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?
My bank recently got rid of their own contactless payment app and now I am forced to use Google pay. You have to accept Google’s privacy terms and they’ll have access to all your transactions. No thanks.
Beyond that I quite like using tech. Still waiting for bitcoin to take off after more than a decade. For budgeting you can use programs and it’ll notify you real time on your expenditures.
This decision was helped by moving to GrapheneOS and losing Google Pay, definitely. (And Degoogling for other reasons at the same time). If I have to carry a card I may as well carry cash, a few folded notes are the same footprint as a card and as I mentioned, I try not to break notes if I don’t have to, so I’m not carrying change often.
I’ve lived in Germany and cards are just not really a thing there. The only real thing I hated about it was that everyone was somehow incapable of just prepping their cash, so I’ve wasted countless hours waiting in line at banks.
The other thing I hated was during corona. I worked in a store and we had to handle all that cash 🤢
Other than that, the coins are quite annoying. They’re bulky and heavy. My trick was to just empty them out every time I came home into a bowl. Then once a year or so I’d get it turned into paper money.
I have a leather coin bag full of change that I swear I could bludgeon a person to death with because it just so rarely gets used.
It pulls down my pants if I bring it with me anywhere.I recently had it with me out recently and ended up paying the restaurant bill in exact change because of it and we were all amazed. They say it doesn’t happen really anymore.
I just can’t justify the like 8 bucks of paper money it would make me either.
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.
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.
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
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.
“Is anyone else still predominantly using cash day to day?”
Yes. Germany.
Man, Japan and Singapore too.
Lots of heavy cash flow dense countries seem to still be a fan of the paper, honestly.
Yep I was gonna say… and Japan. 95% of places I went were cash only, I think I only used my debit card once during a trip of weeks.
When were you last there, and what areas?
2023, Yokohama, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Osaka, Yokosuka then back to Yokohama. In three weeks I saw one toilet with no bidet. And all of the bidets were nicer than my $300 one at home… was awesome.
Sorry for the change in topic to bidet. Every week or so I’d withdraw like $300-$500 in yen and just survive off that til I was below $100 then I’d hit an atm again. Money went far because of a favorable exchange rate… and alcohol and food are extremely cheap in Japan even without those factors.
In Hiroshima, we went into a bar with 8 seats (common for bars and restaurants to only be able to host 1-2 groups, it was neat), anyway four of us drank 4-6 drinks, beers, mixed drinks, etc… I swear the barman must have given us a deal, when the check came we asked them to double check it because we thought it was wrong… about $50 for ~20-25 drinks. Insane. That was the case in most every city but Hiroshima was the cheapest bar tab I ever saw relative to the amt we consumed.
For the record, the Japanese drink like the Irish stereotype, they go HARD.
Huh. I’ve been to all of those but Yokosuka, some as recently as a few months ago but also pre 2023, and I’ve found that almost everything I go to took card. I wonder if we somehow happen to only go to places that do/don’t take card and thus have totally different experiences with cash only.
And yeah the toilets are great. Toto sells them in the US if you’re based here. A little expensive, but if you’re gonna live at your current place for a long time, it’s probably worth it.
The bar sounds awesome, sheesh. That’s the cheapest tab of that size I’ve ever heard of. I buy most of my things while I’m there due to pricing, and even then I’m shocked at how damn cheap that is haha
Tbh after being rejected for card the first day or two in Yokohama, I just stopped asking and assumed cash. So tbh it sounds like I could have used a card more, but I enjoyed handling the cool-looking money so it was a win-win 😁
Heh, Germany isn’t a good example. Its really hard to find a German bank that doesn’t charge you money to let you take cash out of your own account.
Most countries in South America use cash for most transactions.
huh, thats not common in my experience. Most people are with Sparkasse or other mayor banks which allow for free cash withdrawals, at least in their network. You can also get cash in supermarkets o.O
Sparmasse charges a monthly fee, no?
Only if your direct deposit amount is below a threshold, which is low enough that most full time workers meet it.
And what happens when you stop working in Germany? They just steal your money every month? Fuck that
Most probably do, but thats not specific for cash and also depends on your local Sparkasse
Was, das habe ich noch nie gehört? Ich habe bei der Sparkasse, Commerzbank und Santander ein Girokonto, keine davon verlangt Gebühren fürs Geld abheben bei Automaten der eigenen Bank. Bei der Commerzbank und Santander kann ich sogar 3 mal im Monat kostenlos bei Automaten einer fremden Bank abheben.
Außerdem kannst du kostenlos Geld abheben, wenn du im Supermarkt per Gieokarte (aber nicht Kreditkarte) zahlst
This is one thing the UK is really good for, all bank owned ATMs and most public ones are completely free to use for any cardholder of any bank. My bank doesn’t even have physical branches but I can still use the ATM of any bank lobby for free. There are some paid ones run by private companies but the fee is usually a flat £1-2 max. I’ve been to ATMs in Europe that have tried to charge me something like 10EUR to take out 30.
