataclysm and, one thing in specific: the central banking system collapsing. Now, I am only passively worried about it all. But back then, we (conspiracy theorists) were still riding the terror of covid’s unprecedented tyranny. Maybe it really was all falling down, and fast.
So what did I do? I learned from the preppers. What did preppers do? Well they did a lot of things. More things than I could figure out how to do quickly. They grew their own food. They had salt and alcohol for trade. They had a 1-3 month back supply of food. They had military grade water jugs filled with water. They had walkie talkies and ham radios and guns and bug out bags and survival equipment and, most importantly skills. They did a lot and knew a lot. And they also hid cash and gold and silver, in case of complete societal collapse.
— I do have to say though, I’ve always wondered like… if society really fell — like really fell — and there was no infrastructure or running water or electricity, and we had to band together to survive, like… tribally, the way I imagine they had to do in The Walking Dead (I’ve never watched it). Would we see money as valuable when what we really need is water and food? Even original money… would gold REALLY help? Like… who needs gold? What can gold DO? Except weigh you down if you have to run from the tribe you’re at war with? Do you know what I mean???? What inherent value does gold HAVE?!?!?! You can’t eat or drink it! You can’t use it to keep you warm! You can only trade it as this … universally accepted valuable item. It confuses me. People have told me that it’s inherently valuable because it’s a finite resource? And … it doesn’t rust? I don’t know. I still don’t get it.
But …back to the story.
I decided the easiest thing to do, for the time being, was to take out some cash. Cash would depreciate, so you were advised to use it within a few years, before inflation made it significantly less valuable, but apparently, it was still worth having a good amount on hand. Y’know, for the end times/cataclysm.
I was actually involved with a little doomsday prepper group at the time, and someone advised me to have $20K in cash, which is a lot, but also… the world was falling apart? Anddd…. I didn’t have any skills for the apocalypse? And I was starting to finally understand how in an instant, I could be forced into prostitution. Having cash on hand could maybe keep my fate at bay for a bit.
So I went to my credit union, and asked to take out $20K. I’d just sold my house in the city, so I happened to, at that moment, had a good chunk of cash just sitting in my checking account, waiting for something responsible to be done with. And so what responsible thing was I going to do? I was going to withdraw it, hide it (poorly,) and … get it stolen within a few months.
Weeeee!
The bank teller told me that I couldn’t take out $20K. They needed time to get that much cash at the branch. But they could give me $10K. I said… OK.
And I walked out of the branch with a humungous envelope of cash, as thick as a… loaf of bread? As thick as the length of my hand? It was humungous. I ran to my car, terrified I’d get mugged.
And I went home, and thought hmmmmm where should I put this? The safe I had just bought was pointless, because apparently I had to somehow bolt it to the ground… or else you could just steal the safe.
I thought… hmmmmm, where would someone not hide a humungous wad of cash?
And for some reason I thought, oh, my linen closet. Who would hide cash there? It was almost too obvious to be obvious, you know? There is proooobably a better place for it… so, I’ll find a better hiding place for the cash soon. And I’ll break it up into smaller chunks. I’ll brainstorm some good, tricky little places to hide it. But for now, I’m gonna wrap it in this towel, and put it under all of the other towels. And I’ll come back to this cash-hiding project soon.
Just in case you, dear reader, are a scheming thief, and now see me as an excellent target for a break and enter robbery, don’t bother. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m never keeping or hiding anything valuable ever again, at least… not in any way that isn’t truly genius. I still have a safe, and that safe is still empty and not bolted to the ground, sitting there wide open.
And the $10,000 in cash? Someone already took it, and it’s gone forever.
—
As you may have guessed… I didn’t remember to hide the money in a better place. I figured… egh. I have time. I’ll figure it out. Who is going to steal it anyway? Who is going to break into my house? And if someone does, I’ve got bigger problems.
Then I nearly forgot it was there at all.
And a few months later, I hired contractors to redo my bathroom— two brothers who had a small renovation company.
I cleared out of my house and spent two weeks with my parents at the shore. During which time, cryptoscamcatfishgate happened. My friend was talking to a … blond, hot “German” who may as well have been model, who she met on Hinge. He was also a crypto millionaire on the side, who offered to help her start “investing.”
