Did your dad ever tell you where he got the rubber bands, because that detail got me for some reason, little stacks like he was doing it on a schedule. Anyway, yes, split it up and it is not paranoia. I keep maybe two months of bills in cash in a safe at home, checking at a credit union, savings at a totally different bank, and a little bit of actual physical silver in a lockbox, mostly because I lived through a bank freeze in 2008 where my debit card just stopped working for a week. The cash at home is the part that matters most, since when the app breaks or the system goes down, that is the only money that moves the same day. Just don't do what my uncle did and hide it somewhere you'll forget, because we found $600 in a sock drawer three years after he died and almost threw the socks out.

Man, that story hits home in a weird way! It's funny how one little slip-up can turn into this whole new habit you swear by forever. I feel like that happens with everything, not just repair work. You get comfortable doing something a certain way, then one tiny detail bites you and suddenly you're triple checking stuff you never even thought about before. It's like when I started cooking and one time I undercooked chicken for guests, now I poke every piece of meat like five times before I serve it. Same with backing up my phone photos after I lost a whole vacation's worth of pics. These little callbacks are basically life's way of teaching us to slow down and pay attention to the boring stuff we think we've got handled.