Cash in the house

I always keep a small stash of cash in the house, for ‘just in case’
Purposes.

I always use cash for shopping, and keep some at home to top up my purse.
I have a credit card which I use for the very occasional online purchase but never use it in shops. My debit card very rarely gets taken out of my purse, and I wouldn't be able to tell you the pin number.
We pay workmen with cash if they ask.

I don’t often have any at all. Dh usually does, for some reason I can’t fathom since he pays just about everything with his phone ‘wallet’. I do sometimes raid his actual wallet!
Had to take cash out the other day to put in Gdd1’s birthday card - 10 today! 🎂
Cake in the oven…

I was told by a policeman to keep two amounts of cash in the house but in different places. The idea being that if a burglar found one then they might not bother looking for more.

I keep a bit of cash, not a lot, in the house. Gardener/window cleaner prefers it. Also to buy essentials if cards went wrong somehow.

No more than £100, I put that in my purse to shop. I use half, & half, to keep the option of using cash going.
Sainsbury’s internet down recently, only those with cash went through the tills. Plus I spend too much when I use my card.

I always have cash in the house and also in my purse.
For big shops I use a card but still like to keep cash going.
I have never found anywhere which has refused cash.

But if someone is in the supermarket and the system fails, having cash in the house won't help them get through the tills.

I always have a £20 note hidden in my bag, which I've done since the days when it would have paid for a taxi home if necessary. £20 wouldn't get me far now, but it's been handy to have access to a bit of cash from time to time. Otherwise I take £100 from the ATM when I get down to £20 or so in my purse, and as others have said, sometimes that's every week, and sometimes months can go by between withdrawals.

I do have dried food and bottled water in case of emergency (along with a primus stove and bottled gas) so if the power went down we could eat for a while, even if the freezer defrosted. I'm not thinking Armageddon, though - I don't think I'd want to go into a nuclear winter - more an interruption to the power supply or the internet going down.

I still can't decide how much to put in a locked box, or what I would do with it though.

There is food to buy, other than what is in supermarkets.

I keep some cash in the house - about £300-400

I'm not 100% sure it will be helpful. The problem is that if computer infrastructure goes down then the chances that shop tills won't work either

That reminds me, I must visit the bank we're lucky to have and stock up with £1 coins and £5 notes. The WI entrance fee and raffle tickets take the coins. I pay my hairdresser £25 in cash but fivers are hard to find.

I get twitchy if we have more than £100 lying around the house.

Interestingly dd called in for some of ours a couple of days ago when ww outage on.
Very pleased we could oblige.

Having an alternate source for heating (including boiling) water and cooking is sensible.

I can see how some cash might be handy for a very temporary failure but nothing longer term. In any major banking failure it would be of little use. People use the expression cash is king but that only really applies to the cash flow in a business, most of which nowadays isn’t cash.

Our most basic needs are shelter, water and food to see us through a short-term disaster of some kind. Assuming we have shelter and fresh water kept flowing, all we would need is food but, as I said upthread, in a panic, people strip shelves and resort to looting. If the people responsible for the supply chain can’t be paid, or are unable to transport food as nobody could buy bulk fuel, the chain would quickly break down.

Tesco’s annual turnover - what they are taking for goods purchased - is 68 billion or 186 million a day. The vast majority of that is in card transactions. They are by far the largest supermarket but other chains have huge turnovers too. Sainbury’s annual turnover 33 billion or 90 million a day. Add in other chains and, assuming the shelves were stocked, think about the sheer amount of money having to be physically moved to secure locations if the banking system had failed and everybody resorted to cash. Where would all the extra secure vehicles and vetted security staff to transport this cash suddenly come from and where could it be kept securely? It would be a criminal free for all.

A more apt expression would be money makes the world go around. If the banking system failed, so would everything else with it. We’d very soon be in a dystopian nightmare. It wouldn’t have to be Armageddon. Base human nature would preempt that as we saw in the early days of the pandemic - a small number of people buying up everything while nurses went hungry.

