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I just realized the only time I see my money is when I withdraw from an ATM. Ye gads, my wealth accumulated over 70 years is all in cyberspace.
I am at the mercy of computer systems and the folks who run them – and maybe someone in a tiny village in Mongolia. Everything hinges on a programing language which are all Greek to me.
Even my last ATM attempt didn’t go well. There is only one branch of my bank on the Cape. I have to drive twenty minutes to get there. I walked into the lobby and found the ATM out of order. A teller said the drive up was working so off I go only to find at the moment it only dispenses $100 bills. I go back to the lobby minutes later and they have closed. Tapping on the door I attract the teller who signals through the glass she can’t unlock the door effectively saying “tough luck take $100 bills if you want cash.”
I know my online IRA and brokerage accounts say I own shares of stock, and mutual funds, but I don’t have any certificates, I have no proof. My wealth could go poof with a systems flaw.
I think I have cash in those accounts too. At least that’s what the website says. Where exactly is the Money Market? Have you ever visited?
Our several bank accounts are … where? Nowhere or somewhere…I hope. No passbook. If I lost my iPhone I’m broke because I can’t access my bank or investment firms app – or the ATM. Is my debit card proof of anything? I think not.
I have deeds, legal pieces of paper, showing I own my houses and cars, but not a visible “real” thing backing up all our investments. You can’t even get savings bonds to lock away in a safe deposit box anymore, instead you use Treasury Direct where your bonds are…
It seems wealth is nothing more than our ID, password and the last four digits of our social security number.
I just logged on to my Fidelity account and saw this
”Fidelity is currently unable to provide account information. Please try again later.”
oh my‼️ no doubt temporary – I hope. Scary stuff to think about.
Just make believe its 1980. I’d send in money to my mutual fund and find out my share price a week or so later.
Mobile app or web site?
Log out and back in.
Website, tried several times. I’m sure it’s a matter of time before it’s fixed.
Yes. Like Vanguard they seem to be doing technology upgrades to their front-end web experience. Service issues at that layer are easier to revert to restore access.
The ground truth of your account holdings lives in a data tier with so many protections for accuracy issues or loss.
The concept that my accounts are just entries in a giant spreadsheet susceptible to hacking, fraud, computer bugs and societal upheaval has long worried me. For a while, I thought it would be prudent to keep a small stash of real dollars – currency – available to me in my home. But after a few years, the thought that the value of those bills had been melting day by day caused me to give up. What became hard was getting rid of them. I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t use much cash any more, but I am finally near the end of my dollar liquidation. (The day I get rid of the last bill will likely be the day financial Armageddon strikes, ha ha.)
Couldn’t you just deposit them at your bank?
I have no interest in dragging 100 kilograms of gold with me through life. Cash became passe when Covid occurred.
I rarely use cash anymore. Two of the places where I do use it don’t take credit cards, and the only other one has a surcharge for cards. My checking and savings accounts are with Capital One. Not only do I not use their branches, I’ve never even seen one. I use the fee-free ATM in a nearby Wegmans supermarket when I need to get cash. I have the POA for my brother, who’s in assisted living. When I need to get cash for him, I use the same ATM, even though his bank has a branch in the Wegmans parking lot.
I’ve heard it recommended that at least once per year you should download full PDFs (or screen snap) itemized statements of all your accounts.
I download statements each month. Pdfs of bank and credit cards. Error can occur.
I usually do it once a month. Still have some that send paper. I’m old-fashioned enough to feel the need for some paper to reconstruct things should systems crash.
This has scared me for over 30 years.
There is no money. It’s just a number in an electronic ledger.
So why are people so freaked out about bitcoin?
Because it has no intrinsic value, produces no income, and is backed by the full faith and credit of … no one. Bitcoin is not money.
The greater fool theory drives the price higher. Thankly, there’s a lot of them.
