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Here’s something that might surprise you. Until I retired, I don’t think I’d used an automated teller machine for at least twenty years. If I needed to use a credit or debit card, I usually had to spend a significant amount of time locating the AWOL cards. On more than one occasion, I discovered the card was out of date and had to get my wife, Suzie, to complete the transaction. In short, I had a very close relationship with physical cash.
This peculiar state of affairs in the modern world came about by accident. A few of my smaller business customers insisted on settling their monthly bills in cash. My business bankers charged a premium for depositing cash, and I had a stubborn aversion to paying them for the privilege of doing so. I got into the habit of holding onto the bills and conducting my personal spending with them; over the years, it became my default payment.
During my first year of retirement, I’ve moved back into the embrace of the digital payment system and have been reflecting on the small changes this has had on my relationship with money. Talking about “change,” that’s one of the most noticeable differences. I used to be a regular contributor to the numerous charity boxes and collection drives when out and about. It was a great way to offload the piles of coins that built up in my pockets; unfortunately, the charity sector is now worse off because of my lack of coinage.
I also seem to have lost touch with the standard prices of mundane purchases. I really did know the cost of a gallon of milk or the price of a stick of butter. When I had change in my pocket, I took an indecent amount of pleasure in sorting through the coins for the exact amount of the purchase; it made the prices lodge in my mind. Waving my phone in a slightly demented way near a card reader doesn’t fix the price so readily.
Maybe I’m slightly old-fashioned, but I enjoyed the chat with a cashier during the time it took me to retrieve my wallet and gather the correct coins. It was social. Now, if my phone doesn’t “wake up” immediately or demands a fingerprint before opening the payment app, I can feel the palpable frustration from the line behind me—people waiting their turn to “frictionless beep” their way through a digital day.
Looking back, my decades-long cash use was born of a simple desire to keep my hard-earned dollars out of the banker’s profit statement. In that, I succeeded. I lived a life of paper notes and heavy pockets, where the value of a loaf of bread was counted in the specific weight of the silver in my palm. Now, as a reluctant digital convert, I have finally surrendered to the convenience I once shunned. I am lighter, certainly, and I no longer have to rely on Suzie’s card to get through a digital checkout—but I can’t help but feel that in gaining this efficiency, I’ve lost a certain anchor to the real world of dollars and cents.
The cashiers probably enjoyed our chats and the charity boxes certainly made good use of the coins that no longer weigh down my pockets. I miss knowing at a glance whether the milk is a bargain, but I try to look on the bright side — and there are a few. My pockets are considerably lighter, and I now move through the world with the quiet stealth of a trained ninja rather than telegraphing my approach with the jingle of loose change.
I’ve now rejoined the 21st century. It sure was nice being an accidental throwback while it lasted.
I’m almost always carrying a few coins in local currency. You never know when you’ll need one to a use a public toilet, shopping cart or gym locker. And always have paper cash, though rarely need it.
In the U.S. I can’t really think of a need for change. 🤔
OMG… don’t mention shopping carts 🤯
I switched to using credit cards a few decades ago. For a time I had one credit card per category of bills. One for utilities, one for groceries, one for gas and auto, etc. Then the cash-back offers began and I did a quarterly roulette to get the best deals.
When covid occurred and local vendors eschewed cash, that was pretty much the end of my use of cash. As I had pretty much weaned myself from cash this wasn’t an issue for me and the checking account fell into disuse. However, G had a monthly bill for $100 with a small business. She mailed a check until these began getting lost in the mail. The vendor suspected a problem at his end. His solution was for her to mail it via Fedex, which I frankly saw as a stupid, unnecessary expense and waste of time for her. Keep in mind she had to drive to a Fedex facility to get the special envelopes and drop it off. I told G to use Zelle or drop the vendor. He resisted but finally relented. Now he gets his payment within 24 hours of rendering the service. Nor only is he convinced, he acts as if he invented this approach!
As for cash, we use it when RVing for miscellaneous expenses and for the occasional time when credit cards are a problem, and for emergencies. For example, if a satellite goes down, gas stations, etc. cannot process credit cards. I did experience this a few years ago.
Multiple cards are helpful if there is an issue with one card, such as possible fraud. So G and I each have several cards with different banks, etc.
Some see using a credit card or cards as an issue, but we pay these off monthly, so we carry no debt. One advantage is there are certain fraud protections. However, I don’t use my debit card as this lacks some of those protections, except at the local bank branch. Today with “cash” advances available at grocers, etc. we’ve found this service to be desireable, but I’ve never used this “benefit”, always declining at the POS entry screen. However, I view this as a form of insurance for access to cash. Getting to a bank or out-of-network ATM while travelling can be a hassle, or it may incur fees. One of my goals is no fees and no interest payments, etc.
Now that we are retired and with pension and/or social security income and no need to save for retirement there really is no need to categorize expenses because we spend significantly less than our annual income. However, I continue to put expenses into my Quicken categories. It is a habit I’m willing to maintain. This has been useful as G is involved in the care of an elderly parent, and this requires cross-country travel four times a year. There are other expenses related to that, too. I view tracking as an aspect of good management; these care expenses can be $40k a year, or more.
It would be a mess if we only used cash and the checking account, and time consuming to track. One of the relatives bragged that she handles the family finances. It turned out that she wrote the checks. It was her husband who balanced the accounts and replenished the checking account. That approach wouldn’t work for me.
Recently at the oral surgeon’s office to be evaluated for an implant. My dental insurance will pick up a piece but i will be left with a 4 figure copay. Sign at the window says they charge a 3% fee for credit cards. Even with a 2% rebate I lose. They will get a check.
Wow…I can’t remember the last time I paid with cash. Opps…yes I do. i had to get a document notarized, and the Notary only accepted cash.
