this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Generally just curious how often people on here in the UK tend to use it. Personally I use it 95% of the time due to privacy concerns, easier budgeting & wanting to maintain its use. Most people my age (early to mid 20s) seem to find the concept alien & I've noticed younger cashiers are absolutely garbage at calculating change mentally.

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[–] Corporal_Punishment@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago

Nearly 43.

Never liked using cash, its always just been a massive pain in the arse. If I pick up lunch for team mates it really annoys me when they hand me over £4.35 in loose change.

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Basically never. The occasional car boot sale. That's about it. Any cash I receive ends up sitting on a shelf as my wallet doesn't have a space for it. The notion of relying on cash for budgeting makes no sense to me.

I'm not looking to get rid of cash, but it has no use case for me.
Even the local teenager that mows my lawn takes bank transfers!

[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In terms of budgeting its fairly simple, I take out £100 to take around with me and generally leave the cards at home. Thusly I can only spend that 100 quid.

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think I'd call that limiting spending rather than budgeting. Budgeting would involve keeping track of how much is spent on different things, projecting future spending, stuff like that.

[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not really, take the 100 out then divide known expenses you'll be using it for, shopping, petrol the usual and anything left over is fun money for the week.

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That isn't how I approach budgeting at all, so it explains why I don't get it. I'm glad you have a system that works for you.
The downvote suggest you'd rather I stop talking though so I'll leave it there.

[–] Gentryfried@feddit.uk 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I get expenses from volunteering covered by cash and buses card reading is very unreliable where i live. Lots of the fish+chip shops are cash only. All this has cultivated an equal usage of cash and card for me.

Small businesses genuinely prefer to receive cash, too, so i try and do something nice for the shops in my community.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

They prefer cash to evade taxes, same as small contractors.

[–] Gentryfried@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What, small businesses? All small businesses in general?

I see it as they mainly do it just to avoid the small fee for card payment providers. I don't know if this exists for traditionak scanners but it's significant where i work, which uses Zello and Paypal.

But yes some places like cash so that they can more easily minimise taxable profits.

The tax evasion tricks at play aren't as bad as large corporations, and i don't ~~utilise~~ buy from businesses which are obvious money laundering fronts, so my conscience is clear. Allegedly (from business teachers at secondady school, who admittedly were wrong about a lot of things) so many small businesses do small things to minimise volume of taxable income, that it's not worth being concerned about.

Most probably can't be bothered, and don't drive the "cash please!" Thing too hard, so i think they deserve it... as a treat. And then there are other reasons cash is important to them, like facilitating change for old people and day labourers who use the business

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Handling cash costs about as much as handling card transactions. It always annoyed me when I was working at conventions and people would assume that my business was better off with cash. Cash was a huge pain in the arse.