Does your choice depends on somehing? And from what country are you?
I almost never have cash on me. It’s debit or credit always. Here’s my thought process on paying with cash. If I buy something that costs, say $4.55, and I hand over a $5 dollar bill, that item has really just cost me $5.00 because what am I realistically going to do with the 45 cents in change?
I put my change in a jar when I empty my pockets. About once a year I’ll take it by the bank and treat myself with the couple hundred dollars it cashes out to.
Are you just throwing yours away?
I’ve had like ~70 cents sitting on the shelf for over a year… like, what an I going to do with it? It’s just a pointless pile of coins. half the time those coins are in the wrong combination to pay for whatever other change in my next cash transaction, so I just end up with more coins… which I have to remember to grab when I’m specifically going to a cash-only place…
All of the sub-$1 coins that I have ever received as change in my lifetime would not add up to $100. But I also don’t use (or even carry) cash unless I absolutely must.
Edit to add: I have a jar too. It’s a standard mason jar. I started filling this one after my last move. In 2013.
I have yet to fill it completely.
I’ve got a jar too, but it definitely doesn’t fill up at anywhere near the rate yours does. My pay is direct deposited and every place I shop will take a card. I could either go to the ATM to get cash, use it to pay for things when I don’t have to, collect these small amounts of change, and take it all back to the bank eventually, or I could just not bother with any of these things.
Back in the day you take that .45 cents and throw it in a big old empty pickle jar with the rest of your loose change.
the problem now is that I’ll just have a big pickle jar with 45 cents. Next year, I’ll have a pickle jar with 60 cents… maybe by the time I retire I’ll have a whole five dollars of change and exchange it for a bill…
Sure. At the current rate. But it’s likely that if you use cash more often then your pickle jar fills up sooner.
The amount of cash I use is only decreasing with every year. I’m not going to further inconvenience myself just to validate a pickle jar.
UK.
Card. Have always used a credit card as much as possible to pay for everything since I was able to. That was Barclaycard in 1981 - £2 limit as I was underage. Back in the day Barclaycards were used as £50 cheque guarantee cards which they would issue to me as a minor, but they also served as credit cards for adults.
Cards are OPM and legislation protects us for purchases over £100 and I never carry a balance.
There is never any point in using a debit card to pay for anything. Reversing a transaction is a 'mare and you assume all the risk. Chase offer 1% cashback but I’d never use it (read:assume the risk) for anything where 1% would be worth having.
I tend to (over)spend cash if I have it, but cards I don’t over-spend at all. I’ve never been able to work out why. Not broken so not fixed.
Almost exclusively Amex, but carry a MasterCard too for those occasional times where Amex isn’t accepted locally or I’m in mainland Europe. Amex customer service is exceptional. My MasterCard bill is maybe two transactions a month; pennies.
The only place I pay physical cash is the barber. It’s a pain in the arse.
Money laundering regulations here are now insane.
Until the pandemic I used to be strictly cash only. Sadly the pandemic has shifted my habits quite a bit :/
I almost never use cash
Cash. feels better + Banks cant track me
Banks also seem willing to share their data with government agencies.
India. UPI.
Cash and only cash. I live in Europe, so basocally wherever I decide to travel, my euros will be accepted, otherwise I’d rather get ripped off by an exchange than give a single piece of metadata to my bank :)
Travelling to places with a different currency outside the EU, I take my debit card and on the very first day withdraw some of the local currency from an ATM.
I live in the eurozone, and I don’t even know what euro cash looks like.
What are your reasons for using a card? Not bashing you, just genuinely interested :)
I don’t want to carry around more shit and it makes payment faster and less fucking about.
Also if I lose it I don’t lose all my money.
UK, card exclusively.
The charges on card is lifted some years ago and now there’s no need to carry cash anywhere.
UK here - same for me for the last decade at least. The only thing I still pay for with cash is the barbers (although on my most recent visit I spotted a card terminal)
Australia. Cash if possible, but only for small transactions like groceries.
Otherwise, EFTPOS.
Credit card only for some online payments I can’t get around any other way.
Half cash, half card. I’m from Germany and I think that giving banks the level of control they’d have in a cashless society is one of the dumbest things a society can do.
Interesting to see how common it still is to exclusively use cash, especially in European countries. In Canada, they put us in a prisoners dilemma situation where things cost the same regardless of whether you pay cash or card, but if you pay card, the merchant pays a fee and you get a portion of that fee, making it cheaper for you, while also raising the prices because they need to factor in this extra fee, so things are actually more expensive overall, and moreso if you pay cash.
Besides the monetary incentives, it’s also much easier to track my expenses with a credit card.
Credit card almost exclusively and I get annoyed if I can’t use tap to pay. I’m finding more and more places don’t even accept cash anymore.
Germany: Credit card most of the time, using Apple Pay.
Some places only take girocard (formally EC), a special system in Germany that is cheaper for the vendor and more common, though some modern banks like N26 don’t give out girocards anymore which is why I have another bank account just for this. Super annoying.
Sometimes cash is still the only option, which is why I always carry 20-30 Euros with me just in case. Examples would be the local farm shop where I buy eggs and veggies, some small restaurants and pubs.
UPI
cash for bus
Metro card for metro
Almost exclusively cash for groceries and outings. Most other things are ordered online anyway. You’d think that working in IT I’d be more progressive but I’m confronted with so much malfunctioning tech that I’d rather have a simple form of transaction I can rely on and keep track of easily. My bank probably has some sort of ancient database that nobody understands anymore since Larry who was maintaining it died of a heart attack two weeks before retirement and now nobody dares to touch it until it’ll eventually fail and cause my card to lose functionality for 3 days. I’ll stick with my coins.