That smart guy, or gal, inside of ChatGPT says that about 11% of the money supply (M2) is in physical cash. Thus, all the rest is simply digits in an electronic ledger somewhere. I’ve become OK with that. What’s more worrisome is the simple fact that 90% of your deposit at the bank isn’t there. And, as depositors at Silicon Valley Bank found out in Mar 2023, your money really isn’t there if everyone else wants their money back at the same time. Had the Fed and Treasury not backstopped ALL deposits, not just the FDIC insured ones, well, we may have had a massive run on the many banks, at that time, that had negative equity as a result of the fastest increase in the Fed fund’s rate ever. This all happened within days of Mr. Michael Barr’s testimony in Congress (Barr with the Fed Vice Chair for Supervision) in which he stated the banking system was sound as ever, with no systemic risks. You can’t make this up. And nowadays, it’s an electronic run that quickly overwhelms the bank. The whole system is based upon trust, trust in a third party. Fidelity I trust. They have no shareholders to appease, whereas the banks….Don’t forget, in the fall of 2008 many of the major banks/investment banks such as BofA, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, WaMu, Wachovia, etc. were all insolvent and required a bailout or takeover. The whole system failed at once requiring the U. S. Govt, not just the Fed, to become the lender of last resort. So, I’m not surprised that some people self custody bitcoin which allows them to hold their wealth and transmit it to others without a trusted third party. For all intents and purposes now, it’s all digital money. And sorry about the rant folks, it’s just that a banking system that relies on fractional reserve lending will always have crises, and the regulators will always fail(1998, 2008, 2023), and the solution will be to print more money.
Schwab checking has no fee ATM access. I don’t recall if it’s unlimited or 6 withdrawals per month. Either way, this can be worth more than a checking account which pays interest.
On the ATM, look for the AllPoint network that’s fee free, I think they’re in CVS which has locations on the Cape. (Target, Walgreens too)
Costco, Wawa also have fee free ATMs.
Just went to a CVS and they had the Allpoint ATM. I gave it a try. It said will you accept a $3.50 fee in addition to any fee your bank may charge. I touched “No” and it gave my card back. 😩
Good tip. I will do that.
Hey Dick,
I just gave you an update vote to get you back to even. I rarely “vote” on comments, but couldn’t believe you were net negative on such a benign comment. Come on people!
I think it could have been a mistake (the down votes). I’ve noticed the votes aren’t perfect (sometimes one pops up as two).
The one popping up as two likely means someone else was voting at the same time. If you accidentally vote down when you meant up, you can vote up to cancel the down and then vote up again. As someone who often draws down votes no matter what I post (I seem to have at least three stalkers), I find the vote system largely useless.
My. pleasure
Wow, I’ve just barely recovered from having 90% of my retirement savings mailed in paper checks by Fidelity to my home (and dropped outside my front door by UPS). As of today, it’s finally all in my Schwab IRA. Or so they say.
When I’m awake at 3 a.m. worrying about this, I’ll think of you, Dick! 😂😬
Why did it need to be sent to you by check? I recently had my main IRA account transferred from Assetmark to Schwab “in -kind” and all assets arrived in the Schwab account in a few days. It is now being managed by Schwab with no drama or concern.
Because, Fidelity… I had the same problem when I rolled my 401k at Fidelity to an IRA at Vanguard.
I will be doing this in 3 months. Did you have them make it out to Schwab but just wanted it mailed to you so you could ensure that it arrived and then take it to Schwab? I could just see so many places where things could go awry from the mailing of it to it being lost in the maze of a large company when its received.
Good to read the update on your pension checks!
I am not worry about thing I can not control. I keep some small amount of cash and food / water that I can survive for a week. Being a patient of transplant, I kept 4-6 months of medications since most of them are imported after having trouble getting medications during pandemic. To get a small bill, maybe you should try to withdraw $80 multiple times.
I hate to ask this dumb question, but will anyway. You were already in the lobby of the bank when you realized the ATM wasn’t operating, why didn’t you just go over to the teller window and withdraw some money? I think the teller had the last laugh knowing he/she could have helped you, but instead sent you back outside at closing time.
You have mentioned being a Fidelity customer. Why not get their credit card and pay no fees anywhere at an ATM? Have never heard of an ATM machine that only dispenses $100 bills.
