Disclaimer: As far as I know, I'm not going to die soon. I'm asking this question in case that changes someday.
So I was just thinking about this and thought it might be a good idea to leave your family some money while fucking over the bank on your way out. The creditors would go after your worthless estate only to find the recently purchased assets are missing, but you're already dead and can't be charged with fraud. And if you do some decent opsec, they can't implicate your family either.
I assume without laundering the money, your family would not be able to use it on anything big. And your available credit wouldn't be enough to make a massive quality of life improvement for your loved ones. But even if they only spend it on groceries and hobbies for a few years, it would make a nice goodbye gift.
Am I missing anything that makes this a horrible or unacceptably risky idea?
So, there's nothing strictly preventing this in a real sense. I don't know how simple it would be in execution, as folks who are in poor health don't tend to have the best credit and credit cards can stop payment if they see irregular activity.
Also, some open question of who your fence on this would be. Who is selling you this asset on credit? Who is buying it back?
And is this really any more practical than just getting a ten year term life insurance policy? Unless you have an enormous line of credit, I can't imagine how a few grand in precious metals would be preferable to 10-100x that in an insurance policy.
insurance companies probably aren't going to issue a policy for someone with a known terminal illness
and yeah, the credit card companies aren't likely going to let anyone go on a gold-buying spree without asking some pointed questions, at least
Most life insurance products don't take a lot of time doing deep background checks on medical records BUT they do have stipulations on when the policy can be paid in full. Something like, "the full amount of the policy can only be claimed after 90 days of the issuance of policy/first payment".
There are cards that do cash advances, so you'd just pull the money out as cash and then spend the cash partly on the precious metals and partly on other "normal" items (for which you'd keep receipts for).
Good point on the life insurance. The way I imagined this situation is that by the time you'd find out you're dying, it'd be too late to get affordable life insurance that would actually pay out. Wouldn't it be expensive as hell to try getting life insurance while you're already dying of a terminal illness? Or god forbid the cause of death is suicide and your family is denied the claim because it's obvious you only got life insurance for that.
My thinking is that you could buy up the gold bullion on much shorter notice than you could get a life insurance policy, then your family would just take it to various pawn shops to sell it an ounce at a time as money is needed.
I AM NOT A CERTIFIED ESTATE PLANNER OR ACCOUNTANT, THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
In the USA state where I live beneficiaries of a life insurance policy do not have to report it as income on their taxes. Do some research about this for your situation. (I've buried two relatives in my lifetime, I'm no expert but I've had to go through the process... not burying a body... just the insurance/tax stuff...)
If you're not working on a very short timeline and have the ability to put a few hundred dollars a year into an insurance premium, your best bet would be a Term Life (meaning until you die) policy. Most of the medical stuff is a general background check on records and a simple physical, maybe blood work (if you're even asked to do this at all).
If you're working on a shorter time line, a Term "X" Year, might be something to look in to. The maximum benefit amount you can carry in the policy might be less than in a Term Life and the premiums might be higher but we're still talking something like a $30,000US payout and $400.00 in premiums a year, that is probably tax exempt for the beneficiaries. Downside, once the policy has been active for "X" amount of time, it goes away and all the premiums were kinda wasted. Some companies will give you the option to extend it or roll it over into some other product or cash it out for a fraction of what you paid into it (or what the payout could have been) but that is reportable income. Read the fine print in the contract for the insurance product and talk to their customer service/sales rep. (I was being lazy and didn't do anything with a small little 20 Year Term life insurance policy I bought into when I was 18 and I kinda wish I had been more of a proper adult and looked into what I could have done with it when it was nearing expiration instead of letting it all go away.)
If you want to play the credit card game... I'd see about finding a life insurance policy that doesn't have a problem with you paying with a credit card instead of direct withdrawal from a bank account or mailing in a check. Pay everything as normal until you're getting to the point where you're pretty sure the medical situation is going downhill then start carrying the payments on the credit cards instead of paying them down every month OR filling your bank account with credit card cash advances (which tend to cost a lot in fees and %interest) to pay for the premiums.
At the very least, you're keeping the policy paid (as far as the insurance company is concerned), your assigned beneficiaries could get a tax free payout, and if you've planned properly... your family can pay down the CC debit from a portion of the Insurance payout or you all know the laws well enough to know how to discharge the debit (fully or partially) without the family having to pay it.
I AM NOT A CERTIFIED ESTATE PLANNER OR ACCOUNTANT, THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
How much credit do you even have access to? Seems like a huge risk
How risky is it really to a dead person? Only risky if you somehow live.
Not to the dead person but to the relatives that would benefit. How does one hide these assets in a way that makes them accessible but not accessible to others?
