4 Reasons to Keep Cash in your Wallet
When I was growing up, my mom always yelled at me if I didn’t have 20 dollars in my wallet. If I had no cash, my mom would give some to me. Now, I took advantage of that sometimes. I was a bad teenager, but my mom’s point was incredibly valid. Granted, that was 12 years ago, but I really think that it is a piece of advice that is still valuable today.
You never know when you may need a few dollars for something or another. In our technology-driven world, we sometimes forget about cash, and some people speculate that cash will eventually go away. I’m bound to disagree, and for some of the reasons that I’ll talk about below.
Today, we’re going to check out four reasons for you to always keep some cash in your wallet.
1. Going to mom and pop shops. In my area, there are a lot of small businesses. I love it, because you can find some of the coolest things ever in those little stores! Some small businesses don’t take credit cards, because of the costs involved with updating Point-of-Sale systems and for each transaction. It’s just not worth it for some smaller businesses, so if you’re thinking about hitting up some mom and pop shops, keep some cash on hand.
2. Managing your budget. One thing that I always do with vacation money is put cash into envelopes. It helps me to budget out what money I need for what parts of the trip. You can do this with vacations, bills, and whatever else. Our dependency on the bank to keep our records can be almost dangerous; we can forget about payments or overdraft on our accounts.
3. To give tips. Waitresses and waiters prefer cash tips. Credit tips are often treated differently than cash tips, and the lack of a paper trail can be advantageous for them when filling out taxes. Also, it always makes a waiter or waitress feel better to see some dollars on their table instead of having to wait and see what the credit card tip was.
4. In case technology goes on the fritz. You see, technology is really unreliable sometimes. A lot of the time. Technology is finicky. More than once I’ve been caught in a bad situation where I didn’t have any cash on me and the credit card machine broke. Or, another time, my bank card wouldn’t work. Technology is not the be all end all, make sure you always have cash on you for backup.
This was really a case of “mother knows best.” Do you keep cash on you? Why or why not? Do you think cash will eventually go away, or do you think that’s just a bunch of hype? What have you ever forgotten to bring cash with you for? Thanks for joining us this week, and until next week, spend smart, save smart!