I’ve noticed that many of the local ATMs dispense $100 and $50 bills by default. Some machine allow you to elect your denomination. The large bill dispensing was a surprise to me about a year ago. My bank allows you to withdrawal from a teller using a debit card.
Of the three Chase branches within three miles of our home, two have eliminated tellers, including the closest one in town. A real pain.
The last time I’ve been in a branch of my credit union was before I moved from NJ in 2002. Since then, I have used credit at the CU to purchase several homes, cars, and an RV, and never went in a branch. This week at the Iowa State Fair, I noticed most of the merchants take cards. So do parking meters and vending machines. I can’t think of a reason to go into a branch.
Not often i agree, but i do cash bonds and sometimes to get the ATM cash in other denominations. In the past that’s where we got Euros too.
I go in to turn in rolled coins and get more wrappers. Depending on the teller, they’re annoyed or pleased, but always surprised. I guess people don’t do that much anymore. Dick, I’ve had success ordering foreign currency through my bank (an actual phone call) and having it delivered to my home. I always feel better having some in hand upon arrival, even if I’m paying a bit more.
I certainly would not drive 20 minutes to get anything less than $100 from an ATM at a bank getting ready to close, especially in an area where everything is expensive if you want to use cash.
The ATM is on the Cape where only the Rich people live.
I suspect my neighbors here would strongly dispute that. Now if you said rich people own property you might have a point.
The average house price is over $1.2 million in my zip code. The median household income is $87,000.
This post and some of the comments made me think of a 30 year-old Tom Clancy novel, Debt of Honor. In the novel the villain fund the creation o a virus that attacks the stock market software, which prevents the storage of any trade occuring after noon on a certain Friday. As I recall Jack Ryan engineers a simple, yet effective solution – a do-over. They ignore any transaction after noon on the day of the attack and start from the last documented position.
My brother worked in the disaster recovery business. His firm provided backup data storage and computer processing of critical data systems, like hospitals, city infrastructure, and also retail online businesses. Their systems were physically separate from the businesses they served, and had impressive infrastructure resiliency. I recall him being called in late at night a few days before Christmas. A blizzard in the midwest had shutdown the online store of a major retailer. They had the backup online store up and running within an hour.
The government space systems I worked on had disaster recovery plans, with physically separated backup ground control stations, and data storage facilities. These facilities had backup infrastructure systems. We used to practice disaster recovery yearly – including operators jumping in cars and driving several hours to the backup site.
I was involved in a number of anomalies to satellites in my career, some mission critical. I was always impressed by the dedication and creativity that the teams exhibited, working long hours under tremendous pressure to fix the problem. I saw the same dedication in my 7-month pregnant wife and her team, working 24 hour shifts to staff a major hospital’s critical care unit during a blizzard in 1983.
Most of us aren’t aware of the lengths that businesses and agencies go to provide resilience. It’s certainly not perfect, but it is useful to know that these efforts are made. And that good people step up in bad times.
Such interesting stories! Thank you, Rick.
The modern version of disaster preparedness, in this cloud computing era, are core storage systems, built by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which keep multiple copies of your data within a datacenter in realtime, then geo-replicate it across data centers which exist in different regions. A massive earthquake or meteor could wipe out an entire datacenter and services wouldn’t go down or lose a byte of transactional data.
I sometimes think of the scramble to restart financial markets after Sep 11, 2001. Today, with so much redundancy for resiliency, markets likely wouldn’t even go down during such a disaster.
Dick: bottom line, your money is safe.
Thanks Rick. I was beginning to worry readers thought the post was about ATMs and keeping cash.
I’m reasonably confident that things will eventually get sorted out if there’s a serious issue with the electronic systems at a major investment house. But I am less certain how quickly it would be resolved since their total assets measure in the trillions of dollars. So having no access to all my funds for possibly several weeks (even months) could be a serious problem. That’s why I have my investments spread across three major brokerage houses. I’m just not comfortable having all my eggs in one basket.
I keep some cash on hand too … just in case.
Another Old IT guy.
