My goodness you’re organized! It’s all I can do – and very often more than I can do – to just get around to ripping open my bills (CCs and everything else) so that they get paid on time, which they often don’t. As for categorizing my expenses, you may as well ask if I have a household budget! HAH! It is to laugh! 
Au contraire, it’s because I’m not organized. I don’t get any physical paper bills. Just about everything is set up to be automatically paid with my credit card. Requires no effort or thought from me at all. No paper crosses my hands or my desk.
I categorize expenses in Quicken solely for tax purposes (self-employed, don’tcha know). I do not have a household budget.
I only use checks for my pedicurist and hairdresser. I even do an EFT to my cleaning lady’s checking account. And the company (MowManagers.com) that comes to mow the lawn every other week gets paid automatically by credit card, too.
What I do is the lazy person’s way. Everything is automatic.
The only time I use cash is because I have to tip my hair stylist in cash. I’ve had change that I need to take to coinstar, but obviously it got shut down during the Covid panic.
I do use cash during street festivals to buy food or drinks just because the line to pay with credit is often longer and those square machines sometimes run slow or time out. Haven’t been to a street festival yet, but there’s a couple I’ll go to assuming they don’t get canceled
As this is becoming more common, I wonder for people who live alone that this makes it more difficult for someone to note their passing. Maybe we need some sort of simple email/app that requires people to click a button every few months to say, “I’m still here!”
Me too. I used to HATE, HATE, HATE opening my bills every month and filling out checks and taking said envelopes back to the post office to mail them (we don’t have mail delivery).
The pile of paper was absurd.
Now all I do is look at my Visa card statement and say OK, and pay it on line.
I generally use my debit card for purchases, but I will sometimes get an extra $10 or $20 in cash at the register at Walmart or Kroger. I let the green stuff accumulate for a while, until I have about $100 or so, and then I spend it at restaurants – Subway, Arbys, Hardees, Captain D’s, etc. I also accumulate change until I have $30-$50, and then I either take it to the bank and deposit it, or get “store credit” at the change machine at Walmart.
I fully expect my passing to go pretty much unnoticed.
When my late husband and I would sit down to pay bills, the first thing I had to do was pour a big tumbler of wine. I also hated bill paying. We’d wind up producing 20 or more checks. UGH!
BTW, I have alerts set up on my CC web site. Everyone should avail themselves of this option. I get a text message immediately every time there’s a charge of more than $50 (even if I make it) AND any time there’s a charge and the CC is not physically present (IOW online). No surprises when I get the statement online. This is a great service.
I did get a text one time that a charge of $200+ had been made at TJMaxx a few minutes before. That was not me. I called the Chase card people right away, and they said a physical card had been used! So someone had made a counterfeit card, the rat bastards. The charge was immediately removed.
This certainly describes me.
Prior to COVID, I reguarly used cash (and change) for various small-ticket items – paying for parking at the train station ($1.50 a day, in quarters), buying a cup of coffee, buying lunch while in the office, etc. I probably got some spending cash (at an ATM, or as cash back when buying groceries and paying with my debit card) once or twice a week.
I’m very occasionally using cash now – I always have some in my wallet, but the primary thing I use it for is to give my hair stylist a tip (since the salon doesn’t let patrons put tips on their debit/credit cards). Until I had to go to a laundromat a few weeks ago, when our dryer was on the fritz, I hadn’t used change in over a year.
Here is a four-year-old New York Times article (paywall warning) about elderly people living and dying alone in Japan, some of whom died without notice. One paragraph says, “The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.”
So I’m kind of glad I don’t do automatic bill payments. (Although even that may not be enough, as weeks could go by before anyone notices that I haven’t paid for something.)
In the before times, hubs and I both used cash for almost everything. Our change went into a jar at night to get turned in every so often. Panhandlers always got ones.
The world ended and now we both use our cash back Visa for almost everything. Our housekeeper gets paid cash, I use cash at the dispensary and hubs tips in cash. I carry fives for panhandlers.
My 85 year old mother and her out of state 86 year old friend have an agreement to call or text each other daily and to call a designated family member if the other person doesn’t respond.
Although like most people I am using less and less cash, I still carry some. Generally, a dollar or two in coins (my favorite place to get tea during my lunch is always needing coins so paying in exact change helps them out) and about $20 in bills because sometimes the CC/Debit system isn’t working. Also, on trips I prefer to purchase gas with cash to avoid the risk of my card getting skimmed. Even with today’s prices my car can still get from Chicago to Detroit on $15 in gas so I figure that has my butt covered.
