Now I know who to mug at the PA Dope Fest.
Indeed. Basically every two weeks or so I take out 300 for “walking around” money. From this comes all beer, most lunches, all tips, hair cuts, movies and all impulse purchases.
However, now that I work from home, it is usually once every 3 or 4 weeks, since I rarely eat out any more and I hardly ever go to the bars any more.
So basically, if you’re prepared to forego a huge range of conveniences and social niceties, it is just about possible to go cashless. Not very convincing.
People who don’t carry cash always end up in front of me at the checkout counter, making me wait while two out of their three cards are rejected or while they write a check they just spent five minutes fishing for in a purse. Wally World really needs “cash only” lanes.
I buy from friends’ daughters, and they take checks and credit/debit. Just left the local Kroger where Boy Scouts were happily accepting cars to buy their crappy popcorn, so the BSA is modernized, too.
The machines I use take cards (Tap to Pay… no swiping necessary!) and a few even can use my cell phone.
There’s not a single chain here that fits that description. Just Discover? Even Sears gave up on that crap a few decades ago. I know some were weird about taking Visa/MC branded debit cards for a while, and I think some warehouse clubs don’t take some brands, but I have a bank-only debit card that works at even those places.
Check or debit/credit card. I don’t attend church any more, but my old churches all had slips to allow credit transactions by the mid-1990s, and any transactions in church stores (bookstore, cafe, whatever) were credit friendly.
The rest of the kind of weird examples given in this big block of hypothetical spur-of-the-moment purchases can be handled with a trip to an ATM, which are pretty darn common. And… not having cash keeps me from making so many useless spur-of-the-moment purchases. So, it’s not a big problem.
I’ve never understood the other fears of people regarding use of cards… wow, how do I do laundry? Well, if my laundromat didn’t accept cards, I’d probably get some cash since, presumably, I know before arriving at the laundromat that I need to do laundry. Why would I carry $20 in my wallet for a week in the event that I accidentally need to do some laundry? Similarly for going out to a club or restaurant. It’s not like I’m blindfolded and taken to one without my knowledge, where I then discover I’m stuck in a situation where I need cash but don’t have it. I just get some cash if I need some cash, and do not bother with it otherwise.
I’d happily trade a bag of popcorn for a car, too. 
This. When I get cash, I tend to spend it quite quickly. Then my wallet remains empty for a couple months before I remember to get cash again. I usually have it when I KNOW I’m going to need it, but that doesn’t happen very often.
It’s not that I deliberately seek to not keep cash in my wallet–it just sorta happens that way.
I work at a coffee shop in a smallish town. The owner refuses to get a credit card machine because of the costs she would incur. There have been times when we have lost sales because of this, but also times when the customer will go to an ATM and then come back.
There’s an argument in favor of carrying cash that hasn’t been brought up yet. You spend less money.
You can read a study about it in a PDF here: www.nrc.nl/redactie/next/geld/monopolymoney.pdf
The basic idea is that’s it’s more “painful” to pay with cash, as it’s a more vivid transaction and sticks in your mind more. Whereas with a card, the pain of paying is disassociated from the actual purchase and lumped in with other things. Of course, people these days have more money than they know what to do with and often seem to be looking for ways to part with it, so maybe this is a feature of the card, not a bug. But I always have cash and try to use it as much as possible.
I brought it up in my first post!
And yes, Ximenean, but it’s more like - we don’t find we need all those services, and I certainly don’t like money just pouring out of my wallet. if I don’t have it, I don’t spend it.
I have a car.
I haven’t been to a place which didn’t take CCs for about 10 years. I also don’t go have collective food bills with friends much anymore, but if I were going to such an event I would make a stop by the ATM first.
It doesn’t hurt at all.
Nope.
Who sells tomatoes at an arts & crafts fair? 
Nope, nope, nope … well you get the picture. There is no Metro here, and I don’t work at a place where you have to pay to park. If I’m going to church I specifically get money for the collection plate.
I don’t understand what these conveniences and niceties are that I’m missing. I don’t need cash money to get through my day, why should I? I buy my groceries once a week, get gas for my car every couple of weeks, both with my ATM card. I don’t buy stuff like candy, gum, fast food, etc, because I don’t want it. You make it sound like I’m deprived.
It doesn’t make any difference to me, I’m not a spendy person.
You know, I’ve heard this and believe this, but I wonder if it’s a generational thing. I know that for many, paper money is real money, and plastic money is real, but distant money, which makes it easier to spend. I wonder, though, if for young people that the opposite may be true. As an anecdote, my dad never even had a debit card until very recently. How he has managed to live in these times without one, I shall never know, but he pays in cash and checks for everything. He knows his money is spent when there is no more cash in his wallet. Conversely, I have never been without a debit card. I don’t count my money by looking in my wallet. I go online to check my account to see how much money I have. The number that I read when I check my balance is what I say is how much money I have. I’ve always lived in a plastic world. What’s more, because I measure my money by looking at what’s in my account, I tend to regard debit card purchases as spending real, concrete money, and spending cash as less real. The thought process is kind of like, “My checking account balance is $1,000. I get to spend [some amount of money that is less than or equal to what is in my wallet] without having my checking account balance changed.”
Now of course, I don’t actually believe spending cash doesn’t deplete my available money, and I don’t go withdrawing exorbitant amounts of cash to spend, going “It’s okay. It’s not real money!” but what I am saying is that the inverse of conventional knowledge is true for me. That is, it is more painful for me to swipe my card than it is to fork over a 20.
Does this make sense to anyone?
Maybe now, but you haven’t seen my cars in the past. Be careful what you wish for, you might end up with a wrecked '84 Olds Delta 88 that burns oil and occasionally its passengers!
I carry a little bit of cash on me. At least once a week I have to park in a parking garage that only takes cash, so that got me always carrying a handful of $1 bills. Actually I just keep them in the car and replenish when I get low.
Other than that, if I have cash on my, I tend to spend it on little things I don’t need.
There are always outliers (or rather, the small percentage that doesn’t conform with the results), and I guess I’m one. I’m no spendthrift, but when I have cash in my pocket, it’s generally without any accounting whatsoever (versus my credit card statement, which has 100% accountability). Therefore I’m much more willing to part with my cash when I have it. Hell, I’ve been going through cash like nothing the last 14 months because I’m in a cash society, so I always have cash, and there’s no accountability.
That’s what’s happening to me. The saving grace, luckily, is that it’s not income money, it’s per diem that’s meant to be spent.
Which conveniences and social niceties am I giving up again?
And re: Having cash makes you spend it less, I’ve found the opposite to be true. If I have cash with me… hey spend spend spend! It’s not like I have to worry about accidentally overspending!
Lots of places locally only take cash or check, or have high minimums for CC and DC, or charge a fee to use a CC.
Just to ask (because of a POV I’ve seen expressed both here and elsewhere): are any of you cashless people at all concerned about being tracked and your movements/purchases examined by government or corporations? I assume not, or you wouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but I’m just curious.
[Semi-related aside: I’m starting to reconsider not having a rewards card at the place I usually grocery shop at… I never got one because of this very board, and opinions I’d seen expressed on here that it was too big an invasion of privacy.)
No, why should I care?
Because then you won’t care when society becomes TRULY cashless and it becomes ubiquitous, and said government/corporations start doing it to everyone and turning it towards shady purposes.
(Or at least that’s what I’m told.)