These days the image of storing your money in the freezer is a funny stereotype. It might have made sense at one point, when banks were less reliable and giant ceramic or metal freezers were fireproof. But these days, plastic fridges will absolutely melt in a blaze and even the most inept burglar is going to check the ice tray for your cash. But amazingly, people do it anyway.

One of them was Renee Reese. According to Vice, Reese had her $35,000 life savings in the house because her multiple sclerosis made it hard to go to the bank often. And of all the places she could hide it, she picked the freezer because of that rumor it would survive a fire.

Then she decided to replace her fridge-freezer combo. At first, this was fine. Reese remembered to take the money out of her old freezer and then stuck it in the brand new one Costco delivered. But the doors on the new one were a little wonky, so she called the store to have it replaced. Costco came to swap out the defective fridge-freezer, and that was when the disaster happened. This time, Reese hadn’t taken out the cash.

She immediately filed a police report and called Costco. They still had the wonky unit, but when they checked, to absolutely no one’s surprise, the money was gone. Reese accused the company of insufficient background checks and hiring “rapists or pedophiles” who probably stole her money.

An Israeli woman had managed to save up a whopping $1 million. That is the kind of money that will see you into a happy retirement. And, as the Guardian points out, in 2009 she was probably feeling pretty smug about the fact that she kept all that cash in her mattress, since the world banking system had just collapsed. But it would be the worst decision of her life.

Her daughter was just trying to do a nice thing. Anat, whose last name was withheld, decided her mother’s mattress was way too old (and probably lumpy, what with all the money in it) so she bought her a new one as a surprise. And to be extra nice, she disposed of the old one. Her mother, probably screaming at a level only dogs could hear, told her what a big mistake she had made. Anat immediately ran off to get the mattress back, but the garbage men had already come and gone.

A newspaper published a picture of Anat desperately looking through a landfill for the mattress. She had already tried many others and come up empty. Because she appeared “totally desperate” some of the staff started helping her. Of course, this gave other people ideas and guards had to be posted to keep treasure seekers away. It doesn’t appear the money was ever found.

In the end, the mother was incredibly understanding, saying, “People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad.”

There was a lot of talk about the Maya predicting the world was going to end on December 21, 2012. But according to the New York Post, Robert Fitzpatrick had studied the Bible and he knew the world was actually going to end exactly 19 months before that, on May 21, 2011. And he had to get the message out to the people. Or at least New Yorkers.

The 60-year-old Staten Island resident was so sure of his prediction that he spent his entire $140,000 life savings on advertisements telling residents to repent because the end was nigh. He bought 1,000 subway-car placards, and thousands more ads in bus kiosks. (Apparently, if you didn’t use public transport you were going to be screwed.) They all warned “Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever! Judgment Day May 21, 2011.”

That’s because God was going to send a “giant earthquake” that would “render the earth uninhabitable” according to Fitzpatrick. He even knew it would start at 6 p.m. But then he also said Judgment Day would “surprise people,” which seems to contradict that.

Fitzpatrick based his ideas on another doomsday predictor, Harold Camping, who said the world would end on September 6, 1994. Obviously, he was wrong, but Fitzpatrick said he didn’t want to think about that. Plus, in a self-published book on the topic Fitzpatrick said when it came to his prediction, the Bible offered “proof that cannot be dismissed.” May 22 must have come as a shock.

Justin Kayola thought he had made a great find, according to the Portsmouth News
. An online auction was selling eight men’s rings and he got them for just £678.99. It was all his life savings, but it was going to be a great speculation. The price of gold in 2016 was insane and these chunky rings were shiny, yellow, and all marked 18k.

He went to go pawn them and get a return on his investment, when he was told the disastrous news. All the rings were fake. They were just worthless brass. He tried other pawn shops and they all said the same thing. And they encouraged him to go to the police. The only problem was, the police were the ones who sold them to him.

The auction was for items the cops had seized and were selling to make some cash of their own to go toward charitable causes. And Kayola had been so blinded by the shininess, he hadn’t paid enough attention to the other descriptions in the auction. The rings had been clearly described not as gold but having a “yellow metal finish” and that while they were marked 18k, that had not been verified.

Kayola complained and asked that at least part of the sale be refunded. But everyone else involved, the cops, the auction website, even a pawnbroker who was asked, all agreed that the sale had been completely fair, and Kayola was out of luck. He didn’t get any of his money back.