So many factors here: Sealy vs. Serta? Pillow-top vs. extra-firm? And what Sleep Number should you set on your Select Comfort ™ bed if you have, say, $10,000 in small bills tucked underneath it? Would your Sleep Number go up or down if you have more money than that to hide?

But why use a mattress at all? Other financial options exist.

There's the time-honored "Cousin Eddie" method: hiding your savings in any number of coffee cans that you then bury in your backyard or under the crawlspace beneath your home.

Then there's the Tony Soprano method: keeping your bankroll buried deep inside a big-ass bag of wild animal feed (doesn't necessarily have to be duck food; rabbit pellets will work just as well) out back in a Rubbermaid storage shed.

We personally prefer a particularly paranoid method: sealing our cash into the wall of a house, plastering over the cutout and then repainting the room. Think of it as a home improvement project. Just don't forget to retrieve it when you move in 15 years.

Before you go withdrawing all your money from the bank, cashing out your mutual fund and selling those withering stock shares to hold onto your cash for the coming economic apocalypse, think twice. Hoarding your cash at home or in the back yard is foolish; one good fire or hurricane and there goes your life savings. There are no serious financial voices out there suggesting that you cash out and run for the hills. No need to shop for real estate and a good, bomb-shelter-experienced contractor in Coeur d'Alene.

Keeping your cash hidden away by its lonesome actually devalues your money, because it doesn't have the chance to keep up with inflation. If you put $5,000 under a mattress in 1987 hoping to buy something that costs $5,000 then, you would need another $4,013.32 to buy that item 20 years later, because of inflation. Your money is devalued by almost half over just two decades of inactivity.

Same thing for keeping your cash for decades in a so-called "safe investment" such as a low-paying certificate of deposit or low-yield savings or money-market account. Yes, that money will at least still be there in 20 years. Yes, it makes sense to have some cash/money market in your portfolio for liquidity and a hedge against short-term losses. But if you take that approach as a long-term investment strategy, expect not to find much when you go to pull it out 20 years from now. Not as much of it will be there, owing to inflation. If you are earning anything less than the 3-5 percent that inflation runs, then you are actually losing money as you think you are making a little cash in interest.

Even popular fixed-income investments like Treasury Bills are hurt by inflation in the long run.

Stocks are still a good investment — in the long term if not the short term. They aren't normally susceptible to the ravages of inflation, as Investopedia from Forbes magazine explains: "If you invest only in stocks, worrying about inflation shouldn't keep you up at night. Over the long run, a company's revenue and earnings should increase at the same pace as inflation."

Many financial advisors have been screaming at the top of their lungs for long-term investors in stocks and mutual funds to sit tight on their investments, despite the current economic crisis on Wall Street. No need to bail out of the market at this point, as the market overall will likely rebound over time.

It is those short-termers, people who need money sooner rather than later, who are in a more difficult position. Investment advisors such as Kiplinger's foresee a longer-than-average recession and bear market. Moving money out of stocks and stock funds for a while might (keyword: might) make sense if you need to draw cash out of the market soon. The advice here is get a good financial professional to advise you, someone who understands how much risk you are willing to take in the market and who can curb your instinct to chuck your cash under a mattress.

We know there will still be some folks out there determined to take their money out of banks, stocks, money funds, etc. at all costs because they are certain that the next Great Depression is a comin'. For them, we can only suggest that they spend their cash immediately, either for tanzanite gems on a late-night QVC shopping binge or by donating it all to pastors Randy and Paula White.

This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2008.