Grandma horrified after life savings is literally eaten by termites

There’s a metaphor for the tax collector in here somewhere.

A granny in Malaysia hit rock bottom in an unusual way after she had her entire life savings completely devoured by termites. A Facebook post detailing her unfortunate route to rock bottom is currently blowing up online.

According to her grandson, Khairul Azhar, who uploaded the tragic tale, the unnamed senior had reportedly squirreled away RM30,000 (around $8,700) in a box for a pilgrimage to Mecca in 2024, the Straits Times reported.

However, her dreams of a trip to the holy land were soon dashed by a biblical plague of bugs. When she tried accessing her stash, she saw that the banknotes had been chewed to shreds by termites, per her son’s account.

Accompanying photos show the mangled greenbacks, which have been sliced into leaf-like shapes.

Khairul, who lives in Kelantan, said he tried to salvage the situation by sending half of the pillaged bills to the Central Bank of Malaysia with the hopes of getting them replaced.

However, he claimed that the other half were beyond salvaging.

Khairul alleged that perhaps the banknote banquet was a sign that his grandmother was not destined to go to Mecca.

Now, he is imploring others to refrain from storing their cash at home, lest they suffer a similar fate.

The social media commentariat had numerous suggestions for how to better save money with most recommending that next time she convert it to gold — which is far less palatable to wood-eating insects.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time termites have destroyed someone’s money, which often contains cellulose — the ingredient in wood that the bark-biters subsist on.

In 2013, a Chinese woman paid a hefty termite tax after the pests chewed through $65,000 of her savings.

This is perhaps particularly problematic given Americans’ penchants for hoarding physical dough.

A September poll of 2,000 US adults found found that 51% of people have cold hard cash stored away in their homes with the average person stashing $1,010.