To wonder why so many people don't carry any cash on them?

[InHibernationTilISummer]

Excluding people who are skint and the Queen, obviously.

I've had so many examples of this in the last few weeks:

• Colleague who came into the work in the bad weather. Lots of delays and problems on the bus route they normally get so wanted to get the train instead but had no money for a ticket because they had come in with their season bus pass and lunch and hadn't expected to be spending any money.
• Friend turning up for exercise class but hasn't realised that the price has gone up 50p since she last came - and she only brought the exact money she thought she would need.
• Another friend dropping older child off at sport class finds that there's a fair going on at the sports centre with stalls and activities that her younger child (who was with her) would have enjoyed. Complains that she wishes she had known about it in advance as she would have taken some money out with her.

Is this becoming more common or is it just the people I know? If you aren't skint but don't routinely carry money on you, why is that?

I've been in situations where I haven't expected to be spending any (or much) money and some problem has occurred or plans have changed for some reason (e.g. having to accompany someone to A & E or the last bus not turning up) and I would have been really stuck if I hadn't taken some spare 'emergency' cash.

New notes contain tannin @crunchymint so it made most vegans go cashless

By using their non vegan cards and phones instead!

Yes. Phones and cards last year's. Notes need replaced all the time.

So what?

Basically never carry cash, can’t remember the last time I actually got cash out, several months at least. Largely shop online for various things and doing food shops I just use a card.

Was at laser hair removal clinic a couple of weeks back and their card machine died when I came out so they asked if I had a banking app and let me pay via bank transfer.

A restaurant might take separate card payments if everyone is paying the same, but not if people are paying different amounts.
*
Restaurant bills within a group can be very different and not everyone wants to, or even can afford to, split evenly.*

My friends and I like to pay by card, we find it easier (and we can pay individually by card if we want to, although we generally split the bill equally). You prefer to pay with cash. No problem! Us finding card easier doesn't mean you have to find it easier; me using cards where available doesn't that you can't use cash if you prefer that.

It's all very well saying that paying for everything by card gives you more information about what you are spending your money on, but equally, if you're just tapping here, there and everywhere, there seems to be an awful lot of scope to spend more than you intended, in the same of 'convenience', such as the extra charges added by small shops and parking meters (while illegal, there's a lot of places that still do it) and splitting a restaurant meal equally when your own consumption was very small, because no-one has any cash and the restaurant won't take £10 from person one and £40 from person 2.

The OP asks why those of us who don't carry cash, don't carry cash. We are explaining why. We are saying why it suits us better and why we prefer to be cashless wherever possible

That doesn't affect you though. No one is telling you to stop paying for restaurant hills with cash

You don't have to use card if it doesn't work for you though. You don't have to split a bill equally if you don't want to. Paying for card gives me more information and I don't spend more than I need to. Your experience is different and that's fine. The fact you get on with cash better doesn't negate others getting on better with card and vice versa.

I always think people who don’t carry cash seem tight - they never give to charity collections or homeless in the street, office collections, tea kitty, tips etc etc How hard is it to carry a tenner and a few coins

That's a somewhat sweeping statement. I have direct debits to several charities and have made numerous online charity donations. Homeless I donate to my local homeless charity, and have bought homeless people on the street a hot drink and something to eat. Office collections are done online with an electronic pot at my work, because we're based in two countries and you can't pass round an envelope across the Channel. Tips go on card, or I get cash out in advance (eg I take a fiver with me to the hairdressers to tip the junior who washes my hair). Maybe your friends are tight and happen not to carry cash. Extrapolating that to everyone who doesn't routinely carry cash is patently ridiculous

Buses outside London don't take debit cards. Most of us still live outside of London. Although I use debit cards on London transport.

