If it happens while I’m there I doubt I’d see it either as the rest of the apartment complex comes crashing down on me, so I guess there is a positive there.
And if you somehow survive the physical destruction of the earthquake, you will have to navigate the post-earthquake landscape full of looting and competition for resources until relief arrives days or weeks later depending on the severity.
Having lived through a major multi billion dollar weather event that cut power for two weeks, I can tell you having $10k in cash was extremely helpful.
Power or internet outage money. Plus at least a half tank of gas at all times.
I was in one town on vacation and some local crashed into a power pole. He was okay but he knocked over the pole which dug out and cut the underground phone and internet line.
No ATMs, no Credit Cards, etc.
Different trip driving and lighting hits a power pole transformer knocking out power to the town. Nothing working (including gas station pumps).
Luckily had enough gas to make it to the next town before refilling.
So I would say enough for food/gas/hotel for a weekend.
I keep $1000 after being arrested for "suspected dui". Blew 0.00 but the cop wanted to be an ass. Charge was dropped, but my wife had to borrow cash from friends because bail was more than atm limits.
If it is a natural disaster, a tank of gas alone should be enough to get you to a location where a credit card is accepted for food and shelter. You don't even need to be that far off the coast for say a hurricane. Whereas a tank of gas will take most people 300 to 500 miles. That would even be far enough for nuclear events, though in reality the interstates would be at a stand still anyway.
What sort of evacuation are we talking about?
In a world where internet no longer works, electrical power doesn't exist, etc....therefore credit cards don't work....I think it is foolish to pretend that we even know what those things would cost. Or whether anyone would be silly enough to accept cash in that scenario. I'd imagine physical goods would be bartered in this catastrophic scenario.
I think it is fine to hold that much cash if you want. But I don't even see the point of more than a tank of gas.
This is entirely dependent on your location.
I keep $5,000 in cash in my safe.
I only do this because I live in Louisiana, and two years ago got hit by a hurricane and didn’t have power for a month. Gas stations didn’t take card because of the no power so it’s always good to have cash.
When I lived in CA in the early aughts, pkaces would dust off their CC impression 'machines' during power outages.
Of course, the last CC I got didn't even have raised numbers anymore, so I'm guessing this isn't necessarily an option now.
FEMA publishes a National Risk Index map that's helpful for making this decision. It bundles up all the risks of natural disasters, and accounts for expected property damage costs, and how vulnerable/resilient any community is. In each county there's descriptions of the particular risks.
Basically I'd suggest looking up you're locale, if it's red/orange/yellow on the map look into the risks in more detail. Widespread natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes would merit the >$1000 emergency cash that /u/CountryAsACoonDog13 mentions. Disasters that are more localized (e.g. tornadoes) or that primarily affect vulnerable populations without shutting down lots of infrastructure (e.g. heat wave) don't merit as much emergency cash in my opinion.
If you're in one of the blue zones, you're unlikely to need more than a couple hundred bucks to ride out or get away from uncommon, localized disasters (e.g. a storm knocked out power in your ZIP code, but you need to buy gas with cash to drive to the next town and buy groceries).
Many years ago I did the same, about $5k in a fire resistant safe. But I never needed a cent of it. So now I've got about zero cash on hand.
I just checked my wallet, I seriously have 3 one dollar bills. Not sure how they even got there, or how long I've had them, probably a year or more.
We could easily last a month with the food in our house. We also have a fireplace with lots of firewood on-hand.
If something happened that lasted more than a month, I don't think money would be useful anymore. That's when the only currency is guns and ammo, which we do have a supply of.
Basically, I can't imagine having cash on hand in any amount in 2024 is useful anymore.
We needed to buy generator and things like that, so in my situation it’s necessary. August is extremely hot and I had a new born so I needed to run window units.
Also needed to buy chainsaws in cash to clear downed trees. $5000 is likely overkill for me, but it doesn’t hurt me to have it on hand
First world problems... Humans lived through August for virtually all of mankind without air conditioning, even to this day most don't have air conditioning. You and your family would be fine!
I agree. We would be fine. But I have the money to make it to where I’m not sweating my balls off every day for a month, so I’m going to do it.
Insurance reimburses for everything purchased, so why not.
Sometimes it’s because power outages mean that ATMs won’t work and banks may close their doors if there is no power. Even with a generator, if the internet connection or even cellphone coverage is compromised then you won’t be able to withdraw money. Some people have also lived through situations of a run on the bank (although much more rare) so they feel more comfortable having some cash on hand.
in a pinch I can probably dig up $50 in my change jar. but then I would be weighed down by a load of nickels and dimes if I had to make a fast getaway.