I was pleased to see an earlier person, instead of simply discarding unwanted change (and yes, I have known one or two people who would throw out coins in the garbage) puts it into tip jars. I have a couple customers at work who will say “keep the change” and I’ll use it for people who come up short a few pennies at the register.
I don’t know if we’ll ever entirely get rid of cash, at least in my lifetime, but it is certainly becoming less common.
I haven’t carried any cash regularly for a long time, at least 10 years, maybe 15.
I think the opposite might be true. Yes other countries have coins in higher denominations, but other countries have less reason to carry any cash. Where I live there is no tipping culture for instance. Our banking systems seem more advanced as well with it being very easy to make electronic payments to people. I went to a market on the weekend and paid for something by entering the guy’s phone number into my banking app.
A sad and shocking story, to be sure. My automatic payments are on my credit card, not deducted from any bank account. Visa will track me down and find my body while there’s still some flesh on it, I’m sure.
I also wonder if other countries have as many unbanked as the USA does?
It’s really easy to get your bank account garnished in the USA: child support, alimony, or court fees are just a few examples
There’s some unbanked due to the big brother paranoia, I’m not sure if that’s really a significant number or not.
I’d think most of the Great Depression never trust a bank again types would have died off.
In Canada you can get your bank account garnished for the same reason but we have fewer unbanked. We don’t have ChexSystems or equivalent. If you screw a bank you will get a bad mark on your credit but that won’t stop another bank from giving you an account. (Banks here routinely do a hard credit check when you apply. The rules actually make it difficult to reject a new customer. Demarketing someone is a bit easier though.)
We have less paranoia about Big Brother but we have our own collection of Freemen on the Land, conspiracy theorists, etc. I know someone who is paid by direct deposit who immediately takes out everything in the form of cash so “the government” doesn’t know what he is spending his money on. He’s not unbanked, technically.
True, but as long as you’re not getting paid under the table, they’ll get your money. I’ve had to garnish the wages of several of my employees over the years (that is, I had to take money from their checks and send it to someone/somewhere else, not that I was taking it). As soon as I hire someone, I have to report the new hire to the state and if their wages are going to get garnished, I’ll get a notice two or three weeks later.
And, here’s the kicker, if I choose not to garnish the wages, I then owe that debt. So I’m not in any position to, for example, pretend I didn’t get the letter or ‘accidentally’ take out 1% instead of 10% to help them out. Don’t get me wrong, if someone one doesn’t want to repay some debt, I really don’t care, but I’m certainly not interested having that debt transferred to me.
I am sure that there are a few people in the UK who manage without a bank account but they must find it difficult. There is a shop in town that advertises “WE CASH CHEQUES” and I assume that this is a service for the unbanked. I don’t know what they charge but I bet it isn’t trivial.
No legitimate employer pays wages in cash, and all government benefits are paid to a bank account. Only those avoiding the Inland Revenue, or creditors want cash payments.
Covid has given a big impetus to contactless payments in small businesses like roadside snack bars and even buskers, to the extent that, like others above, I have some notes that I drew months ago and have not yet needed.
I’ve been watching Kim’s Convenience on Netflix lately. One thing that stands out to me is how customers come into the store, make a small purchase like a drink or bag of chips, and just leave a couple of coins on the counter. And that’s how it should be, darn it. You should be able to make small purchases with only coins.
Related to the above, I’ve noticed that when I’m traveling in a country that has the equivalent of a $1 coin, I’m much more likely to actually spend my coins, because the coins I’m carrying are actually worth enough to buy things with. So when I buy a cup of coffee or something, I’ll end up paying with a couple of 2 Euro coins or whatever.
To answer the question in the OP, I use cash when I go to the farmers market, and the barber shop, and cards pretty much everywhere else. At the farmers market I often accumulate coins and one stall, and then immediately spend them at another stall. Usually the vendors appreciate exact change. Or I’ll spend my coins in the office vending machine.
My current mechanic offers a 3% discount for paying cash. As expensive as a lot of car repairs are these days, it adds up.
As always in these threads, I say ‘I’m a cash sort of guy.’ If I anticipate I’ll be using smaller amounts of cash for errands, I grab a few coins to round things off. However, what I grab is usually a few pennies and nickels, probably not the payday the person was hoping for.
Glenwood Ave Arts is this weekend, one of the best!