The OP asks people who don't carry cash why they don't carry cash. Posters are explaining why they don't need to carry cash. None of this stops you using cash if you prefer. Someone saying THEY use a debit card for their bus journey doesn't mean they're saying everyone else can or should. They're just saying what they do. Not what you should do. Someone who uses a debit card for their bus journey lives somewhere that takes them and they like this way of paying. If you live somewhere that doesn't have contactless payment for your bus and you prefer to use cash then I don't get your point. You do you and they do them.

Are the 'will not carry cash under any circumstances' people prepared to turn around and go home if they find that they need cash to pay for parking or food and drink at the seaside or a day out in the country?

No one here is saying they refuse to ever use cash point blank. We are saying that we don't routinely carry cash as a matter of course because we don't have any need to do so in our daily lives

If I need to use cash because card payment isn't an option, then I'll get cash out. It's not difficult! If I know I'm going to the seaside or for a day out in the country, I'll get cash out from one of the many many atms between my front door and the tube station or bus stop. I'm not going to find myself mysteriously transported there without my knowledge - if I know I'm likely to need cash, I'll get cash out. Or if I need cash unexpectedly then I'll go to the nearest atm. If I don't have cash and can't get cash out then I will just go without. But the entire point is that this rarely if ever happens, because it's easy to plan for those occasions where it's cash only. I don't carry cash routinely because I don't routinely need cash. If the down sides outweighed the benefits then I would go back to carrying a purse with notes and coins on me at all times. But they don't.

There will always be refuseniks Cuboidal and I will probably be one of them. I see no point in changing for changes sake, or to put money into the hands of tech companies who see you purely as something which they can mine for data and money; or to lock you into their products which are badly made and have built in obsolescence, either through bits failing (lost count of the iPods ds has been through), or the model not being supported with current updates etc.

Tech is fine if it enhances your life, but if you can't see that it will, then I don't see why you have to be pushed into it. I don't have a contactless debit card, as I got my UK bank to send me a non contactless one, and my Belgian bank doesn't do contactless for credit or debit cards. I don't have a smart phone, nor do I want one. I will carry on having something that lets me text and make calls as that is all I want or need to do with my phone.

Getting rid of cash for the underground would be a bit daft...I pay cash on the trams and metro in Brussels, as I rarely use them, so it's pointless loading a STIB card and not using the credit. If you don't make it easy for tourists with cash, then you lose out imo.

The more people are 'pushed' into everything being digital, the more some will refuse. No will still remain a complete sentence, however fast things change.

I don't think it's the last 30 years it's altered in, but the last 25 for the general public as opposed to the geeks and those who got to play with new tech due to their jobs. There seemed to be a big gap between our Amstrad word processor in the late 80s and our first PC in the late 90s.

always think people who don’t carry cash seem tight - they never give to charity collections or homeless in the street, office collections, tea kitty, tips etc etc How hard is it to carry a tenner and a few coins
never? Lots and lots of ways to deal with all them scenarios even if cashless similar to banana office collections are done online when done at my work, charity donations are done online with a one off donation or via a direct debit for a regular one. I live in the middle of nowhere so no homeless near me, but again charity donations to homeless charities perfectly possible.

network is Greater Anglia, whoever asked. (carriages) We have the "oldest rolling stock in the country" too, according to a train geek.

Lots of small vendors around here have to wait for the card machine to dial somewhere before you can pay. Card payment is S L O W. I only started trying to use contactless fairly recently so maybe that would never use a mobile phone signal (?, the vendor almost never suggests contactless instead, though). This thread is first time I heard of so many other instant payment methods.

This thread has been useful, I may have at last figured how to get my phone to use microSD card as default place for apps.

(Now if I could only think of a useful app to install as a test)

The thing that surprises me on this thread is how much people know about the buses, I haven't used a bus for about 30 years apart from occassional pay and ride. Our buses are mainly used by those that get free bus passes so no paying (fairly average town). I wouldn't have a clue if they were card payment or cash, they have wireless because the sign is on the back.

Up until last year the only time I used a bus was perhaps once every couple of months, if I was getting a train somewhere I'd get a bus to the train station to avoid parking and paying a charge at the station. Or if we were heading into town for a meal or drinks and wanted to drink alcohol.

