I had two reasons, the first is because i found it way too easy to spend on my card without thinking, and the second because I wanted to regain a bit of privacy alongside everything else I’m doing. Ive set it up in my bank that on payday, an amount of my salary automatically goes to the bills account, some goes to long term savings, some to short term savings, then the rest I take out in cash.
It really does change my perception of spending I think: Ive found myself not buying things because I didnt want to break a note and carry change. I can physically see how much I have left. I can take £20 to the pub and leave when its finished. Plus it feels really good knowing every single transaction isnt stored forever. I have a small amount of money on a contactless ring for emergencies like a bus fare or somewhere that unexpectedly only takes card.
Is anyone else still predominantly using cash day to day?
With the exception of my early college career (pre-dodd-frank) I never really stopped using cash. It’s much harder to budget using a card even though these days you can check your bank balance from your phone.
I actually started with it this week. It is partially due to privacy but also because I lost a sense for value. It is really easy to press a button online and pay say 20 euro. Not that I am irresponsible with money but the numbers on your bank account feel so meaningless.
Now they have your fingerprints. Good job.
Just never go outside without leather gloves and a ski mask
Follow me for more excellent tips that definitely won’t make you look like a serial killer to everyone
Ski mask isn’t enough. You need to remove your face.
In the US, I’ve noticed several places, mostly restaurants that now charge a convenience fee for credit card transactions. Double bonus for cash. I’ve even started using checks again as they don’t have a fee.
That’s actually illegal in the UK, to charge a fee for card use. Just means everyone pays more in increased prices, although most people in the UK use card for everything so for the population as a whole its probably a money saver, if not a privacy saving policy.
Been thinking of trying this. Thing is nobody uses cash anymore around here (Nordics). In supermarkets I know for sure I can use cash, but restaurants, bars or small business it’s going to be hit and miss. I guess I’d have to endure the awkwardness of asking in every single place if they take cash or not
Businesses aren’t legally required to accept cash?
No, same in the UK. How could you force them to take cash if they don’t want to?
What if you only had cash?
Then you can’t buy anything
It’s a private contract between the business and the customer, you are supposed to ensure you have means to pay beforehand.
In the US cash is considered “legal tender for all debts” by law currently.
That’s changing though as some places won’t accept cash even still.
It’s the same in the UK but “legal tender” doesn’t mean what most people think it means.
When you buy something from a shop you’re technically offering to enter a contractual relationship for the purchase of said goods. If the shop agrees to your terms, including how you’d like to pay, then the contract is ratified. If they don’t accept your preferred method of payment then there is no contract of sale and there is no debt to be paid.
This is also why shops don’t have to honour pricing errors; when you bring the item to the checkout you’re technically just offering to buy it for the listed price and they can choose to reject your offer.
I love the occasional “thanks for not requiring change!” that comes from it.
I should start using cash too once I find my wallet. And that means I will be able to give some money to the homeless
A small addition to the discussion - I pay in advance with cash for 10 coffees at a cafe I go to several times a week. Its an informal arrangement, and a very small independent cafe (these are common in my country). If you have a regular spend somewhere ask if they could do this. Obviously it doesn’t work for all things. I wouldn’t do it as a pay later type of tab though otherwise you’re back in credit land. It works for me as its the best coffee in my area, an indie outlet, and they threw in 1 free per 10 paid for. They get my loyalty I guess and money in their bank (or cash in the till)- also bypassing the 3 or so middle men orgs between my bank and their bank by way of visa etc. which is another big motivator for me - we are being reamed in our country with up to 3% charge for using a credit card. Maybe thats common globally?
Some credit cards offer 2% cash back… (Not points) So it’s hard to give that up when you get 2% off for just about every dollar you spend. Why wouldn’t you put every dollar on card you would normally spend.
This doesn’t work well if you are paying interest…
If you’re fiscally savvy and don’t overspend and can pay your balance in full every month and are not paying interest, this is a strong vote for choosing over cash.