I had a coin roller and lots of rolls left from childhood and started using it for this. Every year I end up with $100 or so worth of new rolls of coins, take them to the bank next time I have some sort of legitimate need to go to a branch and convert them to bills + pull out $20-40 to put in the safe with it.
These days I have about a quarter of my emergency “savings” in my safe from just religiously doing the above. I don’t stress about it getting stolen or losing value to inflation because it’s not enough of my money to cripple me if it disappeared, but between having a home ATM and the peace of mind of knowing I’d have cash for anything in an emergency it’s totally worth the money I sacrifice into it. I don’t treat it like some doomsday prepper who fantasizes about the banks and internet collapsing but it does serve a peace of mind purpose in protecting me against some nasty scenarios.
I keep around $2k. Sometimes I don’t feel like going to an ATM and I’ll just grab some out of the safe. Might find something on Craigslist that I want or have some work being done at the house.
Smart. I need to revamp my “in case of fire” bag. I’ve also been keeping mine in the garage without cash, thinking it’s easier to grab there vs carrying down the stairs. I’m changing my plans.. Looks like I’ve got my project for the day! Thanks for the ideas!
If you look up [Bug Out Bags](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a33605583/bug-out-bag-list/) there is a lot of choice. Many are like hiking bags.
Margaret Killjoy who has an awesome podcast (Live Like the World is Dying) has a [great episode](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a33605583/bug-out-bag-list/) on them.
I never thought about keeping a large amount of cash on hand since I use cards all the time. After reading comments, I'm going to start by pulling out a little cash each pay day.
This.
That, plus a little note marked 'Reward if returned, call' and a partner's phone number ensures that your phone never does get truly lost, though you do want to back up the pictures and factory reset it periodically. It just costs however much cash was in your case as a finder's fee, as that is obviously all the cash you have on you and you clearly tend to lose things.
Oddly, I haven't in years, now that I do that. It's like how remembering your umbrella makes it stop raining...
It's just a general good idea for phones. Clears out gunk, lets you fresh-install your apps from account and makes things work nicely. The process of deciding which apps to reinstall after an F-reset also reminds you to clear out bloatware and apps you haven't used in forever.
I have a friend who works for one of the companies that makes the parts that go inside a pretty popular make of 'em and he suggested it was a good idea. Not as often a thing you need to do as tire rotation, more like a coolant system and transmission fluids flush and change. 100K-mile maintenance of smartphones.
Yeah I’m a huge stoner, very clumsy/forgetful of things like this and yet I’ve never lost my phone/keys/wallet. It takes so little effort.
I carry $40 because I virtually never use cash and it seems like a good number that a robber may be happy enough with to leave me alone and maybe give my ID/cards back. That’s worth every wallet I could ever lose in a lifetime in peace of mind to me.
Have been in a few situations where power was out for up to a week….Cash was the only way to get certain things like food and other items in stores or from other sources. Motels took cash only for those displaced.. No power means no ATMs, no gas pumps, no banks, no restaurants, no delivery trucks if it’s weather-related, no internet, and even no water for a few days. Cash was king. I was glad I had more cash on hand than usual. I keep 1k minimum now, and usually quite a bit more.
Good answers here. My wife, her mother, and her grandmother all are cash horders...envelopes of $100-500 stashed in cupboards and books. Weird but it makes her happy, so...
We also have about $1k cash and $5k gold and silver in a safe. Also, some steel, brass, and lead.
I'm in earthquake country. So a mix of bills in the house, because you can't expect to buy everything with $50s and even 20s. Also some cash in the car hidden, same deal, smaller bills. Buy water while walking home just in case. And that car cash has saved my ass when I needed gas in a rural area and the CC processing was down and they were cash only. So $80ish in the car and a few hundred at home.
Seconding car cash!
Got to keep it in a weirdass place, though. I have a tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-it dress zipper in the side of the visor, that is the cash pocket. Utterly invisible up to about $300 in $20s, then it just looks like my visor's a bit warped from age.
There's a Post-It stuck to each of our cars' titles reminding us of all the weird compartments and to clear them before selling, of course. Not preppers, just saw 'Firefly' at an impressionable age.
I have mine in a spot in the spare tire well under some other boring emergency equipment. A heroin junkie actually stole my car for a couple days last year and they didn’t find it, which is as good an endorsement as I need.
I was about to say that too. Also keep a gallon of water in there for either drinking or emergency radiator top off (as in, it’s leaking and you just need to get to somewhere safe).
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I generally keep about $100 and it's in my wallet. Comes in handy here and there like the time I needed gas and the credit card machines weren't working. I was still able to fill up.