Yep, good idea. I remember being on a road trip last spring and pulling into a small restaurant that only took cash because there was literally no cell service/internet in that tiny town. I was glad I had some cash on me. Gene
There are several places in my little town, including the best restaurant, that give a discount for payment in cash. I was surprised when it happened at the butcher where I occasionally shop, so it’s not just the restaurants. Some gas stations too, of course.
Think about this too much and you’ll convert all your investments into gold, silver, and the like. I’ve seen people go down that path.
Or shotgun shells…..
They’re both symbolic systems of representing value thru no-value markers. The paper has no real value.
The paper is merely a remnant of your childhood, it’s a reflection of a period in the past that you cherished not some repository of real value.
Electronic has replaced paper because it’s better at the things that caused paper to replace hard currency. Ease of movement and transfer, ease of safeguarding.
Look on the bright side, representational currency has been central to elevating billions out of poverty, well worth any angst people may feel about it.
It’s not about the relative value of anything, it’s about documentation of whatever value you have. If I have three mutual funds in my brokerage account, what proof do I have that I own those investments other than what is shown in the accounts system? Should there be a catastrophic system failure, what is my backup proof for the funds. A dollar may not be worth a dollar, but that bill demonstrates I have the value whatever it may be.
The documentation is pretty much the same, they’ve just changed delivery method.
In the past if you lost your document did you lose your account? No, so the docs had no real authority.
True. The validity of your deed and many other important paper documents depends on their verification which is probably computerized.
I don’t think that is actually true. My will, trust and other estate papers are not computerized and they are certainly valid.
My deed may be entered into a data base for record keeping but the paper version is valid.
Maybe your paper deed supersedes an electronic filing. Maybe not. The enforcement of property deeds appears to be highly on locale and who knows who.
This is different than dollars managed by a large bank or brokerage.
There is a subtle but important difference with deeds. In NJ a paper deed that has been signed and notarized is valid, but it must be recorded by the county to be enforceable and fully transferable. Recording a deed protects your property claim. In Nj, the first deed recorded has priority. I’ve had the opportunity to learn this because we are dealing with deed issues in our community as we transition an old electrical distribution system to a new modern system. The utility is asking for homeowners to provide deeds, but legal counsel recommended they obtain the recorded versions from the county
We’re having problems with this now in our community where it appears that neighbors are encroaching on a park. The publicly available maps, paper deeds, and paper trails of the city and county are full of discrepancies. Perhaps people did not file properly and subsequent owners did not know this and are operating based on mistaken property lines. Which are correct? Was this intentional theft or carelessness? It’s a mess.
This comment/discussion is one of the most valuable hidden features of Humble Dollar – info/details regarding financial activity.
Recently we began building an addition to my daughter’s home. It is the potential of a late in life mother-in-law (etc.) apartment or merely an alternative investment of her inheritance.
My youngish adult children have been learning some valuable lessons about owning property. So much information kind of creeps into our brains as we live life. But this project has thrown them into the pool of learning about things like equity/escrow/property taxes/insurance/builders insurance, etc.
I don’t even know how the deed is going to need to be changed to reflect the addition. But that’s their problem.
It’s always about the record keeping. If your deed got incinerated in a fire you don’t suddenly lose your house.
100% in the 80s I went to the NYC board of health to get copies of my birth certificates. It was all computerized by then. No clerks rummaging through files.
I recently helped a friend who has moved overseas correct what seemed like a minor error on her NYC birth certificate from 74 years ago, but was holding up documentation she needed for her new country of residence. Wow! It may be a computerized system but it took multiple letters and a couple of months to accomplish the task. And there actually was a clerk involved. I offered to go in person but that’s not allowed anymore.
Gosh, I hope you know that you can actually go to any ATM, at any location and get some cash. You don’t have to go to your own bank. All you have to do is to be willing to part with a few bucks in the form of a fee. Since I bank with Schwab, they will even pay me back for the fees.
It has been noted that Americans are generally losing faith in religion, attendance continues to decline. Many people lack faith that our government is actually beneficial. As evidenced by some folk, there is a lack of faith in science and medicine. I am therefore not surprised that you doubt your own faith in our system of finance. With fiat money that actually has no intrinsic value, and things like crypto, meme stocks, there is much to doubt.
