Retirement is something most people look forward to! We spend the majority of our lives working, and when we hit that ripe old age, we’re ready to be done! Most people start saving for retirement in their twenties either by investing in a 401(k) or in a Roth IRA. But one paranoid man decided not to trust John Hancock or the banks, so he buried his retirement savings in the ground.
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In what could be dubbed an ironic turn of events, the 67-year-old retired Chinese fisherman decided to store his pension fund in a plastic bag 5 years prior. Unfortunately, as HR SBT would have it, his entire life’s savings went to the worms.
The fisherman never told anyone he buried 35,000 Chinese yuan (RMB)—roughly $5,400 U.S. dollars (USD)—in the ground. He said, “It was my pension fund payment and all of the savings I’ve had from working as a fisherman all my life.” Most of the money was either rotten or chewed up. The only help the man could get was from his local bank, which he never trusted in the first place. They were able to help recover some of his life’s savings, about 20,000 RMB (roughly $3,100 USD).
So, let that be a lesson to all you paranoid pensioners—the tin can in the ground may sound like a good idea, but tin rusts and disintegrates. Maybe leaving your money under the mattress is a better option, or you can just invest your money and potentially earn some interest!