However, without that…I see no benefit and would use more cash for all reasons in this thread.
Well that’s the way it should be. If they’re selling your data, they should compensate you for that in some way. Then it becomes a personal decision as to how much it matters to you.
As an aside, this is why I recently degoogled, having been all in on Google products for 10 years. 10 years ago you got amazing value for your data from Google but now every single useful product has been enshittified or shut down and they collect more data than ever. The sums just don’t add up any more.
This is sort of a scam though. Credit cards give rewards, but then charge the business for the processing fees. So the business needs to raise prices to cover the fees. So really no one is getting that 2% except for the card network. And if you don’t lose a card you lose 2%.
It is basically a protection racket. “It would be a shame if you didn’t use our credit card and had to pay 2% more everywhere”
Yes, I know it is complicated. Handling cash also costs non-trivial amounts. I know that the EU has limits on fees (and that is why basically no credit cards have rewards there). I also know that some businesses see the fee as more of a marketing costs because higher spenders tend to use cards and people tend to spend more on cards.
You’re also paying in the data they sell on you
Out in NYC, the bodegas all have a little plaquard saying that either 1: listed prices include a 2% credit card fee and you can save by using cash, or 2: listed prices may not match your final charge because they add a 2% fee on top for credit cards.
Which is the same thing effectively but it can be sometimes confusing if you’re trying to watch for the fee.
Anecdotally, I have sometimes noticed the cashier will say a price, and then say a slightly different price when I pull out the card. So it’s not like they always apply the fee regardless. At least some of the time anyway.
Not universal of course. I don’t remember if that’s also true for grocery stores, and it’s probably not the case for big chains but honestly I don’t know.
Indeed. Its very uncommon to get flat cashback options in the UK for this reason. I think I had AmEx that gave me 1% for a year and nothing after that.
Apparently there has been an uptick in people using cash in the UK because it helps with budgeting. Which has become more necessary since 60% of inflation started coming from corporate profiteering and four people became able to outcompete twenty million others in the market.
I would consider paying with cash again IF $100 bills weren’t so much trouble.
It’s hard to get a $100 bill. ATMs just don’t spit them out. Many places refuse to take them. It’s just hard to carry over $100 in cash without quickly having your wallet explode in size.
Back in the day $100 was like caring $1,000 now. You could get a lot done with $20 bills… You can burn through the major of $100 just going to dinner and I also have no desire to manage all that cash at my house or hit up an ATM every other day.
Interesting, we have £50 notes in the UK but they essentially don’t exist for most people. No cash machines will give you one, and shopkeepers mistrust them, although generally accept. 20s are the highest people deal with here usually.
We also have 50s, they have the same problem as 100s.
There are definitely places that will take the 50s and 100s but the number of times you can get burned by it is too high for my liking. I once was on vacation and a state park (I think it was) wouldn’t take anything bigger than 20s for their admission fee.
I think I only had 50s so I think I ended up having a stranger help me out.
50€ notes are really common in Germany (and probably the rest of the euro zone), mistrust only starts at 100€ and above, most shops don’t accept 500€ anymore and 200€ also became quite rare
Yeah I do agree that American cash doesn’t stretch as far. I’m definitely having to hit the ATM or cash back option way more than before for how much things cost. 50s are good for restaurants and the like but 100s are so weirdly distrusted and a pain. But I rarely get back 5s and 10s cause seriously inflation is just so good damn high.
I keep thinking I’m gonna pull out a bunch of cash to have but then… Yeah I am not one to stuff it under my mattress and it being available electronically is so useful… Sigh…
Trying. It’s all we can do until things change for real.
I regularly consider doing this. Obviously it is great from a privacy perspective. But I hate dealing with cash, especially change. With cards I just have one thing in my wallet and it just works forever. My bank account is automatically charged at the end of the month. With cash I need to keep refilling my wallet and carry around annoying change.
I would love to have something digital but also private (like Monero). But so far I have been picking convenience over privacy.