Sell them to a pawn shop and get 65% of your value back. Tax free
I’m just thinking about the relative risk-reward here. What’s the credit score of this hypothetical person that they can get some useful amount of credit on one or more credit cards and so that they can buy an appreciable amount of gold? Like it would seem that a few thousand dollars worth isn’t worth the potential risk but I guess it could be life changing
first of all: piratemaxxing
but yeah, to add to the other people who have explained how this would fall apart / be hard:
The creditors would go after your worthless estate only to find the recently purchased assets are missing, but you're already dead and can't be charged with fraud.
the estate would probably be the one charged with fraud. then when your family went to retrieve / sell / launder the assets they would be charged with fraud & other stuff.
I assume without laundering the money,
Not to be semantic or anything, but I think this would already fall under money laundering unless the intention is to keep the treasure buried for really long and have a future generation indiana jones it back later. Honestly maybe still illegal though? Idk where the line is.
Am I missing anything that makes this a horrible or unacceptably risky idea?
I think the typical strat of sorts is to just continuously max your cards on normal stuff (not gold bars) and then declare bankruptcy to get out of the debt. It's not definitely not a get rich quick strat though. Legally I'm pretty sure that taking on more credit card debt with no intention of paying is a crime or something (fraud?), but defaulting on credit card debt happens to people all the time cause the rate is so high so you can also definitely do this unintentionally very easily.
Do a fuckton of research before hand. Do everything in your power to keep the research anonymous. Find trusted relatives that you will give explicit verbal and written instructions to... possibly with the addition of "burn these documents after you've read them or they are no longer useful" instructions.
The laws change depending on country, state, type of debit left, (probably) what type of estate planning was done, and quite probably the amount of debit left to be dealt with by the executor of the deceased's estate.
Even if the original holders of the debit don't try to collect it (the CC companies) they will still have no problem selling the debit to a collection agency (even if the local laws say that a dead person's CC debit dies with them) and they can harass your family. It won't matter that it might be illegal to try to collect the debit, they know that most people can't get a lawyer to counter the harassment. So part of the research will need to be about dealing not only with debit owed to the original source but any following owners of the debit as well.
What are the statute of limitations on collection debits incurred by the deceased? What are the specifics?
Don't forget to figure out how to "sell" the precious metals you are putting in your stash. I know nothing about it, but it wouldn't surprise me if there some rules (like with buying Money Orders) that selling less than $xx.xx of precious metals doesn't need to be reported to some Authorities but selling more than $xx.xx in a given time period does. Knowing where to look for the most up to date "value" of the metals, where to sell them, how much to expect to lose in the transaction, at what amounts can they get straight cash that isn't reported at the time of sale and what amounts would be reported or only allowed in digital transactions (instantly creating a paper trail to your family).
The IRS, SARS, or whatever your country's revenue service is called, will call in lifestyle audits on your family/beneficiaries once they realise that all the gold you bought on the credit cards has gone missing. That's assuming the banks will even grant an old or terminally ill person such credit facilities, they know that is a high risk situation.
For this to work, your family would have to find a way to evade the lifestyle audits finding out about the money obtained from selling the gold.
Then just don't give the gold to friends or family, but to some rando on Hexbear.
Am I missing anything that makes this a horrible or unacceptably risky idea?
Yes, I am not 100℅ sure, but I think debt collectors. My little understanding is that the bank may not want to go through the hassle of sorting this out themselves if the debt is small and the applicable laws complex, in which case they can sell the debt to a debt collector. Whatever person or agency is motivated enough to buy that debt might have some good experience in getting paid back. They can annoy your family for a while, and they might know of some laws that they can use to put pressure.
But family left behind, if they weren't a co-signer, have no responsibility to a dead family member debt,.unless they're a spouse.
Sure they will try and threaten you and make you sign papers that you are responsible for their death, but as long as nobody signs anything there's nothing a debt collector can do.
Which is kind of the point.
All it takes is one family member to get harassed enough (or at the right time) to agree to something or sign some document and collection agency's shittiest lawyer has enough of a case to legitimately threaten litigation, knowing that most people don't know the laws, can't afford a lawyer, and probably can't afford the time/money to go to any type of court to fight them.
It's why you got to plan it out with your family. Make sure that at least one of them knows what's going on. Make sure you divorce your spouse just before and allow all your assets to go to them. That way your spouse also skips out on inheritance taxes. The only person the debt collector can go after is your parents if they are still alive, or your children, but only if they are over 18. If you have gotten enough of the untraceable asset to your family, they might even be able to hire a lawyer to send a nice and threatening love letter to the debt collectors to kindly tell them to fuck off or they'll be paying off your debt plus interest back to your family.
Most debt collectors are cowardly scum who don't want to waste money on litigation.
Make sure you divorce your spouse just before and allow all your assets to go to them. That way your spouse also skips out on inheritance taxes.
