I am busy watching a Netflix documentary on Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune and someone who is described as the richest woman in the world.

Early on in the first episode they state that Madame Bettencourt is worth thirty billion Euros. Quite obviously, a very considerable sum. They also mention, and simulate for the documentary, the use of cash and how absolutely everything in her household is paid for in cash. Envelope upon envelope of €500 bills, all pristine looking and no doubt fresh from a bank note company.

This had me thinking about the use of cash so I scrolled back in the OM blog and found various mentions of (cash) but in particular an article written by Byron in December 2014 titled ‘Why I Pay Cash’. Chief amongst his reasons he mentions identity protection and the feeling of a better appreciation of the amounts one is spending when cash leaves one’s hands! As opposed to paying by card.

I too, until three or four years ago, was a cash ‘fanatic’. Except for buying a car or a house I paid for just about everything in cash. My credit card lived at zero/zero and I termed myself the bank’s worst customer as they basically made nothing out of me. But then things slowly changed.

I started to notice that each time I drew cash from an ATM my bank was charging me what I thought was a disproportionate sum for the ‘service’. Be that locally or internationally. So I tried a different tack. By transferring money from a savings account into a credit card and using the credit card as a debit card to pay for things I found that the cost of the internet account-transfer was about an eighth of the ATM charge. On top of that, I began earning interest on the credit balance in my credit card!

Then there was, or is, the ever-growing issue of security. By that I mean physical/personal security. I still draw cash for some specific payments but now only do so at a few shopping centres where the machines are located in a branch of my bank. Never after banking hours though. Less chance of the card being cloned too as opposed to ‘holes in the wall’ in the street which are prime sites for that type of thing. I know this sounds a bit paranoid but I have been followed in a shopping centre after withdrawing money. I also had a colleague who some years ago was drawing money from a street ATM at three in the afternoon. Broad daylight. He was bumped on the head and never regained consciousness.

Since the 2014 blog article there have been considerable advances in the technology of banking and quite a few places no longer accept cash at all as a result of this. No doubt ‘they’ know when and where I have bought a cup of coffee or an ice cream but particularly in big cities it is becoming more and more the norm (not) to use cash.

I am curious to know how others have ‘evolved’ in the last ten years. Are members of the tribe going ‘cashless’ ? I realise that when one has hard currency ‘in the hand’ and one spends it, it is ‘physically gone’, so to speak. And immediately apparent. For some it is  easy to rack up debts using a card. To others it isn’t a problem or a temptation at all. They manage their cards just as they would bank notes.

Keep in mind Old Money’s management of money is rooted in self discipline irrespective of whether it is in bank notes, cards, cheques, bartering with precious stones or whatever the method of the day is.

What are your latest thoughts, habits and practices?