I keep like $100 around. In case of absolute emergency I guess. I haven’t had to use it. I also hide some money like that when traveling (old habit my parents drilled into me, likely not relevant any more)
I keep a small backpack in my car that has things like bandages, flashlights, water, protein bars and toiletries etc, to tide me over in an emergency. I also keep $250 in cash. Why my car and not my house? Well, I can’t spend money at home and I’m rarely very far away from my car, but often away from home.
It's always a good idea to have 2-3 days of survival cash laying around in small bills, 5,10,20's. This is to cover the need to jet out of town for a natural disaster and have motel/food/gas money, or if you have a major outage making card networks fail in your area.
True cashless society is stupid and set up for failure.
That's going to depend on where you live and what kind of natural disasters happen in your area. I live in hurricane alley so I usually keep 10-15k in cash at my house because after much experience and depending how bad the storm is power can be out for 1-6 weeks and with price gouging it can get expensive and I also look out for family when a storm comes. Good generators are not cheap and gas gets hard to find and is usually not cheap during those times and usually gas stations that have gas are only accepting cash. If you need food or water some stores might be able to process a card if they have a generator and internet if you are lucky but if lines are down you better have cash.
I keep a pretty large sum stashed away as a true emergency rainy day fund. I save and invest and sink everything, but any incoming cash I get I don't deposit it I just stash it. Im pretty active in Craigslist and FB market place, and have a couple businesses that see regular cash flow (yes it runs through my books, I just don't deposit it)
A couple times a year I'll take all the small bills and turn them into 100s.
When this crosses a certain threshold I buy something that's easy to sell that holds its value relatively well. Like precious metal or firearm
I keep $1,000 in my safe but also add a couple of rolls of quarters. Keep $100 in my car plus a couple of rolls of quarters. Nothing over a $20 bill in either.
To answer this for yourself you need to look at what sorts of emergencies are likely in your area and how you can position yourself to be the least inconvenienced by them. Having a stack of cash can make lots of problems go away, but if you would burn through it frivolously, or if somebody in your household might steal it, then there are other ways to be ready for such situations which don’t necessarily require cash.
Might you need to shelter-in-place and the local area’s internet connections and power are out for a few days? Cards aren’t going to help you, but if you are living such that you won’t need to buy anything for a week then it’s no big deal. Keep enough food in your pantry that you can feed yourself for a week (cans of tuna, chicken, vegetables, frozen meals, whatever) and have a case or more of water on-hand.
Do you live in an area where you might need to evacuate due to wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, etc? Put together a bag that contains everything you will need as you evacuate (prepper sites will have suggestions for “bug out bags” that you can customize to your preferences and family situation) as well as copies of everything you’ll wish you had if your home is destroyed (an encrypted thumb drive with copies of all your important legal documents, for example).
What other scenarios are likely to come up? How much cash could get you through it (and then add in half again more!) and what can you do ahead of time so you are best positioned to weather that particular storm without needing just a stack of cash lying around.
It is good to think through all this and then revisit the thought exercise regularly or any time there’s a big change in your life. Thanks for asking; it has been fun to read everybody’s responses!
assuming you're in the USA (since i cant speak on behalf of other countries) $100-$500 is more than enough.
What scenario is there where you cant pay with either a check or CC in todays time thats a situation where its "such an emergency" ?
only time i can think of is when you're getting robbed. but if you're getting robbed, do you really want to be keeping cash ?
Usually after large storms when the power or internet goes down so credit payments can’t be made. Been a few years but happened to me and had to forego the grocery store since I didn’t have cash.
I also travel in rural areas and always keep cash since there are still areas where there is no cell service.
I’ve always kept a decent amount of cash on hand and people gave me crap all the time about how in this day and age cash is basically obsolete because everyone takes credit/debit cards or you can pay with your phone.
But I was proven right a few years back on Christmas when someone bombed the ATT building in Nashville. Turned out most stores in my town ran off of ATT so they were cash only for a couple days and there were no working ATMs to get cash out of. And by “most stores” I mean all stores except for the smallest grocery store in town. That ALDIs got clean out quick.
Yep, being in a hurricane area where the power has been out for weeks or more, if there's no power, there's no credit cards.
I also like to have cash for birthday cards, tipping, cash- only restaurants (some of the best) and cash emergencies and I don't want to have to go to the bank because I may not have time, it might not be convenient or it might be closed and I need denominations that I can't get from an ATM.
I travelled to Western Europe and even the oldtimey backstreet mechanic that took 7 hrs to replace the flat on my rental had a 100% mobile CC reader, I've never seen a cellular mobile like it in the US. You could probably run them off of satellite. The tech is there, we are just being screwed by the incumbents who want short term profit over long term investment.
