Credit card, debit card, ATM, signature: spending money has never been so easy, never been so convenient.
A credit card purchase can protect items, put them under instance insurance. A lost debit card can be blocked, traced, very much unlike cash.
So what’s to love about cash money? Cash in hand?
- It reminds you how much you’re allowed to spend
- Cash reminds you how much you earn
- coins can also be a painless way of saving if you throw all you have into a jar every night
- Tossing all your dollar bills into a jar is a faster way to set aside some dough.
- Furthermore, a wrinkly bill is still legal tender whereas a cracked credit card or one with a damaged magnetic strip spells trouble.
- The fact is, using cash for dinner out is a great way to stay on budget because, once again, it involves the actual concept of money spent: With tax and tip, I just spent two hours’ worth of salary on a burger, fries and beer. If you use plastic, it’s easy just to sign and forget.
For now cash is not about to disappear. Only the government can put an end to it for it is it that produces it.
The Economist in 2001 argued that the end of physical cash can occur by the time a panhandler can accept electronic payments.
For the moment cash maintains an important part also in the informal economy. In Australia’s Cash Economy: Are the Estimates Credible? (2005) multiple independent research sources show that unreported cash transactions might be funding an underground economy as large as 15 per cent of official gross domestic product (GDP).
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