How many of you keep emergency cash in your home? I know that we do and over the years, we’ve become pretty good at hiding it! It’s extremely important that if you’re going to hide cash in your home, that you look for places that burglars won’t think to look.
Emergency cash should never been left laying out where everyone can see it. Avoid tossing it in a desk drawer, your old purse, in a filing cabinet, jewelry box, in the freezer, underneath a mattress and all of those types of places! Trust me, those who want to rob your home, will look in those places first!
25 Places to Hide Emergency Cash in Your Home
1. Tape an envelope inside your vanity (under-the-sink) cabinet in the back area, covered up by toiletry products.
2. In an envelope stashed between two towels in the linen closet.
3. In a sock in your sock drawer.
4. Rinse out & dry an empty shampoo bottle. Place rolled up dollar bills inside it and cap it. Place it in your linen closet or in the vanity cabinet. Mark a big black X on the front to identify it. When needed, use scissors to cut open the plastic bottle.
5. Stash money in an old sock and stuff it into an old shoe in the back of your closet.
6. Place in a zipper closure bag & stuff it inside a half-empty coffee can. Make sure you toss lose coffee grounds on top.
7. Place it in the pocket of a shirt, blazer, jacket or coat hanging in the back of your closet.
8. Stuff a small cosmetic bag with cotton balls and cotton swabs. Hide money in the bottom of the bag before stuffing.
9. Place in an envelope and tape it underneath or inside a kitchen cabinet.
10. Place in an envelope and tape it underneath a shelf in your pantry closet.
11. Pour dry pasta into a plastic canister, filling it halfway. Tuck your stash in the middle & finish filling. Store “pasta” canister on a shelf in a kitchen cabinet or in the pantry.
12. Sew a pocket into one of your old bath towels & add a snap or button closure to the pocket. Use this pocket to hide your emergency stash while safely storing the towel in the back of the linen closet.
13. Wash out a plastic peanut butter jar, while keeping the outside label intact. Line the inside of the plastic jar with tan-colored felt. Place emergency goodies inside the jar & store it on a pantry shelf. When thieves see it, they’ll think peanut butter is inside!
14. Thieves rarely look inside old sewing boxes! Hide cash in the bottom, covered up with dozens of spools of threads, needles, buttons & supplies.
15. Roll up the cash and hide it inside a plastic cat or dog treat container. Make sure you pour some dry food or treats on top and store on a pantry shelf.
16. Hide it inside books that are stacked on a bookshelf.
17. Taped underneath a dresser drawer.
18. In an envelope taped to the back of a hanging mirror.
19. Place in an envelope and bury it in the bottom of a puzzle box, sitting on a shelf. Make sure puzzle pieces cover up the envelope.
20. Remove a bar of soap from the box. Place dollar bills inside the box. Using sticky glue dots to seal up the box & place it on a shelf in the back of your linen closet.
21. In an empty tumbler cup with a lid on top…sitting on the back of the highest shelf in a kitchen cabinet. Make sure it’s out of easy reach and not easily visible.
22. Place in an envelope and taped under the base of a heavy floor lamp.
23. In a secure lock box hidden extremely well in your attic or basement. Don’t hide that lock box in the main living areas of your home.
24. Carefully empty out about 1/2 of the facial tissues from the box. Hide your emergency stash inside and place the rest of the tissues back into the box. Hide this box on a shelf in your linen or bedroom closet.
25. Got wall-to-wall carpeting? Carefully un-tack one corner in the room and stash your cash underneath.
Additional Tips:
– If you’re using an empty, partially full or almost full container or box to hide your emergency money stash…mark the outside of the container with an identifying mark. Let your other household members know about the item & the mark that you’re using. We use neon colored stickers. Never mark cash, money symbols, etc. as that will be an alert to thieves.
– If you live alone and 100% trust another family member or friend, tell them about your emergency cash fund and where they can find it. Should you need it in an emergency and are not home to get it, they can retrieve it for you.
– Instead of hiding all of your stash in one particular place, make smaller piles and hide it in several different places.
When it comes to hiding emergency cash around your home, where do you like to hide it? If you’ve got some ideas and tips to share with our readers, please leave your comments in our blog’s comment form below.
* This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may or may not receive a small commission which helps to support this site. Thank you!
This was a great post. Never thought of a lot of these hiding places. Especially underneath your tacked down carpet!! Thank you for sharing all these hiding places with us. I am thinking burying it in a can in your yard somewhere Or burying it in your Crawl space. No one usually likes to go underneath a house..
It has never occurred to me to keep an emergency cash stash. But now that you’ve got me thinking about it, it’s a good idea. And your tips for hiding places are sneaky, sneaky, sneaky–perfect!
This was such a great post thank you for sharing this one. You have so many great ideas and I am so going to stash some cash for an emergency. A few years ago we were snowed in and everything was shut down and you never know when you are going to need cash in an emergency situation.
Exactly! It should ONLY be used in an emergency and there might come a time where you need to grab cash fast and exit the home…so I always have a few stash piles in case I need to grab and run out in a matter of seconds. You just never know and even if it’s only 50 bucks stashed away, it’s something!
These are all good ideas. It is important to have hiding places that criminals wouldn’t find.
These are all great ideas. Someone once told me that they put a little money in an obvious place (The Bible, a drawer, etc.)—hoping that any burglar would find it quickly & assume that was the emergency cash, lol. Can’t hurt, I guess, but I can’t afford to give up even a ‘small’ amount of cash!
These are all great tips on places to hide the money! You can never be too careful or paranoid. Crime happens and you don’t want it to be easy pickings for a robber.
I like the sock stuffed into a shoe in the back of the closet. I really hadn’t thought about keeping an emergency stash of money. Now I will.
There have been times over the years we had to grab money from our emergency stash and get out of here in a hurry. You never know when a severe storm, ice storm, blizzard, power outage, medical emergency or whatever emergency happens and you need to grab cash…fast. We had a blizzard & an ice storm (both in one week hit us last winter) and everything was shut down here for 8 days straight, including banks!
There are a lot of places in older homes. I do like the idea of in pet related things. The thieves here (having been robbed once) will usually tear the pieces out of your house so you have to be pretty inventive. Hubby is a carpenter so we likely have more places than mos to hide things.