I've decided to share the message of a colleague this week about the importance of cash. It is quite topical of late and I think Glenn Ellard's message is an important one to share.
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If there is a sound synonymous with modern society it has to be the muted beep of the contactless card reader as we wave over our credit or debit card to pay for purchases.
I am pretty sure it is the noise that most aptly sums up life now, sitting just above the less than muted cries of consternation when we realise how much money we have spent.
The two are inextricably linked, because using cards to pay for everything is divorced from the reality of bank balances that used to be rigidly enforced by the cash we once had to carry to pay for things.
When I started full-time work back in the 1980s I was at first paid with a small yellow envelope containing an even smaller amount of cash, so I always knew how much money I had left to last the week.
As time went on the job switched to paying wages directly into a bank account, and as someone who had been schooled in budgeting, each week I tried to work out how much cash I needed before trotting over to the bank and withdrawing it over the counter.
If I ran out of money, especially over the weekend when the banks were all closed, that was bad luck and I had to get by without.
It was a few years later that the first automatic teller machines were introduced to allow around the clock access to our funds, but it was still always dealing in cash.
However changing technology and the COVID-19 changed everything, teaching us all that we can go weeks without touching cash.
But at what cost?
I have recently switched back to dealing only in cash, winding back the clock 40 years to withdrawing what I need for the week as a way of improving my budgeting and preventing overspending.
So when I see a pair of new runners on sale the question is no longer whether they represent good value or whether they fit, but whether there is enough money in my pocket.
In this age of rapidly increasing prices and pretty much everyone coming under increasing financial pressure, the adage that cash is king seems to be the best way of taking back control of our money.
- Sally Foy, acting editor