Otherwise, my wife and I charge everything on a credit card. It has a 2% money-back on all purchases, so we get $150-160 back each month. I never carry a balance, though; I pay the balance off every Saturday Morning.
Funny story…my son, after returning from military service, lived at home for 18 months or so, before moving out into his apartment. (ONLY because his mom and I were relocating for my final career move.) He called me and asked me how to write a check for the deposit and 1st month’s rent. He was 21 years old, and had used a debit card his whole life.
I’m not surprised your son had to ask. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a personal check — in fact, I don’t think my bank supplies checkbooks unless you specifically ask for one.
Entertaining comments. I remember long ago as a kid the very first ATMs were introduced in Wisconsin. They were called “TYME machines” – Take Your Money Everywhere. Then for years when Wisconsinites were out of state and asked for the nearest “time” machine, they always got funny looks.
Your post highlights one of the many little differences between living in the UK and living in the USA. For about as long as you never touched a credit card is about as long as I have never touched cash.
Sometime after I retired, I collected all the change I could find and took it to our credit union so I could feed it into the Coinstar kiosk and deposit the result to my money market account. Considering the heft of the bag and how long it had been collecting, I was surprised to find the total to be “only” $38.05. For some reason I thought all the change would be worth a lot more.
My change gets put in a jar and deposited at the bank. It then goes into the vacation fund (recycle rebates used to go there too until I moved to a no deposit state). A coin stash of a couple hundred dollars wasn’t unusual (silver only… Pennies were only a few dollars). I now do more credit and debit, so less change… vacation is looking further in the future.
Sounds like a good retirement day to me. You cleared $38 and got a free weights workout!
Cash still remains useful at flea markets, estate sales, and such. Even at some auction houses, unknown buyers have to pay cash for gold and silver items.
Thanks for the post.
There are two things I hate in this world: cash and mail. There, I said it.
You’ll be in a bit of a quandary if you ever get cash in the mail 😉
True!
I might start to like them both…
What? I love the mail. Today I got an offer to buy insurance, a credit card offer, a political solicitation, and a Costco Connection magazine…… Come to think of it, I hate mail too!
What? No steak dinner invite?
Mark,
Thank you for the great post!
Reading about how others handle their money is one of the strengths of Humble Dollar.
It’s rather good having a window into how others handle money, even if, as in my case, it just highlights how much better others handle it compared to myself..
That’s an enjoyable read, Mark. I see some parallels. I seem to remember that the option to have my paycheck direct deposited coincided with the time period when ATMs went mainstream. I was an early adopter of both, probably around 1990. I would have my entire pay deposited, and hit the ATM once a week for $150, which represented discretionary spending, helping to control the little things.
After becoming self-employed, I also kept most of the cash I received, but only for my discretionary spending and cash gifts for the kids. For 20 or so years, I didn’t know where my ATM card was. Now retired, I hit the ATM once a month for $300, which covers grandkid gifts, tips for the housecleaner, and the monthly meeting of the ElderBeerMen at Red’s Irish Goodbye. (Red’s prices are cheap, so we all pay in cash to save him the merchant fees).
I agree that it’s a bit difficult to maintain discipline when using plastic.
Maybe it’s a small business owner quirk, I know a few others who do the same, using cash from the business rather than using cards.
ATMs mainstream in the 90s?
I remember when I moved to Phoenix in 1980 straight out of college getting my first ATM card.
I also remember in 1982 when we got married and moved to Illinois for me to attend graduate school taking out $10 at a time from the ATM because we had no money.
close enough
One of my first experiences with an ATM, around 1985, ended in disaster — the machine swallowed my card. Terrible timing too, as I was meeting college friends and had been counting on it for beer money. Thankfully they took pity on me and stood me a couple of rounds, though I’m not sure they entirely believed my excuse. In fairness, it was a novel one at the time.
I could never tolerate change in my pocket for some reason. Years ago when money was tight when we raising children we almost exclusively paid with a debit card to avoid overspending, but we would carry a small balance on the credit card. We had the same local credit union card for 30+ years and by the end our interest rate was very low.
It’s been maybe a decade now that we use a credit card exclusively as we pay it off monthly. This usually results in at least one free flight per year for both of us for our travel.
We still use cash for groceries, it helps us stay in budget. Chris
I always have a problem with staying on budget in the supermarket. That’s probably the reason I shop daily for groceries.
To take it another step, I didn’t even convert any dollars to euros for my last two trips to Ireland.
I realized a few years ago that I ended up spending the euros at the end of my trip just to get rid of them. All I really needed was my phone.
There were a few times when I would have given money to people on the street, but I had no cash at all. I do wonder how the mostly cashless society has affected people like that.
When I run out of $1 and $5 bills, I go to the bank and withdraw 100 of each (or sometimes less because bank branches don’t always have 100 of each, but the most I can get approaching 100).
Why?
Purchases of fruit from stands on the street. Or in summer an ice.
And beggars.
A few days ago one of my kids was on a beach in Puerto Rico and someone came around selling ice cream, water, chips. She told me she was bummed because the vendor only took cash so she couldn’t buy anything.
You made me realise I inadvertently stretched the truth in my post. For the last ten years or so, when travelling abroad, I’ve been using a multi-currency prepaid debit card — so at least my leftover foreign currency sits in different digital pots on the card rather than gathering dust at the bottom of a drawer.
In 1993 my girlfriend and I made the bold choice to not bring travelers checks with us to Europe. We had to hunt for the correct ATM machines, but we were able to get local currencies with the debit card I had. It was a new financial world.
I always found the multiple European currencies very exotic. It was a bit disappointing when they amalgamated into the Euro, but I suppose it makes things simpler when traveling between countries.