Woman Hides Life Savings In Mattress, Mattress Taken To Dump By Helpful Daughter
A woman in Israel hid her life savings—she says nearly $1 million dollars—in her mattress. Her daughter bought her a new mattress as a surprise upgrade and threw it out. Dump employees are now searching on behalf of the family while security has been hired to keep out treasure hunters, but they don't know which of the two city dumps it was taken to. We imagine it's the one where the rats are all wearing tiny gold rings and toasting each other with little glasses of champagne.
The good thing about keeping your money in a bank is that it's insured. If you're not sure whether to trust the bank or credit union, look it up at Bankrate.com to see how it's rated.
"Tel Aviv search for mattress containing $1M life savings" [CNN]
(Photo: oddsock and i'm george)
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OK that's only slightly more embarrassing than having Madoff steal your million dollar fortune. At least at the dump, there's a small chance you'll find you missing fortune.
Great pic!
I don't understand what this woman was thinking. There were obviously no exterior signs that the mattress contained anything so what if she got hit by a bus or something? The daughter would never know where her inheritance went and the million would be lost forever.
It's amazing how decades of effort and self-sacrifice can be undone in mere moments. Lady Luck is a cruel bitch.
I'm calling shenanigans. She insisted that it was cash and shekels. Does anyone here realize the volume $1M USD takes up? In $1 bills it'd weigh just over a ton, and take up 39 cubic feet. In the best case, $100's would occupy .39 cubic feet and weigh 20.4 pounds, but it's unlikely that she had the optimal amount. Add in shekels, which are worth less than American currency, and I'm not buying the value reported. Not to mention the mattress had to, you know, have room for the coils and such.
Anyone wants to check my math: [wiki.answers.com]
here's hoping a homeless family found some comfort in its deluxe padding & found a way to finally move out from under the freeway.
@Copernicus42: Not only that...but how do you forget about $1 million dollars? Once she needed a new mattress how did it not click that she is literally sleeping on money?
I hope she has fun looking for her money. That is complete incompetence.
@tedyc03: We have a call of Shenanigans! Please get your brooms while the call is investigate, thank you.
The woman saves up another million dollars and tucks it away in her mattress, the daughter decides that the mattress is too lumpy and uncomfortable for her mother and throws it out, the mother saves up another million in the new mattress, the daughter can't believe how uncomfortable her mother's mattress is . . .
It's a never ending cycle.
@Copernicus42: That's why I always stop and check the bottoms of drawers if I see furniture on the side of the road. Them old people are sneaky, and didn't trust banks. That's crazy! I mean, banks will never fail. Right?
@LegoMan322: It sounds like she didn't want a new matterss, her daughter did the swap for her as a surprise.
@tedyc03: I didn't see anywhere in the article that mentions American dollars or shekels, just that she hid $1 million. Where are you getting the currency information?
And to think, during the banking crisis she was probably all like, "Yeah, panic fools...my nut is safe and sound."
Of course, this could be a brilliant prank to get hundreds of people walking around in garbage chasing nothing.
I wonder if the security is provided by the publicly financed dumps (?) And if they're having to compensate for having city employees hunt for their mattress.
(Mostly I'm just bitter and jealous because I think it would be super fun to hunt in a dump for a million-dollar mattress....)
@Where The Mild Things Are: That sounds like a premise for a new Fox Reality show. Contestants have to hunt through a dump to find the one piece of furniture or garbage with the prize money. I'd watch it, anyway...
@AcceleratedDragon: I still think they should let the shafted investors beat him like a pinata to see if their money comes out.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this has a bit more sinister plot..
I am guessing the daughter found the "stash" of money in the mattress and concocted this as a way to steal the money from her mother.
Its really convenient the mattress was replaced with a brand new one and the old one disappears completely..
i found the mattress! madoff's been sleeping on it all this time in jail.
@Radi0logy: I'm not debating that she kept money inside her mattress, I'm just not seeing where the information about the specific currency came from. Shekels are coins - they weigh significantly more than dollar bills, but if they are in higher currencies ($2 shekel vs. $1 bill) the weight might not be so bad.
It's understandable that the daughter wouldn't suspect any increased weight...a queen sized mattress is extremely heavy, money or no money. Unless you haul mattresses every week, you're not going to know precisely how much a mattress should weigh.
@Coles_Law: Wasnt that video always work friendly?
Or is it because it was a video, which by nature tends to announce "hello everyone! i am goofing off!"?
@U-235: UGH! I am so tired of the Madoff haters out there. Yes, he was a scumbag, but guess what? There are thousands of more like him out there doing the same thing everyday.
What I still don't seem to understand is why people don't see that most of these people would have lost the same amount in the latest "Market Adjustment" if they had just invested it in the Stock Market like everyone else.
I guess it's all about having a face to go with your lack of good financial judgement.
@pecan 3.14159265: You'd think if there was such a large amount of coins in it, you'd someone would've heard all the jingling.
But we don't need banks. Banks are evil!
I prefer to skip the matress alltogether and sleep on "a big pile of money with many beautiful ladies."
@allnitecp: "Yes, he was a scumbag, but guess what?"
The the hell, dude. Madoff is a scumbag -- you even admit it yourself -- and yet ... you are defending him? Why? Were you his boyfriend?
If it's really $1 million, it's kind of stupid to tell the dump employees what you're looking for. They probably found it on the first try and are buying vacation homes with cash.
In recent years, interest rates have been outpaced by inflation, so most deposit accounts have *lost* value. Makes you want to bury gold in the yard.
Do we know it wasn't left on the corner and collected by a scavenger? Someone may have just taken home a fortune!
@Where The Mild Things Are: Ha! As long as you found it. Otherwise it would just be a lot of trudging around in soiled diapers.
@tedyc03: I thought the same. You'd think someone would notice a million dollars shoved into a mattress. Did the daughter just think it was extra-lumpy?
I have little sympathy for people who put money in coffee cans and mattress and then loose them. If you have that much money put at least SOME of it in a bank.
@SupremeCourtNominee_GitEmSteveDave: Err, no animated GIFs that have more that 4,500 frames? Please? :)
When I read the article, it said that the daughter came out to find that the mattress had been taken by trash collectors.
No one has mentioned this yet, but there's a good chance that a neighbor or needy person took the mattress if it was still in relatively good shape. It could be in the neighborhood, under her nose the entire time while they search the dump. I'm sure - I hope - she's considered this possibility.
There was a Spongebob episode just like this. I hope the giant guard worm doesn't hurt anyone.