Seriously? If in a natural disaster I need to buy gas and the price is $100 because they can't make change I wouldn't hesitate to part with the $100, and never lose sleep over it.
So you are fine wasting money in situations where it's easily avoidable? Ok, if that works for you. This is the Antimistachian wall of shame and comedy, after all
Let's not call it "situations" like it happens often. Because it doesn't. I'm saying the risk that someday I'll have to pay $100 for something that should cost me $50 in an emergency is not going to dissuade me from doing something that works for me, because it's remote. What is more likely is that I'd have $100 in $20s, and over time we'd fritter that away on ice cream and girl scout cookies and other bullshit, and when the SHTF I'd have $0 because I never replenished the emergency stash. THAT is a much bigger "risk", to me, than the once in a lifetime where I have to overpay for something in an emergency.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what we are talking about here. I thought we were talking about true emergency cash, i.e. Cash set aside for use in life threatening situations. If you are talking about just keeping some extra cash around the house for any purpose that's different .
Now if we are taking about emergency cash, there should be no situation in which you would "fritter" any of it away, regardless of denomination. And since its sole purpose is for use in emergencies, you are extremely likely to run into problems breaking the bills, and that is 100% foreseeable.
So in either case, we are talking about Antimistachian inability for self control or Antimistachian disinterest in minimizing unnecessary expenses.
Edit: if there's an emergency and I properly planned, but for some reason I have to pay $10" for $10 of gas, I would my lose sleep over it either. But if simple planning could have saved be the $90 by keeping smaller bills around, I would kick myself for that. And as discussed in this thread, it's actually far more work to obtain the $100 bills than just stash smaller bills readily obtained from ANY ATM