To ask you about cash?

[PassingStranger]

What with card payments going down and threats to shops online systems

Are you thinking you should keep more cash in the house? I am.

It's not really promoted as being safe though. They always say money is safer in the bank.

Would you consider having more cash available?

I dont like having cash i seem to spend more if i have it.
I like it on my card then i can always send it in to savings if its in cash i cant.
But on days out i might have £20 in cash just in case some shops dont take card.
but nope i really dont like cash on me.

A lot of Portuguese and Spanish businesses were affected by the recent power cuts and managed to carry on by using cash.

There would be similar businesses here- the corner shop say. But it’s only a short term solution to allow you go quickly get the goods you need and they would need to be able to pay it into a bank in the short term. They would obviously quickly run out of change etc.

so yes, if you separately need something go it’s helpful. I’m not sure what I would need that desperately over the course of a couple of days, so don’t think it’s a huge deal.

Excellent advice.

My Jewish great-grandmother (whose family fled the pogroms in C19th Russia and escaped to Ireland) was always adamant about keeping a stash of gold and precious gems in the house, in the event of a major crisis or having to flee the country.

She repeatedly warned my grandmother and her 11 siblings that banks can fail, accounts can be cut off, and currency can be devalued to the point it's near worthless... but you can always barter or pay your way with diamonds. Small, light, easily concealed. She had a good amount of cash on hand too, but gems were her main thing. They always hold their value.

I do think we in the west are very disconnected from the reality of how life can change in just a matter of days or weeks. The UK is so reliant on imports - everything from food to white goods - that we forget how vulnerable we would be in the event of a major cyber attack or banking collapse. A major NHS trust in London had its IT system fail a few years ago, and without the old fashioned paper files on hand, several weeks worth of appointments and operations had to be cancelled. Imagine a nationwide outage!

There's a reason why countries like Russia and China haven't called time on traditional power supplies like coal mines and factories, or rushed to close down their manufacturing bases and completely digitise their finances.

In supermarkets the vast majority of food items for sale don't have prices on them. Now they might have lists they can print out if there's electricity and if the file is available locally, but it's going to be one hell of a long list so if you've done a big shop it's going to take a while.

Shame we don't still have the Kwik Save chain of supermarkets. The cashiers had to remember the prices of everything as items weren't individually price marked and they didn't have scanners back then either. Always pretty impressive how they remembered the prices, but it was a very limited range of products and it was a bit like pound shops where most items were in "price bands" so lots of items all had the same price. They did have "crib lists" at the tills for anything they couldn't remember, but most of the time they did remember, certainly for all the most popular/best selling items.

Some people don’t even have enough water or basic food (like tins & pasta) to last them a week. Not sure where they think their water will come from if there is a cyber attack or something else.

I just googled and Tesco can have up to 65-70,000 items (they cut down from 90,000), I'd be impressed if anyone could remember the prices of all of them, plus offers and Clubcard prices!

Enough cash for a year? How much is that then

I work in a supermarket. Power occasionally goes out (storms, etc). We have to close the shop, as electric doors and tills don't work. It's unsafe to have the public on the property without power as alarm systems don't work.

If the card machines go down (as they do sometimes) we can take cash payments, but this is because the internet has gone off. We can still use the tills. Without electricity we can't do anything and have to close. So having cash for your shopping is only useful if it's just the internet down, otherwise you can't even go in to buy anything.

I always have some cash in the house. Usually have some in my purse too but it was just my luck that I didn't have much on a day all the card machines went down at Asda just after I'd got a big shop through the checkout.

I think you'd be surprised at how many people have small fireproof safes. Mine holds historic documents like my grandparents' marriage certificate, etc., as well as more current things like passports. And cash, and good jewelry. For £50 it's peace of mind.

Yes, a small fireproof safe is a standard household item to me. The perfect spot for holding a bit of cash, plus your passports and other important documents.

That’s what I said. I’m surprised how many people have safes.

I've been thinking about this recently, since my card was stopped because of a fraud attempt. Obviously you get no notice, so I had no chance to get cash out. My DP happened to be away for work for about 10 days, so it was really bad timing. I'm friends with my upstairs neighbour, so I transferred her some money and she took the cash out for me, and it was fine, but it did make me think that it's not a good position to be in.
Having said that, I still haven't got round to getting cash out and stashing it in the house! <<adds that to to-do list>>

I prefer to keep a good stash of non-perishables in the house than cash, as if the world ends, no cash will be accepted and it'll be looting ahoy.

No. I walk to work, DD cycles to school and the lader and freezer are stocked. I only use cash in certain countries and I have had 7 euros in my pocket since December 2023.

Can you still get cash back at supermarkets,?

I've got about six quid in my purse at the moment , but have a stash ( between us ) of about £300 at home so I think that would be ok for any immediate need.

Banks aren’t the ones charging you for a card machine or for transaction fees. That would be payment processors and card companies. Pretty sure banks make more money from the cash handling fees.

Your business insurance premiums must be through the roof if you keep that much cash on site!

Well that depends who your card machine is from surely, plenty of banks supply and charge for card machines? And I'm not sure why you would assume I'm holding large amounts of cash on my premises

Never ever use cash except to pay the cleaner.

At Waitrose you can, on a debit not credit card, and inserted not contactless.

The tills where I used to work switched to battery power if the mains went off. They were good for around 24 hours before needing to be plugged into the mains again.

What, enough to pay your mortgage, utility bills, etc etc?