Hard Cash Making A Comeback?

Oh yes Nan, and finding a hole in the wall isn’t easy either. In Germany they are still a cash culture.

Which is fine, mostly!

There is nothing like a recession for the black economy to flourish.

If you look at the postings on my local marketplace platform there are plenty of people tooking for others to do small jobs - assemble flatpacks, put up shelves, plastering etc and seemingly plenty of people looking for such work. Assuming most of these folks will want cash in hand there is cash about. You can spend it on your weekly shop, put petrol in the car or on public transport and plenty of small shops and markets happily accepting cash.

And of course in the antiques/vintage world where I deal cash has always been preferred.

Zuzu

We ate lunch the other day at a local restaurant we've eaten at many times, always paying with a debit. I noticed a "customer fee" on the bill of 4%. Asked about it and was told it covered the cost of using a card. I'm in the US, but thought this was tacky and cheap. Felt like I was paying a fee for the lights to be on. Some things are simply part of the cost of doing business. Plus 4% seemed high to me. I should go back to cash, I suppose. But a card is so convenient.

That does seem high- especially when you are expected to tip 15%-20% per meal to subsidize the wait staffs wages.

It now costs 25% more

Our local shop likes us to pay with cash when we top up our travel cards, apparently he makes almost no profit on it at the best of times and the credit card charge takes even more,
Our local bank has gone, as has the next nearest and now they are closing the third. This means that we have to travel for 45 minutes by bus if we want to take more than the daily ATM limit out. Most of the larger branches only have one till so we always have to queue.

Summerlove

Zuzu

We ate lunch the other day at a local restaurant we've eaten at many times, always paying with a debit. I noticed a "customer fee" on the bill of 4%. Asked about it and was told it covered the cost of using a card. I'm in the US, but thought this was tacky and cheap. Felt like I was paying a fee for the lights to be on. Some things are simply part of the cost of doing business. Plus 4% seemed high to me. I should go back to cash, I suppose. But a card is so convenient.

That does seem high- especially when you are expected to tip 15%-20% per meal to subsidize the wait staffs wages.

It now costs 25% more

Most of our local restaurants leave it to the customers' descretion how much they tip, though one does add 12.5%. You can add what tip you want on the card machine and nobody in our area charges extra for using a credit card

biglouis

There is nothing like a recession for the black economy to flourish.

If you look at the postings on my local marketplace platform there are plenty of people tooking for others to do small jobs - assemble flatpacks, put up shelves, plastering etc and seemingly plenty of people looking for such work. Assuming most of these folks will want cash in hand there is cash about. You can spend it on your weekly shop, put petrol in the car or on public transport and plenty of small shops and markets happily accepting cash.

And of course in the antiques/vintage world where I deal cash has always been preferred.

Yes, the black economy is certainly flourishing amongst people we know. Who wants to pay a builder an extra 20% if it can be avoided?
But of course every time somebody does this the tax take goes down and government spending has to come from somewhere.
Personally I think the VAT rate is ruinously high, people would not try so hard to avoid paying it if the rate was lower.
One local tradesman said that as soon as his income was high enough to be registered for VAT he had to add it to his quotes and lost a lot of work to tradesmen with a turnover below the VAT threshhold.

If you pay in cash to avoid VAT you are assisting in the commission of a crime - tax evasion. Don’t risk it. If the person you have paid is caught you may be too.

The one time we were in America 25 years ago, we were in NY walking down the road after a rather indifferent meal. To our surprise the waiter charged out after us, shouting because we had ‘only’ left a 10% tip.
At that time 10% was fairly generous here in the uk as tipping wasn’t expected as it is now , and still isn’t at all in many countries in mainland Europe , but clearly it was not enough fir this waiter.
We were astonished as nothing like that had ever happened, not before or since.

My hair dresser has stopped using cards and now is cash only. the card people charged the hairdressers twice once to have the card reading equipment etc and on every transaction they took a fee. Really really greedy people.

They’re a business - how do you expect them to exist?

A lot of people like to physically track the disappearance of their cash knowing just how much they have left to spend each week. I'm one of them.

EmilyHarburn

My hair dresser has stopped using cards and now is cash only. the card people charged the hairdressers twice once to have the card reading equipment etc and on every transaction they took a fee. Really really greedy people.

When I was in business I was also charged to deposit cash.

I'm self-employed and all my fees are paid into my account via bank transfer.
All my minded children's parents pay through the government Tax Free Childcare account, which is beneficial to them as it saves them 20% off their bill.

Virtually all my spending is done online via credit card.

I like the traceability when I work out my income and expenses for my tax return.

But of course every time somebody does this the tax take goes down and government spending has to come from somewhere

Governements seem to find plenty to reward and pay off their mates for bum contracts, squander in foreign wars and send aid to countries like India.

I am really puzzled that some people think banks should carry out all their services free of charge. They are businesses .
Why not expect your builder or hairdresser to work free of charge then ?

I'm seeing the opposite problem at the moment. I volunteer for a small local charity who've now decided to go cash free, only card payments are accepted. They say that it cuts admin costs with no banking etc. and safer not to have cash on the premises. We get lots of elderly people on coach outings, who, when told we only accept card payments, cannot pay entrance fees as they only have cash, so they have to give our venue a miss. They miss the experience, we lose the revenue. I made this point at the meeting where the decision was made, but was out voted. Surely there is a justification for either method of payment to be available.

Lots of dodgy deals can be done in a cash only business as we all know. Money laundering etc.

Zuzu

We ate lunch the other day at a local restaurant we've eaten at many times, always paying with a debit. I noticed a "customer fee" on the bill of 4%. Asked about it and was told it covered the cost of using a card. I'm in the US, but thought this was tacky and cheap. Felt like I was paying a fee for the lights to be on. Some things are simply part of the cost of doing business. Plus 4% seemed high to me. I should go back to cash, I suppose. But a card is so convenient.

This used to be the case in the UK if you used a credit card though not a debit card if I remember correctly. However it is now illegal to add a charge to the customer for using a card.
When I first had a credit card I never used it. It was there for emergencies. Then I had one - car repairs. I asked my boss what \i had to do to use it and he was amazed I had a card and had never used it! Some businesses only take cards if the purchase is above a certain amount and that is still allowed. Since many people use cards nowadays prices are set to reflect this. I'm not sure if it is legal to give a discount for cash these days. There was a time when my ex would negotiate a discount for cash on large purchases.