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Comment by mikegioia | Hacker News Reader

I've been "cash only" for 8 months now and I love it. Of course I need a credit card if I buy something on Amazon or a one-off web store, but the point is to move as many transactions offline as possible.

There are so many privacy benefits to using cash, but one that really resonates with me is the physical nature of it. When you pay for something with cash, you can feel the transaction of money exchanging hands and it can have a psychological effect to prevent frivolous spending. Or at the very least, further reinforce that YES we are spending money!

Also, store clerks, cab drivers, any anyone who accepts tips always love getting cash.

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Funnily enough, I'm the exact opposite. Mentally, money in my account is "my money". Cash I've withdrawn feels like already-spent money. Since it's unaccountable, I tend to spend it more frivolously. Might be a generation-to-generation thing.

I'm definitely the same here. Taking cash out at an ATM feels the same as spending it. It's spent money to me.

Yep, I share your same mindset. Whenever I take money out of the ATM I typically only take what I need right now because once it's in my wallet it's already spent.

Same effect, different reason.

Once it's in my wallet, it's already spent by my spouse.

I might actually spend as much as 10% of my cash withdrawals myself. I can reliably keep a single $10 bill in there, as the "didn't want to clean you out"-based guilt prevents the very last note in there from being taken.

Of course, now the spouse just takes the debit card from my wallet instead, so I might have to start keeping more cash in there, in case I go to pay for something one day and it's not there.

> Since it's unaccountable, I tend to spend it more frivolously.

Which is fine!

Here's what you do: allot a certain amount of cash to discretionary expenses each month. You take that money out at the beginning of each month (actually in my case, twice a month) and then use it. And when you run out you're out.

What you've just done is used physical cash to put a hard ceiling on your discretionary spending. This turns what are normally variable expenses into a fixed item in your budget, which makes it a heck of a lot easier to account for.

This is also called "budgeting"

I appreciate your deeply insightful comment. Thank you for your service.

I never realized this, but I do this too.

I think the mentality comes from using your bank's website/mint/etc to track your spending. Anything done with a card becomes a specific line item staring you in the face; cash, however, just falls into "miscellaneous".

My first real job & paycheck was an internship in Tokyo. Since Japan is very cash-based, and I only had a savings account (and wasn't sure what the limit on transactions was, if any), I would withdraw my spending money /for the month/ and avoid going to the ATM as much as possible.

It definitely formed a different attitude towards cash then I feel I otherwise would have got. The money I have left in my wallet feels like all I have this month, and as the bills disappear I really feel the spending. I feel spending from my bank account much less.

Or even better on the frivolous spending, the "I don't have enough on me right now" situation. If it's really important, you'll come back. If you need to trim your purchase from the grocery store to match what's in your wallet, the stuff you didn't really need factors in.

It makes you MUCH more conscious of how much things cost because you don't want to get to the checkout and be short.

>I don't have enough on me right now

Yeah I remember that situation. I accidentally left my card at home. I didn't have lunch that day and I barely managed to drive home with an almost empty fuel tank.

To me looking at the balance on my phone is far quicker than counting all the damn coins. 1 cent coins are such a huge annoyance that I'd rather throw them into the trash than actually pay with them.

On the plus side, using a card gives you a good list so you can see what you've spent. This makes accounting simpler than using a cash book and accumulating receipts.

On the minus side, I use contactless ("wave to pay") all the time now, and find I rarely look to see how much I'm spending on small transactions. Even with larger transactions, it doesn't feel like "real money".

I think it's the opposite for me, using cash makes it way easier to get an idea of how much I spend. I use the ATM three times per month with 100 pounds each so 300 pound/month in normal expenses. With card I would need to to an addition of everything per month.

My credit card bill this month is £500, That seems easier than "i had n trips to the ATM plus I think I had £30 in my wallet from last month and I got £25 from donna for the booze we bought in France over the summer"?

Not only that, I can download a monthly spreadsheet of all my transactions, pivot them into a simple table and so on and so forth. Data out the wazoo. £105 a month on tube fares. £235 a month on lunch. £17 on fuel. Knowing where I spent it is as useful if not more so than how much I spent in total.

Then of course there is the free money I get from spending on a card. It all seems like a no brainer. And I never need to go to an ATM. And most the time I just lean my wallet against a card reader and mosey onwards.

I'm not sold.

My bank (Danske Bank) even does that for me. When I log in, it shows a bar chart of spending categorized for the previous 30 days (housing, transport, food etc).

Changing the range changes what transactions are summarized, and what transactions are shown in detail below the graph. Clicking a graph category further filters and shows the transactions that match, with the graph changing to more specific sub-categories (rent, water, electricity etc if I click housing).

The categories are set automatically, but can be overridden or a transaction can be divided between several, and that remembered for future transactions.

I'm impressed that a bank produced this system!

I wish a UK bank did that! (Maybe one does, but I haven't heard about it....)

True, but when the time comes where you need to cut expenses for some reason, do you know where that 300 pounds is going? That is the advantage he was getting at.

I download my transactions weekly from my CC company and can easily see I've been spending way too much money eating out the past two months.

> On the plus side, using a card gives --you-- everyone a good list so you can see what you've spent

FTFY.

The modern world seems to be one in which business, governments, and hackers know exactly what we are doing.

True ;-)

There are so many privacy benefits to using cash

I like to use cash a lot too. And the privacy benefits are true sometimes, but more and more places want your information when you purchase anything. I bought a weed wacker the other day and they wanted my address and phone and email. I never say no, but instead reply with, "555 Fake Street" which is obnoxious, but its like you don't need my damn address to sell me lawn equipment. Amazingly, most people dont understand why anyone would give false information to a random business.

How many people use 555-areacode-1212 for loyalty card search at the cash register? It's an offline equivalent of bugmenot.

<areacode>-555-1212 is the correct order.

Similar for me, but I resisted using cards in real life from the beginning. I use them exclusively for internet transactions. I just don't like the idea of giving up a freedom of anonymity, yet I notice others are seemingly jumping at the chance.

I'm not sure what I would do if I lived in a city where electronic transactions are a requirement for public transport. I guess I would walk as much as possible... or even move to an alternative place.

    I'm not sure what I would do if I lived in a city
    where electronic transactions are a requirement for
    public transport.

Step into my office ;) There are many things you can do, walking is the best one. You can pay for Metrocards in NYC with cash though. The machines still accept them.

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