£100 kept in a teapot isn’t going to be much use.

I don’t agree Silverbrooks, because a cyber attack is actually quite likely, and people can’t strip the shelves (or run the petrol stations dry) if they don’t have a means of paying in those circumstances. Once the cash is put aside you don’t need to think about it except in those unfortunate circumstances. Europeans have been formally advised to do this already.

I don't have any at all.
I used to "siphon off" small notes from my wallet when the children were small. I kept is separately for emergencies (or treats). Not exactly hidden but where I'd be the only person going there. It was a way of saving without having to go anywhere or do anything much.
Sadly no dividends or interest.

I used to empty my purse of any £1 (and then £2 when they came in) coins and put them into a coin purse. It stopped my main purse from stretching out of shape and in the days when I paid bus fares to work every day and bought lunches etc with cash it soon mounted up. It was handy when the children needed money for various things, but wouldn't last long as a source of funding if I couldn't get to the bank.

It's six and half a dozen.
I can see the argument for keeping some cash at home in case the banking system fails.
On the other hand we returned from holiday(our valuable documents and jewellry were with us) to find that our house had been burgled.Our French Doors had been broken to gain access. Nothing had been taken however , our elderly second hand computers and an elderley Iphone had all been ignored.
All the drawers were rifled, fruitlessly because there were no valuables.
Cops said that thieves were looking for jewellry....... and cash.

People would steal and loot and find the means to obtain the food and utilities they need. People already bypass meters to steal energy because they say they can't afford to pay for it. We already have energy theft on an industrial scale by criminal gangs running cannabis factories and other illegal activities. We know people fill up cars and drive off without paying (although in an emergency the pumps would soon be shut off). We know people steal food from allotments. I think society has moved far past the time when housewives queued politely to buy wartime and postwar rations. Which is why I say it's more sensible to have enough simple non-perishable food in the house to last a few weeks than worry about cash.

Goodness, what a bleak world you portray. We would probably be looking at an outage of a few days at the most. I don’t see the UK descending into the state you portray in that timescale. We’re all different though, and must all do what we’re comfortable with. I take the advice, and just do what I think is sensible.

If we are reduced to looting and survival of the fittest I'd sooner keep a gun in the house than a box of cash.

I've always kept emergency supplies, and probably always will, but they are food, batteries and so on, not cash. I'm looking at supplementing the emergency box with cash though, on a 'just in case' basis. It's the 'in case of what?' question that I'm struggling with though.

We keep cash, locked in our home.

Cleaners, exterior window cleaner, garden workers, hair stylist, yard workers (apart from the gardens). However, if banks weren't working I suppose most of the cash we'd need would be for food and petrol.

We'd make do cleaning our home, windows, mowing etc.

fancythat

I cant see the electric company wanting cash. Or car insurance.

But food, yes.
You could buy from neighbours?
Old fashioned barter[limited idea I always think].
Burst pipe so can pay a plumber?

Burst pipe so can pay a plumber?
That could require a bank loan!

Window cleaner, lawn man, etc all ask for payment by BACS now.

Norah

We keep cash, locked in our home.

Cleaners, exterior window cleaner, garden workers, hair stylist, yard workers (apart from the gardens). However, if banks weren't working I suppose most of the cash we'd need would be for food and petrol.

We'd make do cleaning our home, windows, mowing etc.

Yes, in the sort of extended emergency that required cash for any length of time, I don't suppose clean windows would be top of the priority list

Labradora

It's six and half a dozen.
I can see the argument for keeping some cash at home in case the banking system fails.
On the other hand we returned from holiday(our valuable documents and jewellry were with us) to find that our house had been burgled.Our French Doors had been broken to gain access. Nothing had been taken however , our elderly second hand computers and an elderley Iphone had all been ignored.
All the drawers were rifled, fruitlessly because there were no valuables.
Cops said that thieves were looking for jewellry....... and cash.

We bought a Patlock from Amazon to put on the French doors. We now leave that on all the time.