Cash in the house

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

petra

I’d ask to borrow from the vape shop nest door to the charity where I volunteer or the myriad of Turkish barbers all around us. They only deal in cash 😉

Ah yes! The money launderers that nobody in authority seems to ever bother about.

My window cleaner only takes cash, which is a nuisance. I like to have about £50 in the house, and £20 tucked in my phone case, and I spend using a note on a regular basis so that I have coins in case I need any. But mostly I pay by card.

I’m another who likes a stash of cash! When it gets to below £100 I get a bit fidgety 🫨 (I’m forever slipping a tenner to a visiting GC ) and I pay for my bingo in cash along with a weekend newspaper.

I still use cash when I can but I'm lucky to have a post office at the end of the street so if I have tradesmen coming I just nip down and draw out the cash.
These days though most payments for services are by bank transfer.
There is some stiff going around now about having emergency supplies etc and I suppose it's sensible. If only I had the money to do it lol!

I keep quite a lot of cash in my house but in a place where 9 out of 10 burglars wouldn't think to look!

Only I know about my secret hiding place, absolutely nobody else.

I much prefer cash, partly as the banks, government etc. can't control my money as they can with cards.

I have a debut card but only use it once a month to keep the account going unless I need to pay for something big/expensive like a vehicle or washing machine etc.

Yes, I do, I keep about £500, it’s hidden somewhere even a determined burglar wouldn’t look.. I’m heavily reliant on my car so I want to be able to pay for petrol or a tyre if necessary, and also groceries should the systems be down for a few days. I think cyber attacks are very likely, and I prefer to be a bit prepared.

I rarely use cash, but I do keep £100 in the house for whatever. When we had dogs, DH used to buy our dog food in bulk and friends would buy it from him - always in cash, so he’d end up with quite a bit and tell me to help myself to it as and when, rather than go to the ATM.

I’ve always been quite good with finance, however, I think it’s easier to budget with cash - once it’s gone. it’s gone. It seems far easier to get into financial problems these days with ‘plastic spending’ and pre-arranged overdrafts etc.

We always have about £250 in the house, we use cash a lot as neither want to loose it, all the village shops take it, pubs, Tesco Express who have fuel too.

Yes I’ve a little stash in a secret place ..the garden man likes cash and window cleaner and for my hair stylist a little tip each time I visit
Also have a £20 in purse which was needed some time ago now when travelling down to London, the card machine failed and you could only purchase drinks and sandwiches with cash!
Would not be without a small amount of cash…cash is still 👑

Think back to what happened in early 2020, at the start of the pandemic. In that kind of event, people panic buy and strip the shops of food anyway. Or if nobody had any money, they would loot. The supply chain (including fuel supply) would break down very quickly so there would be no replenishment until payment systems were working again.

A better plan would be to make sure you have stocks of dry food and enough long-life staples to last a month.

I can recall being snowed in some years ago, about ten maybe, and living off what I had in the house for three weeks. I could have gone longer. And that was without the contents of a freezer. I eat a very simple vegetarian diet anyway so it wasn’t difficult. I had a stock of rice, lentils, pulses, onions, potatoes, pasta and flour for breadmaking and a variety of tinned foods. I grow a continuous supply of easy salad leaves.

I keep no more than ten pounds in my purse. Five goes in the cathedral plate each week as a donation for a weekly music concert. The other five is for buskers and street collections. Everything else is paid for by card or bank transfer including the window cleaner.

Just this last weekend M&S were hit by a cyber problem that meant they couldn't take contactless payments, only cash or chip and pin. There were a fair few people having to turn around at the door because they only had a phone or smart watch as payment methods, not even a bank card with them. I do realise this wasn't an earth shattering event!
I always keep cash in my purse and about £200 safely hidden at home, even though I pay a lot with cards. I'd hate it if we went completely cashless.

Oh yes! in the past I have been inordinately delighted to find a fiver in the breast pocket of a denim jacket not worn since the previous summer. yay!
Or almost as good a £2 coin trapped in a torn handbag lining.

We rarely use cash at all (except for the hospital car park!!) but we have a small supply of notes and coins in both cars, my purse usually has a couple of notes in and we collect change and £5 notes in the kitchen drawer. We occasionally pay by cash so we have a supply of coins in the change.

We withdraw £200 every now and again and put it somewhere safe. Sometimes it lasts months, sometimes no time at all.

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?