Last year I started a course in the city centre and as a student only paid £1 for each way on the bus whereas driving and parking would have been ten times that due to lack of free or affordable parking anywhere in the city centre, so twice per week I'd get the bus to and fro. Luckily the bus stop was very near my house!

I despise buses on the whole and would almost always choose to drive but it's good to have the option occasionally, if your car breaks down for example. And obviously lots of people can't afford to run a car.

Yes I think bus services in cities and large towns are a completely different thing to some smaller towns where parking is free and places are easily walkable, all the people over pension age have the free bus passes so cashless wouldn’t affect them anyway. DS lives in a city and uses the bus a lot and doesn’t own a car as parking is so expensive. If I got a bus to the train station it would be a very long walk at the other end from the bus stop

I think it's useful to remember that electronic money transactions can only happen if there's electricity and communications.
I don't think hard cash will or should disappear for this very reason.
If systems failed our money in the bank would be but virtual.
It could be for one day or two or more.

How did they ring a taxi with no mobile or phone lines?

Don't know where you live but around here we have taxi ranks at bus and train stations, outside shopping centres, and outside the pub/nightclub areas in the town centres. So you just walk to one and go. We also have cabs (hackney carriages to give the official name) you can flag down on the street.

Not in the area storm Desmond hit. They are taxis not black cabs. Most of it was rural.

Do you even have a clue? Lancaster, Morecambe, Kendal, Kendal, Carlisle aren't rural - they're towns/cities! Tens of thousands of people in towns/cities were either flooded or suffered city-wide power cuts. We're certainly not talking about isolated farm cottages on the tops of hills. Or perhaps Londoners think that any town smaller than London is rural???

The thing that surprises me on this thread is how much people know about the buses, I haven't used a bus for about 30 years

totally off topic, but I find this really sad

Tech is fine if it enhances your life, but if you can't see that it will, then I don't see why you have to be pushed into it.

This is so true. Far too much new tech is used "just because you can" rather than due to any proper reason. Just look at all the novelties/gadgets that you just can't live without. I'm sure most people use their new app/gadget a few times for the fun of it and then just forget it and move on. The modern curse of the Twitter generation who have short attention spans. I use lots of tech, but only when it really will enhance my life, i.e. either time saving or money saving.

The thing that surprises me on this thread is how much people know about the buses, I haven't used a bus for about 30 years

Same here. I only know about buses because of my son needing to use them to get to/from his school. I had hoped that he could get a bus from our nearest bus stop to his school. Some hope! Our nearest bus stop is actually on a route that doesn't got to our nearest town. So he has to walk a mile to a bus stop on a different road where buses do go to the town. Then he has a tortuous hour long bus journey to go just 5 miles (around villages and housing estates). Then a mile long walk at the other end as the bus terminates at the city centre bus station and there are no buses going from there to his school a mile away at the other end of the city. I really couldn't believe how poor the bus service was. It means he has to leave the house at 7.30 just to get to school just 5 miles away!

I think people who live in towns/cities with good bus services are really fortunate. You're OK if you live on a good bus route, but a lot of towns/cities are stuck in the 70s with their bus services, i.e. no routes around new housing estates, no routes around out of town business parks, etc., all routes terminating at the city centre bus station, etc. OK if you work in the centre, but tortuous if you end up having to change once or twice which just adds time to your journeys.

Those in towns/cities with modern bus services/routes don't appreciate just how crap the bus services are out in the smaller towns, villages, etc.

I think it's useful to remember that electronic money transactions can only happen if there's electricity and communications.

At the levels of social dislocation claimed by the cash enthusiasts to justify the existence of cash, it's not obvious what they think they would be buying. Even if supermarkets could trade without electricity (no tills, no back office systems) the shelves would be bare within a day or so (no replenishment).

The least of your problems if there's a country-wide power failure is whether you have cash. Your main problem is whether you have tinned food to eat and shotgun cartridges to protect your food. And to misquote Tropic Thunder, that's when you go full survivalist.