Yeah this is me.
I acknowledge the privacy issues but cash is way too inconvenient.
Change is easy to deal with. Just give it to the people begging.
This works in the US where change is worth very little but we have £1/£2 (or €1/€2) coins in EU which add up to a fair bit.
If it’s low-value change you won’t feel any worse giving it away. And if it’s so valuable to you then it must be valuable enough that you can buy something you want with it.
All day, everyday! Freedom over convenience!
Never stopped using cash. It works, is less trackable and most importantly is accepted for exchange of goods even outside of your typical store front. Say when buying hay or straw for horses and paying then and there.
I visited the UK back in 2022 and I was pretty baffled at how you can universally “tap to pay”. We even visited a pub on the coast of Dorset where they wouldn’t even accept cash as a mean of payment. All in all it was nice, because it meant not having to deal with a foreign currency at all, we spent 10 days just using electronic payment, so as a tourist I think it was a good experience.
In Germany, where I live, you’re basically getting nowhere without cash, it’s still very difficult to eat out or buy small food items like bread or a sandwich. There’s also a culture of paying cash for many things, including pricier items like a second hand car! Shop cashiers usually don’t even blink if you try to pay with a 100€ bill (except if you’re coming at super early and they don’t have change available yet). It’s not unusual for me to end up drawing a quarter to half my monthly salary in cash.
I first disliked it when I moved from France, but now I think it’s actually good for the society. You always have some change to tip a waiter or give to a beggar, a coin for the cart at the supermarket, get something from a vending machine… Also I live in a very quiet area so getting mugged is very unlikely, making it not so scary to carry cash around.
I live in Germany too without using cash for a few years now and it’s no problem at all.
Yes, even the buses and vending machines and car park meters and public toilets have tap to pay. It is certainly very convenient but I think it does encourage spending more, and of course it means literally everything you do is tracked. Luckily I’ve found that most places still do accept cash but there are definitely a few who don’t.
I find it interesting that Germany is so far behind when it comes to IT and modernization. It’s like you’re stuck in 1990, even though you’re surrounded by countries that have used chip payment cards since the early 2000s and contactless payments since the early to mid 2010s. Nobody here in Denmark has touched a fax machine in the last 15-20 years, and apparently Germans still fax things sometimes to this day??
hey don’t belittle technological advancements in germany, people here at are the forefront of innovation: https://simple-fax.de/fax-ki
:'D
Canada has universal tap to pay also, but what surprised me about the UK—at least in the London area—was how quick it was? The payment processing was near-instantaneous. In Canada, I think the machines make a phone call behind the scenes to a bank or something? There’s a significant delay before it goes through.
They use mobile data over here so it can be very slow in spotty areas, but most populated areas in the UK have full 4G/5G.
Ah that makes sense.
I think another thing that might be uniquely Canadian is when you’re paying at a drivethru and you see the machine emerge from the pickup window taped to the end of a hockey stick. That was a big thing during the pandemic for social distancing. I guess more recently, they’ve been moving to less improvised solutions, which is a shame. I really liked the hockey stick!
I agree, cash is fun in Germany. I think it really helps that the 1 and 2 euro coins are available and used in circulation. It was so nice going into the Späti and buying a beer with a single coin.
Change feels unnecessary in the States since the highest denomination that’s widely circulated is the quarter dollar. There are dollar coins, but they are hardly ever used.
€1-2 for a beer? Germany truly is more advanced than the US
Some are only 30 cents! At least they were…
Haha don’t get me started with US coins, I also have a fun story there: we arrived fresh off JFK Airport in NYC and headed to our rental apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn. It was pretty far from the a subway station so we got a connecting bus to get us closer.
The next day, we thought of taking the same bus line to head to Manhattan, except our party of four ended up being expected to pay 4x $2.75 in a machine inside the bus… in coins. That’s 44 quarters. Yup, don’t have that on day 2 of my stay. So we walked 6 blocks.