How’s Ireland?
Probably vaguely similar from when I’ve visited
A lot of the convenience of the modern UK high street baking sector is because of Girobank, the 1960s Government’s successful attempt to force modernisation on the banking industry. When I hear about the ass-backwardsness of other country’s banking arrangements (especially the US) I give a little thankyou to Girobank.
Edit: Also, yes, tourist ATMs are predatory bullshit.
Hm. Since covid, even my local bakery started taking cards. Even most corner shops for late night beers do. Kebab is usually still impossible, but that seems like the final frontier.
I’m starting to use more cash for daily spendings. The rise of surveillance pricing is terrible, better to hide qt least some of information from my bank.
I’m finding supermarkets locking their regular prices behind an app or loyalty card is getting out of control. Out of all the major supermarkets, ONLY Aldi has nothing of the sort currently.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s will often have a £3 item that costs £6 without their loyalty card. Of course it’s £3 in every other shop: it’s not a special offer for members, it’s a punishment price for those who don’t give away their data.
But say you only use that card for that store, where’s the privacy invasion? It wouldn’t be much right? Trying to find a downside of a store card.
two words: data aggregation.
They know it’s you. They can match it everywhere else.
Tesco now even has stores in the UK where you scan your loyalty card on the way in, pick up items off shelves, and walk out and it charges you accurately. The amount of cameras and sensors on the ceiling was uncanny. So not only do they have your purchasing profile but they now know what you look like, your gait, and any other identifying information they use to make that work
(OK it might be just lads in the Philippines following you on CCTV like Amazon did but still)
Cause I’m looking at signing up for an REI credit card and haven’t found much downside researching it online. I do find it sus that all the employees are pushing it though. Asking if we are members and have the credit card and stuff.
Because then REI gets to be the one selling your purchase history and credit report.
A nice way to understand how much your data costs
Wow, I’ve never seen pricing that bad without a loyalty card in the US. Not saying it doesn’t happen, quite often it’s a 20-30% discount for the loyalty card, and occasionally more if you use the app (which I refuse, since I use Jenny’s number for the loyalty card).
You’re right to call it a punishment. Wonder if we can aggregate the loyalty app program somehow, like host the app in an Android VM on a VPS that anyone can then access, so the data they get is muddied.
Just one example I found in 5 seconds:
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/282774907
£7.50 member price, £10.50 otherwise.
There’s nothing stopping you scanning anyone else’s barcode but I guess they’d cancel the account if it got used en masse
Safeway. That’s only one of the several good reasons why I don’t shop there.
I usually ask other people in line for their loyalty cards. Or, in case there are none (which is rare) - I have found usable photos of random cards’ barcodes. It was mostly from the respective loyalty programs’ reviews, but I believe I saw a group that specifically shared theirs to get extra points.
Not only that. Companies are now charging people extra for using cards, passing on their processing fees to consumers.
I encourage cash spending at a small business I operate. Average sale is around $150, 10% discount for using cash. About 25% of people pay cash.
It’s very thinly veiled tax avoidance, but zero people have complained or called us out in it.
well nobody complains about having to pay less, and calling it out means they might lose the discount in the future and who would want that?
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
€1-2 for a beer? Germany truly is more advanced than the US
Some are only 30 cents! At least they were…
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
I live in Germany too without using cash for a few years now and it’s no problem at all.
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.
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.
I rarely use cash. Nearly everything I spend is on supermarket and they know exactly what I buy because we’re forced to use their “loyalty” programs anyway.
Then traveling: dealing with other currencies, coming home with unspendable money. And there’s no interest on cash lying around.
But I hate the tendency for places to not accept cash at all, there should still be a choice.
One bonus is that I keep finding money on the streets in countries that love cash.
In what country are you forced to use loyalty cards?
I’ve never had a cashier tell me I couldn’t pay without a loyalty cars. Usually I ask them to swipe their card, which 80% of the time they do because they get free gas or whatever
Czechia. In many supermarkets “discounts” only apply when you have a card/app. Essentially the “discount” is normal price, otherwise you’ll pay nearly double.
And the cashier doesn’t swipe their own card if you ask them politely to do so?
I really doubt that.
Co worker went into a grocery store and asked for a loyalty card. They wanted him to fill out the form of information. He’s like can I just not? The person behind the counter couldn’t care less…they just handed him the plastic sheet of like ~5 cards (full size and several keychain sized). So my loyalty card is spilt with that many people and is tied to no one. So the data on that account is wild I’m sure. I don’t get the like 3 cents off gas but I wasn’t gonna use it for that anyway. I hate ‘loyalty card’ prices on everything…
They also usually tie loyalty cards to phone numbers. So tell them 555-555-5555. Chances are high that someone already registered a card to some bullshit phone number, and many people are using it simultaneously
I’m using fake names on all those things, but prices without loyalty are often insane. It’s basically an extra tourist tax.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You’re also paying in the data they sell on you
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.
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.
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.
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.
All day, everyday! Freedom over convenience!