"totally off topic, but I find this really sad"

Not everyone has a good bus service, and I rarely use a bus brownelephant.

It really depends on where people live. We are rural/semi rural and have hourly buses during the day that only go to the two nearest towns. I tend to get a train because it is quicker and doesn't make me feel sick, or I drive if I want to go elsewhere.

around here we have taxi ranks at bus and train stations, outside shopping centres, and outside the pub/nightclub areas in the town centres. So you just walk to one and go. We also have cabs (hackney carriages to give the official name) you can flag down on the street.

The only taxi rank we have is outside the station in the nearest city 17 miles away.

There seems to be a lack of understanding about other people's lifestyles, and dare I say it, quite a bit of ageism on this thread.

I can see from some of the posts on here that it is entirely possible to be totally cashless providing you live in an area where it is possible to do so. Perhaps those that live in those areas could try and understand that there are other places where it isn't possible.

a lot of towns/cities are stuck in the 70s with their bus services

In most cities, the bus routes link dying post-war slum-clearance estates where no-one works to brown field sites where factories used to be. Every time there's an attempt to change the bus routes, the local radio phone-in is deluged by the very elderly talking about the blitz, and the local councillors worry about the grey vote. The buses stop have 200 yards for reasons no-one can discern, so a journey of a couple of miles take half an hour. Which is fine if you don't work.

The last time I tried to get a bus home from work a drunken woman with two dogs in a pram got in a fight with a drunken woman with a shopping trolley about who was entitled to use the parent and child space, and the bus was stopped until the police arrived. Delightful.

This is so true. Far too much new tech is used "just because you can" rather than due to any proper reason. Just look at all the novelties/gadgets that you just can't live without. I'm sure most people use their new app/gadget a few times for the fun of it and then just forget it and move on. The modern curse of the Twitter generation who have short attention spans. I use lots of tech, but only when it really will enhance my life, i.e. either time saving or money saving.

Could you give an example of this?

I only use tech that enhances my life - sometimes enhancing can be simply that it's enjoyable!

The MN app isn't essential to my life, but I enjoy MN and the app makes it super easy to use

Twitter has given me job opportunities and new friends! Instagram enables me to share in my friends' lives over and above when we chat or see each other.

Then there are more functional apps like British gas enabling me to submit my meter readings more easily.

Alexa isn't essential but voice control is wonderfully time saving and makes if possible to do things that couldn't so easily be done before

We find that different things enhance our lives - why is that a problem?

a lot of towns/cities are stuck in the 70s with their bus services

In my experience, before the National Bus Company was deregulated, there were more bus routes and more frequent buses. If we had the number of buses/routes round here that were available in the 1970s I wouldn't be using my car as often to ferry DD around.

I think I must be probably a bit old fashioned, where everyone seems to be using smaller things and fiddling around on their phone with apps I have gone the other way and use a big iMac for my day to day usage, just as easy to enter a meter reading and I can see everything side by side. iPad if I am watching telly and my phone only when I am out, I even take my iPad to work sometimes if I need to do anything particular because its easier than my phone. I find a lot of apps quite basic and useful only on the move. I may move into the future though and get one of those home pods for music though DH is a bit about it in case it listens to him or something like that

Then we are all different and use what best suits our lifestyle and our bus service is crap according to friends who have got DC who don't drive and no-one as ever mentioned if they are cashless.

he least of your problems if there's a country-wide power failure is whether you have cash. Your main problem is whether you have tinned food to eat and shotgun cartridges to protect your food. And to misquote Tropic Thunder, that's when you go full survivalist

Not really, since when everyone realises what is happening and rushes to the shops to stock up, they'll probably still be taking cash for a while after card payments have gone down
I've read a lot of apocalyptica!

We find that different things enhance our lives - why is that a problem?

It's a problem when people enforce it on others. Should be free choice to use tech crutches nor compulsion.