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?
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 3.12K Posts
- 78K Comments
- Modlog
Being able to use cash is a privilege, and we should not let governments take it from us, since then they can monitor and control everything money-related.
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
You should also shave all of your body hair. Without eyebrows you may look like Mark Zuckerberg. Who wouldn’t want that?
Ski mask isn’t enough. You need to remove your face.
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 fantasize about getting it together enough to pull off what you are doing. Good for you — keep inspiring us.
If you fully stop using cashless at the grocery store you might get put on a list. Governments love tracking irregularities.
Appearing “normal” and occasionally using cash at your regular grocery store makes it far less suspicious. Then for every irregular store you can use cash.
deleted by creator
People don’t understand that not leaving any trace is suspicious of itself. Though it requires participating in a system many oppose.
Then more of us should get ourselves on those lists. We should make the lists useless by way of flooding them
I’d love to but since tons of credit cards charge fees to the store, shops increase their prices on menus and items to account for this. On top of the fact that I receive points for purchasing, I’d be losing money if I were to be using cash alone.
This seems like circular logic. The credit card & transaction companies incentivize you to buy more & take a cut every time while attempting to raise the # of cuts they take. Like OP I bet you’d save even more when using cash as you’d buy less.
Depending on the business, some actually charge less if you are upfront on paying cash
I’ve only seen small/local businesses, sometimes big gas chains, give a cash discount so naturally it makes sense to use cash when I can but it is very few shops still.
Yup, but those are exactly the places to use cash and it’s amazing what even some of your meals being in cash and it influencing your budget does to your purchase habits.
I agree fully with using a cash back credit card for the big places and purchases and cash when around town locally.
Kinda feels like I’m doing what my grandparents did but hey it kinda works
why does this stop you from cash? you’re still charged the same
Like Orange said, I’m not getting a discount by using cash. Prices are higher because of credit cards so I might as well use them to get 2 - 5% cashback/discount. Doesn’t sound like much but it leads to hundreds of dollars in a single year for me.
You usually are tho. Around here it 3%
Only very few shops in my areas and mostly just local resturants. So yeah, it makes sense to use cash then but it isn’t the norm around here.
oh i see, i was tired haha. i’ve never used those card benefits much myself
I’m huge in the credit card game with all sorts of cards but it is a privacy I am willing to sacrifice.
maybe even less if he doesn’t buy stuff for same reasons as OP
That’s their point, they don’t get a corresponding discount for using cash.
I also want to pay more in cash to reward businesses for still allowing you to pay in cash as I’m noticing more are going cashless. I’m occasionally reliant on cash so I don’t want to end up stranded on those occasions where I can only pay cash, so definitely want to ensure the option remains open. The privacy is a benefit too of course.
I think at the moment I mostly buy “important” stuff in cash and everyday stuff with card. Important like a new computer or something, because I’d plan to have that computer for a while and don’t want it easily traced to me. Everyday stuff like food because, while I completely understand not wanting the state/banks/etc to know anything about you, I personally don’t care too much if the state knows what I eat. Would be nice to eventually become one of those people with no footprint at all though.
A computer is something you’d want to buy with a credit card, as they often come with additional free warranties for various mishaps
Thats fine if you value the warranty over your privacy (not trying to be sarcastic, everyone has a different threat model and I mean it when I say that’s fine for some people), but personally I would prefer the computer were not traceable to me, including at the cost of having to buy replacements when they otherwise come with warranty. I have turned down various things that electronics come with that require leaving your details. I understand why people leave their details to get the extra stuff but i am willing to spend more to be anonymous.
Anyone in a 14 eyes country is essentially impossible to achieve zero footprint, but assuming they’re not actively looking into your network packets or searching for you on CCTV its feasible to have a relatively low footprint. I’m essentially trying to eliminate as far as practical, any data points I’m just giving away for free for no reason, especially to corporations and advertisers.
Afraid they almost definitely are actively monitoring all my above-ground activities lol, I’m in a country getting quite a bit of international flak for cracking down on political dissidents. Won’t say any more than that, tbh that doesn’t narrow down my location much with the current state of things anyway. But yeah I agree, I want to minimise the amount of data accessible about me.
I only use cash at places that have a purchase portal as complicated as giving change. You want to hand me a tip machine on a stick without tap pay and select a tip amount on a tiny shitty touch screen? You can count my change, thanks. Hopefully we see some traction in public opinion regarding privacy soon. Until then banks are selling your data, but the infra is required to live a modern life.
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.
😂 The way you wrote it I imagined your pants dropping during a fight.
When I exchanged it I’d always end up with well over 100 euros, even 200.
It was also useful when I was low on money. Just yesterday my account was in the negative because… apparently it is possible for companies to get money from me when I have none? Well at least the coins were always safely there in my drawer so I could you know… eat?
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.
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.
IIRC that rule applies to debit cards only, which most businesses pay a flat monthly fee to handle, as opposed to credit cards which charge a percentage. Also, fuck AMEX.
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
I love the occasional “thanks for not requiring change!” that comes from it.
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?
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 majority 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.
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
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.