This post is a response to @SavingNinja’s Thought Experiment #4.
@SavingNinja poses the following challenge, and asks for a ‘stream of consciousness’ reply:
You wake up one rainy morning and after checking on your accounts you find out that you’ve been ‘wiped-out’ by a cybercriminal. You’ve lost all of the money and assets that you’ve ever owned and you can’t get them back. What will you do?
Thought Experiment #4 by @SavingNinja
My first reaction is to clarify exactly what I have lost. I don’t accept the premise that I have lost all the money/assets I’ve ever owned; for starters, I’ve spent some of those! So for purposes of this discussion I’ve lost all the assets that can be retrieved via online / written instructions to banks/brokers/etc.
This loss is catastrophically bad for me. It amounts to:
- £100k+ of cash in various accounts
- £millions of publicly quoted investments in my own numerous brokerage accounts
- £00ks of assets in Mrs FvL’s accounts and brokerages that I have access to
SavingNinja tells me I can’t get them back. I am not going to take that at face value and am going to find a very competent lawyer, agree a performance-related fee structure, and send them hard at everybody that moves. I am going to consider going public with my predicament and creating an almighty fuss that my banks, brokers, etc will find embarassing at least. But, for the sake of argument, SavingNinja proves right and I can’t retrieve more than, say a few £000s of goodwill gestures.
I do however have a few remaining assets.
Continue reading “I’ve lost everything through a cyber theft”
FIRE v London 