Anyway, my linen closet is in the hallway, next to the bathroom, but not in the bathroom. But there was a day when I realized… oh, wait, shoot, shoot shoot shoot, they have to cut into the linen closet in order to create the recessed shelf…. and my stupid money is there, that I never MOVED.
I thought… well, the shelf is up high, and the towel is on the bottom shelf, so… maybe they won’t even move anything from below (of course they did. they had to cut into the wall and wall dust would have gotten all over everything.)
I thought…. hmmm ok. Ok ok. If they see the money… I mean… they won’t be stupid enough to take it? Would they? Then I’d obviously know it was them! No, they won’t take it, because it would be too obvious who did it.
So I put it out of my mind.
—
My big mistake… the fatal flaw, if you will, is that when I returned to my house …. I didn’t let myself check to see if the money was still there. I mean, I looked in my linen closet, and everything, including the towels looked exactly as they had before. Ah, nothing was touched! Everything is fine.
Did I let myself look and confirm that the money was actually still there? No. It was easier for me to assume… or to pretend, that it was.
This was such an uncharacteristically avoidant choice for me. This was unusual and… very unlike me, I think. I am not usually this avoidant. But in this instance, I really was. I think subconsciously, I just didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know if it was stolen. I also didn’t even want to know if they had seen the money and left it there.
I felt… I dunno… embarrassed? If it was clear that the money was seen by them… it was all so ridiculous. Like why did I have that much money in my closet? It was such a humungous wad of money. Even them seeing it and not taking it was hard for me to swallow.
And it would be even worse if I saw it was stolen! What would I do? Confront them? Report it to the police?
I didn’t let myself think about any of this. I never even consciously decided not to check on the money, I just… didn’t check on the money.
I deleted it from my mind.
I pretended the money was there.
—
Then, a week later, there was a big leak from the new tub that had water gushing through my kitchen ceiling. The guys rushed back to fix it, and they had to come multiple times to troubleshoot the leak, and then to fix the ceiling that the water had damaged.
Not once at any point during the next few weeks of them coming back to the house, did I let myself check the money. Again…. I am not sure why. It’s not that I didn’t think it was a big deal. I think… I thought it was such a big deal, that I became so incredibly avoidant about the whole thing.
—
Then… a year and a half went by. I still told myself I had $10K cash sitting in a huge wad, wrapped in a towel, at the bottom of my linen closet.
And then on a whim, I decided to look for it. To *make sure it was still there.*
I unwrapped every towel and lay them flat on the floor. And… surprise surprise, the money was not there.
And I was actually… in shock. I kept thinking that … maybe… maybe I forgot that I had moved it. I started looking other places for it. I started looking in drawers of furniture I didn’t even own back when I hid the money in 2022.
No…
That whole year and a half, even though I never checked on the money I kept thinking that it had to be there. Because, who would be stupid enough to steal that much money when it would be so clear who stole it?
The real question really became… who would be stupid enough to not look, and make sure the money was still there? ME. ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It took me a while to figure it out. I kept wondering why would they do it, if, assuming I were a normal person, I would have immediately checked, and immediately knew it was them who took it? Why would they risk that? I had been talking to them about hiring them for more big projects after that one was finished. (Turning a bedroom closet into a bathroom.) And recommending them to my parent’s for their bathroom project… I never did hire them for more, largely because I didn’t have the income these past two years to keep doing expensive house projects…
But… I couldn’t figure it out. Why would they risk more money, and more business, by taking the money?
And then I realized… they probably didn’t take it right away.
They probably saw it. And left it.
I had a chance to check on it, and move it. But I didn’t.
And so, when they came back a few times to fix the leak, they checked again. I hadn’t moved it. Maybe I’d forgotten about it. Maybe I was psychotically in denial about it. But either way, it is most likely, that they took the money when they checked on it again, and realized that I was not paying close enough attention to it.
And I wasn’t.
And, it’s too late to file any sort of report. I know it was them… but it’s been so long… it would be so easy to deny. So difficult to prove. And it introduces doubt into my mind too… what if I am wrong? What if it was someone else? And most importantly… uhhh, why did I wait so long to check?
But there you have it. That is how I was dumb, and in denial enough, to not realize I’d had $10k stolen from me.
And sadly, I could really use that $10K right now. Money’s tight, and my fireplace lining is shot.
But remember thief readers: I will not be hiding money anymore.
Stay away.
My linen closet is bare.
Paywall for voiceover