Nothing deep behind this one. My office has a number of vending machines scattered throughout. Most of them take credit cards (a modern-day miracle itself, in my eyes), but the one nearest me only takes plain old cash money. I pass by it at least once a day, and lately, I’m always immediately struck by the realization that if I really wanted the Snackwell cookies out of there, I’d be out of luck. As far as I can recall, I haven’t had any money in my wallet for about five weeks (and I’m fairly certain the last dollar I had went to that very vending machine). I just haven’t had any reason to go to an ATM since then, despite the fact that I am typically opposed to the idea of walking around with zero cash. You just never know when you’re going to need it in a pinch, but I’m apparently walking on the wild side these days.
So, share your stories, such as they are! “Cash” here means whatever your local paper and/or coin currency is—if you live in the United States, but you happen to carry around a new leu for luck, that does not count for this thread. Credit cards, debit cards, cashier’s checks, personal checks, money orders and IOUs also do not count.
Not sure. It’s not something I’ve ever wondered about. I normally only carry cash if I had to get some and still have bills on me, then I carry them until I spend them. Normally don’t need cash, as most of my spending is with cards or electronically. But occasionally will need cash for places that don’t take cards or for tips, etc.
If I have pants on, there is cash in my pockets. Routinely, $1-200.
I can’t remember a time when I did not have cash ready at hand, since my younger struggling days when I sometimes went several days with none to carry.
As a proud Canadian I very rarely carry any cash with me. I depend on my debit card for 99% of my daily transactions. The only reason I ever have cash is the $2 bucks I spend every month on casual day at my place of employment. If I was able to do a payroll deduction for that then I could probably go the best part of a year without carrying cash.
The only time I can remember not having cash was when I went to my mother’s house for a barbecue and realized when I got there that I had left my wallet at home. I wouldn’t knowingly be without cash as I keep it in the same wallet as my driver’s license.
I always like to have cash on me for little purchases. Psychologically I know it’s all the same money and it doesn’t matter in the end, but something just pisses me off when I see a $1.07 charge on my debit card because I forgot a drink and needed to run to BK for a soda.
As a child, I’m sure I went months and months without ever carrying cash. I’ve done the credit card with cash-back rewards thing before, paying it off in full each month. I still have the cards, but since I’m trying to be more disciplined with money, I’ve locked the cards in the safe.
It’s too easy and convenient to overspend on credit cards, and when saving is a priority, convenient spending is my enemy. It turns out they’re right when they say folks spend more when using plastic than when using cash. I never paid a dime of interest, but I made far more impulse buys when using plastic.
I thought of keeping the rewards card for gas, since that’s never going to be an impulse buy, but my local station offers a cash discount that’s on par with the CC rewards, so there’s no sense to keep temptation in my wallet.
So to answer the OP, several months is probably the longest, but within the past year, no more than a day.
I generally try to avoid having cash on me. I prefer to use debit or credit cards for a couple of reasons including a lower risk of theft and easier tracking of my expenses.
In the last couple of years, I’ve started making a small effort to keep at least $20 or so on hand just in case I need it. I still routinely go a month or more without any cash on me.
I use my credit card like my life depends on it (er, it does?) but I always have cash on me too.
I totally get that I can live a happy life without cash but my dad is a huge cash guy and he always makes me feel like having cash on hand is important.
Many times I have enough to cover something in cash but choose to hold on to my cash and pay using credit, because I can. I hold on to the cash for whenever in the future I will need cash for real.
And yes I pay off my CC every month so it is not costing me an extra cent to always use my card.
I rarely carry cash. I use my credit card for EVERYTHING, and I pay it off every month (plus get rewards points). At tax time, I can categorize everything in Quicken and produce a report for my tax person in just a few minutes. So convenient.
When I carry cash, I usually wind up giving it to panhandlers and homeless people.
Once I was out of cash and had expected to use a cash machine. The problem was that the display on the machine was broken. I needed to money to get my car from parking, so I pressed the buttons to recreate what I’d done when the display was working. I did it right.
Over the course of my adult life I’ve probably need cash at least once a year.
Recently I’ve only gone 3 months since I had to pull money out of an atm to deposit it at the bank the atmosphere was attached too since that was only way the transaction would make it on time. About six months ago I had to drive 1,500 about an hour across town because the people preferred cash to checks. About three months before that I was getting paid in cash weekly so I always had a little. My total time with cash in my pocket since I quit that job in April has been about 1.25 hours in 8 months.
ETA: just remembered before that I paid myself in cash once a month because it was the fastest cheapest way to move money from my company accounts to my personal account. So I had cash for about 30 min each month.
I can’t really correctly answer this question, because I am currently not carrying any paper money. I have some coins that might be worth together a few dollars. I don’t know how long the situation will last, nor do I know how long I’ve been in this situation. I estimated how long I think the entire run will be.
5 or 6 days but periods of 1-4 days is not unusual for me. Spending a fair amount of time places where there isn’t much to buy cash is just something that clutters my pocket that I can do without.
