To be sick of cashless society

[Ihatepcos]

I prefer to use cash, I always have.

I find budgeting and spending so much easier. If I am tapping away on my card I think nothing of constant £3 £6 etc being spent on things I probably wouldn't buy if I was spending cash.

More and more places simply don't take cash and it's driving me mad.

Shop around for a cheaper card. Moneysavingexpert usually has an article/comparison of the best cards to use abroad, i.e. those who don't charge an extra fee and use official exchange rates rather than detrimental ones. Quite a few don't charge extra!

I used their advice to get a Halifax Clarity credit card which I use only when abroad or shopping online from a foreign website. I got it a few years ago, but it's still one of the recommended ones on their site at the moment.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/travel-credit-cards/

Lots of online articles about it over the past year or so, on the news websites, telecomms provider websites, and the ageuk website as per link below.

www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/consumer-issues/changes-to-landline-telephones/

Polly didn't say there was no difference between the countries. But assuming your country couldn't ever become controlling risks sleepwalking into a total government control.

The cleaner and travel expenses are typically trivial amounts of cash. If it's a business of any significance, it won't be able to pay out all of it's cash to the cleaner and mileage claims will it?

These days, it's harder and harder to spend cash. Delivery drivers aren't typically allowed to take it anymore, due to risk of loss/theft, insurance costs, etc. Overheads are usually paid by standing order or direct debit. Staff mostly prefer payment by BACs. So just what do they do with the cash? They have to bank most of it, which costs money to bank charges, time to count it, travel time to take it to the bank, etc.

The occasional customer paying cash isn't usually an issue (hence why sometimes a shop will accept it as a one off despite a card only policy) as they'll be able to get rid of it somehow.

I've used cards in small shops in rural Africa.

This. It's important to keep cash for privacy and personal freedom.

Short term, maybe, but you'd need one hell of a lot of cash under the bed to survive more than a few weeks. Food for a few weeks, yes, perhaps a hotel room or hostel for a few weeks, yes, but anything longer and your handful of cash will soon be gone. It gives you a stop gap. That's all.

But it isn't, for the vast vast majority?
IME abusive men are just as good at restricting access to cash as they are to doing it with cards, and how much cash are you going to manage to hide anyway? Enough to leave? Enough to get a new place to live? Extremely doubtful.
Certainly it's not a consideration for 99% of the population.

But anyway, OP's original question was "AIBU to sick of a cashless society" and since she doesn't in any sense live in a cashless society, isn't this all a bit pointlerss?

You can have a bank account that your partner doesn't know about. You can opt for paperless, so no paper bank statements. A bank account can be opened and operated entirely online by an app. Unless your partner has unfettered access to your mobile phone, they'd never know. Even then you could "hide" the app in a group or several screens back hidden in plain sight amongst other barely used apps, or password protect it, make it access only by fingerprint etc.

At the end of the day, unless you always carry your "cash stash" with you which is a stupid risk of loss or theft, your abusive partner could almost certainly find your cash if they were that bothered to look for it around the house.

It's difficult, because there are implications about privacy and freedom here and we do already have examples of governments limiting what money in accounts can be spent on. You don't have to agree with the Canadian movement to find that fairly horrifying. Equally though, it does cost a lot of businesses money and people simply cannot expect them to pick up the tab for you to use your preferred method of payment.

All your OH has to do is take your phone away.

With cash, there is freedom and escape. There is also privacy, without every transaction being recorded.

I guess one solution is a cash surcharge- the way some businesses used to add a card surcharge

All he has to do is take your cash away! And if he takes your phone, you can get another one and your money is still safe and sound. With cash, it's gone.
Don't you think he'd notice you taking the money out in the first place? Where is your imaginary money coming from?

Just get another phone, load up the apps again and you're good to go, just as you were before.

If your abusive partner finds your stash of cash and takes it, then you're really stuffed!

@bringmetheheadofpastaalfredo From friends and family, from cash back when shopping, from change. If hidden well, cash is much safer for a DV victim than having an app on your phone or statements which can be traceable online.

I think the reason this subject prompts a lot of debate is that the people keen to keep using cash perceive this as some kind of grand conspiracy against them, for some reason.

We live in a capitalist society. If it's good for business, it will be imposed on us.

We live in a capitalist society. If it's good for business, it will be imposed on us.

I'd say you're probably right, but that's pretty much what a lot of the people who complain about it think too!

The conspiracy is to get us all behaving like China - with social credit system - where you can’t fly or get on a train if you don’t have enough social credit points…. That’s 1984 and some!

I completely disagree. Do you think financially abusive men are solely cocerned with online banking? Do you think you can get enough money from the change in your shopping and a tenner off your dad to make any difference?
This doesn't reflect the reality at all. It's all very naive.

Have you actually checked that's their preference? Small businesses in my area are card only as they get charged for bringing cash to the bank/getting a change float and there are so many smaller card companies these days that it's actually really competitive. It's also inconvenient for the owner to have to traipse over to the bank to cash up.

Why?

My whole money life is on my phone. If I lost my phone I'd be buggered.
I only keep coins in my bag to buy the Big Issue and to give to some people begging.

Why would you be buggered? If you have everything backed up properly you can just fire up another phone and in ten minutes everything is back at your fingertips.