That is so obviously fraud that even the shittiest of debt collectors will destroy you in civil court. You'd need to leave the property to a friend or family member that could be trusted to liquidate the assets into cash, pay any taxes/fees with the proceeds, and either give cash directly to the spouse (gotta stay small dollar cash amounts or it winds up becoming noticeable by the tax collectors) or set up a trust that could pay the spouse but that is a whole area of tax law that I know nothing about.
Inheritance taxes... unless you've got literally millions of dollars in real assets this won't apply.
Its probably safe to say that a "regular" person won't have to pay taxes on inherited vehicles, real estate, stocks, etc anywhere in the USA when the estate divides up the deceased's property. The taxes kick in when you sell, and make a profit on, any of those assets.
Most debt collectors are cowardly scum who don't want to waste money on litigation.
I'm cynically inclined to say, every state in the USA has a small claims court that is very easy and cheap for a Debt Collection agency to hire a shitty lawyer full time (hell even a law student or clerk can serve the same purpose and even cheaper) and pretty cheaply to deal with litigation. In a lot of places, if you don't show up, you automatically forfeit to whoever did show up.
Encrypt the coordinates. Give the encrypted coordinates to a lawyer as part of a will or something. Lawyers will probably have to report suspicious activity to the police, which means at worst your relatives will have to hand over virtually useless data, assuming they’re smart enough to not hand over your key.
I’m not a lawyer.
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I think you could buy gold/etc in various amounts, but I think diversifying and focusing on things that don't need to be re-sold is what's going to make this work in the end. You want to avoid the Breaking Bad example where <spoiler>the cops find all your barrels of money buried in the desert</spoiler>.
Give your beneficiaries things like restaurant experiences, bulk food packages, kitchen hardware, laptops, mobile devices, gaming computers, TVs, toys (some for the kids, some other things sell for hundreds more on ebay in a few years). Everybody needs various $50 to $999 furniture or outdoor equipment that don't have to all be one mega purchase. Buy things they need, but things that don't need their names.
If you own property, look up whatever the laws are. Sometimes if you give and/or "sell" your house to a relative then die in heavy debt the next day, they'll legally be allowed to come after your beneficiary and take the property. But if you sold the property X years ago, the beneficiary is safe. Attempt to live your last few years assets the beneficiary legally owns but you posses and use. This can be difficult with things like cars because you don't want your name on their insurance. Maximize plausible deniability. If you sold it X years ago (based on legal jurisdiction), there's usually nothing debt collectors can claim. For things that require contracts to transfer, it might be better to sell them to non-beneficiaries and launder the money directly to beneficiaries in less traceable ways.
Avoid giftcards, phones, 4G connected devices of any kind, Apple devices (maybe mostly phones/iPads?), vehicles, anything where you put the recipient's address/phone number into. If any kind of Credit Card -> Debt Collector -> BestBuy -> product remotely deactivated/bricked type thing can happen, don't buy that product.
Give your beneficiaries things like restaurant experiences, bulk food packages, kitchen hardware, laptops, mobile devices, gaming computers, TVs, toys (some for the kids, some other things sell for hundreds more on ebay in a few years). Everybody needs various $50 to $999 furniture or outdoor equipment that don't have to all be one mega purchase.
A lifestyle audit would uncover that, and directly implicate whoever recieved those things
This is a great concern and I need to elaborate some points.
"diversify", as a key element to the strategy, includes where you buy things, what types of things you buy, and who receives things. If you can rotate between 10-100 beneficiaries, it'll be harder to audit than 2-5 beneficiaries.
Avoid luxury things. Lifestyle audits happen when you're driving a lamborgini but you're a junior tech or work cashier at McDonalds. In fact, avoid gifting larger or numerous things to any specific person who acts flashy. Lifestyle audits are usually somebody thinks you're stealing from your company, or you're doing your taxes wrong and receiving large assests that are heavily documented and regulated (cars, real estate, checks).
Lifestyle audits aren't likely to happen unless you're really loading it all up on a small number of people and they're all trying to dress up and show off like instagram models/influencers while poor.
Keep as many gifts practical, utilitarian, or ordinary as possible. Don't be gifting things that are >$1000 if they must be reported to any random agency or they're not a normal house-hold item the beneficiary claim they threw away the receipt for. Don't buy things only good for peacocking, don't buy things for people who regularly peacock.
IDK about vacations, I'd avoid it or keep it really simple and small.
Grandparents gifting large numbers of small undocumented things is very normal.
Buried near to an oak tree under a piece of obsidian next to a stone wall . I'll meet you in Zihuatanejo, friend.
Get the credit out as cash advances. Then use the cash to buy things like gold coins or valuable antiques anonymously. Give them to a trusted friend/relative that are outside of your "estate". I don't see why your family couldn't become savvy antique flippers after your passing ;)
