chapotraphouse

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.

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.

How much credit do you even have access to? Seems like a huge risk

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.

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.

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).

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.

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 the cops find all your barrels of money buried in the desert.

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.

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 ;)