But, even if you had a million dollars in paper currency, what would you have even then, except a few pounds of paper?
Perhaps, as a few physicists have speculated recently, our universe exists inside of a gigantic Black Hole. ( You can check this out on YouTube.) Is anything really real these days?
Gee, I’m not that old, but why should I pay a fee to get my own money? Yesterday I was in a restaurant that was cash only? Yup, they conveniently had an ATM too. The guy in front of me in line didn’t have cash so it cost him $4.00 to get $20. And why cash only? According to the IRS the largest source of lost revenue is small businesses that deal in cash transactions. Imagine that?
You wrote that you drive 20 minutes to use your bank. I assume that is each way. At 30 mph average, that’s a 20 mile round trip. The 2025 IRS mileage rate is $0.70 per mile. So the trip costs you about $14. If there were a closer bank that charged $4 per transaction, it would still be a better deal.
And I’m sure you know that ATMs are never free. Their cost is built into the banks’s business model, likely in lower interest rates on savings and checking accounts.
Richard, I know your love your Fidelity brokerage account (for good reason, I have one too). All you need is to get their debit card and attach it to the Cash Management area (you can limit the funds available as you choose). Then you can use any ATM (there may be some rare exceptions), and Fidelity will reimburse the ATM fee (usually the same day). I also use Cash Management to autopay my mortgage and any bills that I cannot charge to credit cards without incurring a fee. This is a great perk that Fidelity offers that you are missing out on.
You can even get cash (foreign cash, that is) from ATMs in foreign countries. Capital One used to refund those fees, too. But if I actually want cash, like maybe once a year, I go into the bank so I can get the exact denominations I want.
Used to do it all the time. I was told the ATMs had the best exchange rate too.
Just don’t fall for the Dynamic Currency Conversion scam. Always, always get and pay in the local currency.
Good post Richard, I have the same concerns. That’s why I keep all my money hidden in the basement, under the steps in the empty box from my big screen Samsung TV that I have written “life savings” on with an over-sized magic marker.
What could possibly go wrong down there?
Just kidding. I’m not so stupid to tell you where I really hid the box. Besides, we don’t even have a basement…. It’s in the attic! DUH!
ROFL. Dan, I was thinking of going out and buying a mattress that I could stuff all my money under, after reading this post. I don’t think I could use the mattress I sleep on now as it may make it uncomfortable for sleeping . 🤷🏻♂️
Can’t remember the last time I took cash out of a ATM. Certainly a couple of years. But then if you’re not facilitating tax dodging or other criminality by paying for services or goods cash in hand there is no real need.
Occasionally get cashback at a supermarket till.
Perversely carry more local currency cash when I’m travelling but I think that’s the “far from home” factor of what ifs holds get put on cards etc for unusual spend patterns etc.
Can probably survive a week or so at home with cash I have but doubt in the event of an e-meltdown EPOS equipment will be able to handle payments etc so no gas, no groceries. I figure society would be looting within days.
money held in accounts is that just paper statement and that is why I carry $300 in my pocket just in case the Cyber World has a melt down……..I feel I can weather the storm until the Nerds fix what ever code they need…..the world did not end on Y2K so I think they have a handle on it that is why I still have a flip phone…….KISS
Let’s just hope it can be fixed and the guy in Mongolia is not smarter than the nerds.
Yup. I have the same concerns. I get (pay for) paper statements from major accounts just to have something physical. I doubt the would be of any real use if something made all the bits that represent my “money” go poof.
I do keep a small amount of cash “just in case” all the computers go haywire for the short term.
What are the alternatives?
Keeping a week or 2 of emergency cash is good practice. It’s the power grid not the computer systems that present the biggest risk.
Paper currency tho doesn’t necessarily help. How many retailers can actually do business without their computer systems, I know gas stations can, but can’t tell you the last time I was in a grocery store that didn’t use scanners.
I’m guessing there are no alternatives at this point. We are at the mercy of security experts. Let’s hope there are backup after backup systems 🙄
I retired from 20 years in Cyber security in part because I perceived defense to be an unwinnable game. Fingers crossed :-/