Cash......Should I be holding on to some tangible CASH??

[Woodshark]

Short answer is yes I do and so should you. Why?  Three things come to mind.

1. When there is a natural disaster, power is lost and ATM's are down OR they have already been used hard and are out of money. When the power is out, cash is king.

2. To buy good deals fast.  Case in point, one evening I was watching Craigslist and ran across a kayak at a real good price. I called and the guy said two other people had already called and wanted to buy it. Seller wanted cash so they had to wait till the banks opened the next day before they could get the cash. ISince I had the cash, I purchased it that night.

3. You or a friend get towed or arrested and need cash for bail.  Not likely but it does happen!

Keep at least a few hundred in twenty's around. It's cheap insurance.

[KatieSSS]

Yup, we keep a few hundred in our fire proof safe.  There have been a few ice storms lately.  Sometimes cash just works better.

Out of curiosity, what else do you keep in your fireproof safe? This sounds like a good thing to have. I have a safety deposit box, so one item in that fireproof would probably be said keys to safety deposit box :)

We've had one for years, and it's handy to keep anything that's infrequently used and hard to replace.  Passports, birth certificates, savings bonds (old school) safety deposit keys, deed to the house, titles for the cars, unexpired days on old Disney World passes, some cash.  I also keep back up disks of photos and Quicken info there (and another copy offsite).  We've never yet needed to evacuate, but if we do, it's grab and go.

Thanks. A lot of the stuff you mentioned I keep in my safety deposit box. But there are several things at home that I wouldn't want to forget if I had to flee quickly, like my external hard drive.

[Annamal]

If you're worried about some calamity where you might need non-digital forms of currency, what makes you think people would still want cash?   I'd imagine something like propane canisters, canned food, water, and precious metals and stones would have more value than a piece of paper in that scenario.

No, I don't keep cash around.   Though we do have a warchest of over $60,000 in our business checking account.   That way we can make payroll, hire people we need for a contract before getting a contract, pay ourselves etc.   Before we saved this money up, every month seemed to be a looming disaster, and often was.    We used our credit cards in order to make payroll more than once when we were bootstrapping it.

Because I saw exactly what happened after the Christchurch earthquake and cash was a useful thing to have in the week or so immediately afterwards.

People were incredibly awesome after it (the student volunteers who organised themselves into groups to help dig up silt for example) and there was no apocalyptic hellscape, but a lot of infrastructure did take a while to come back on line and cash was useful.

[Bigote]

Exactly.   Keeping cash around isn't a hedge against the apocalypse.  It's for the once-in-a-decade event that temporarily interrupts electronic payments.   Blackouts, earthquakes, things like that. 

And as several pointed out above, it can help in other situations like paying tradesmen ( and getting a discount), helping friends, etc. 

[Prairie Stash]

Exactly.   Keeping cash around isn't a hedge against the apocalypse.  It's for the once-in-a-decade event that temporarily interrupts electronic payments.   Blackouts, earthquakes, things like that. 

And as several pointed out above, it can help in other situations like paying tradesmen ( and getting a discount), helping friends, etc.

Or you could be a friend that borrows...All the benefits and none of the problems.

P.S. can I borrow $20, I know you have it on you?

[BlueHouse]

since the ATM only spits out $20's

The ATM that I frequent spits out 50 dollar bills.  I find this odd and quite embarrassing. when I try to pay for something with a $50 (it makes me feel like a big shot-wannabe).  People look at me funny when I whip out a $50 to pay for something.  I hate it.  I wonder if this is the beginning of a trend (give us more money to make us spend faster), or just a symptom of the spendy factor in Washington.  Maybe this particular ATM is where all the lobbyists get their glad-hand money.  (It's across the street from the Capitol)

[aj_yooper]

Fifties or hundreds are best because you don't want to break them and nobody wants to take them.  Good stuff.

[jpdcpajd]

Got to have cash to buy Beer in a summer power outage

[fmzip]

So funny.....

I started this thread because I had no cash on hand....

I proceeded to sell an old bumper on craigslist this weekend for $170. I thought how great is this, this is going to be my cash stash!

So I proceed to the safe in the house, I open it. Low and behold, there are six Benjamins staring right at me! I snatch them up with a big smile on my face to look at the old wallet underneath. Voila, there is another $470 in there!

Not a bad way to start the weekend! Cash stash is SOLVED! :)

[KatieSSS]

Ha ha! I've never found THAT much cash that I didn't know I had, but your story reminded me of one of the best feelings in the world. Putting on a coat for the first time in several months to discover that you left a $10 bill in the pocket!

[Bigote]

since the ATM only spits out $20's

The ATM that I frequent spits out 50 dollar bills.  I find this odd and quite embarrassing. when I try to pay for something with a $50 (it makes me feel like a big shot-wannabe).  People look at me funny when I whip out a $50 to pay for something.  I hate it.  I wonder if this is the beginning of a trend (give us more money to make us spend faster), or just a symptom of the spendy factor in Washington.  Maybe this particular ATM is where all the lobbyists get their glad-hand money.  (It's across the street from the Capitol)

I had that happen to my favorite ATM in Brooklyn.   Others from the same bank didn't do it.   I finally asked a guy in the branch about it, he said the ATM was heavily used so using larger bill denominations basically increased its capacity and decreased the frequency of refills.   

My response was to get 280 out of the bank instead of my customary 300.   At least I had some 20s I could use until I could break the 50s.