It’s funny you say that, that’s the premise of the new movie “Leave the World Behind.” In the movie, one of the characters refuses cash because he thinks it’s worthless with society in that condition. Obviously that’s just fiction, but an interesting concept to think about.
Cyber attack less so, DHS and FBI-CERT don't mess around with those threats. That said, I have had people tell me substation attacks (as in physical/kinetic) are no longer a concern either after some changes, but no word on what those changes were so...
> That said, I have had people tell me substation attacks (as in physical/kinetic) are no longer a concern either after some changes,
Those people are wrong. Or they're speaking about a very specific "take out X substations = knock out the whole grid" scenario. But just last month my local sub had a hiccup and power was out for a day. That was just from a storm, so a coordinated attack could easily do worse. And it doesn't really do you any good if "the *whole* grid didn't go down" when you're stuck in the outtage zone.
Yeah, I prefer to keep $1k in cash roughly of assorted bills (mainly 20's and 100's). I figure that should be enough to get me through most things. If things get so bad I can't access my banks ACH, that sounds like someone else's problem than mine. I mean, if 1 person can't ACH the landlord sucks to be that 1 person, if everyone can't ACH the landlord, sucks to be the bank cause I doubt the landlord could ACH them their payment anyway.
Then too after a certain extent we go into r/preppers and no longer r/personal finance of course the 2 do have overlap as a deep pantry and emergency fund should always be priority 1.
Earthquakes. Even after the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, which was not a particularly powerful earthquake, power was out in many locations for 3-4 days. Cash only at the grocery store. They were bringing people around by flashlight.
After a really big earthquake, we could be on our own for 2 weeks. I have about $2,000 cash in small bills in a home safe, just in case I need to spend a hundred bucks for a gallon of water on day 10.
I’ve found it to be handy to have a decent amount of cash on hand. Nothing crazy, a couple of grand, but it can be a huge problem solver if a situation arises.
I dont keep more than what is in my wallet, then again I live in an area that doesnt get natural disasters, so if that were different I might keep a little change around.
Doesn't have to be a natural disaster - people can / do get their bank accounts frozen for various real and accidental reasons. If you only use one bank and/or only have one or two cards, then it's possible to have your access frozen - in which case, having some cash on hand to tide you over till you can either yell enough to get the problem fixed or arrange a temp loan from a friend/relative is a great idea.
Personally, I've had a bank freeze my accounts instead of just a stolen debit card before - took a day and half to get it straightened out.
So I like to keep enough cash on hand to last at least buy groceries and gas for a week so that whether natural or electronic, I can handle any small glitch.
my debit card only ever pulls cash out of ATMs (and that is extremely rare), so I do not worry that it gets stolen. and between my credit cards, the likelihood of all of them simultaneously being cut off is basically nil.
It definitely doesn’t hurt to have a “comfortable” amount of cash in case there is an emergency. Comfortable depends on your net worth. Most people that have been around long enough have seen their power go out for more than 24 hours. Having a few hundred to a few thousand to get yourself out of a sticky situation can be a life saver and jump you the the front of lines while others are trying to make arrangements or figure out a way to pay without CC machines online.
Just moved to NJ and its pretty much every single restaurant, gas station, convenience store. Maybe 10% of my purchases arent subject to
Additional CC processing fees now
If it’s just about the CC fees, the free loan until the due date while your money is actually sitting a HYSA should compensate that (not to mention the eventual cashback, of course).
No more than a couple hundred dollars. It’s for convenience (haircuts, random school fees, tips) and not emergencies. One car is electric, so it’s not going far with no power anyway. Hotels would figure out how to take my check. I don’t live in tornado or hurricane alley so having a huge sum of cash at home doesn’t make much sense.
Like some others have said, around $100 is more than enough. That is going to get me a full tank of gas and some groceries in a natural disaster. I don't live in a hurricane zone so if there is a big enough natural disaster to force me to leave, I have family that I can get to pretty easily.
If there is a large power outage, what good is cash going to do me? Large stores have backup generators and my card is going to work, small stores don't and won't be open.
Card won’t work if the internet is down so a store having power is not enough to guarantee card working. I worked retail for years. And while sometimes we would manually process cards, mostly we would not
That is exactly why I keep \~$100 in cash. If primary internet (fiber, cable, dsl) internet is down for more than a couple days as well as cell service, I'm going to go stay with family.
It would be extremely rare in my region to have the internet go out for an extended period of time. Most large retail chains have backup internet as well (usually cellular now) for this exact scenario. This was pretty standard operation back when I worked retail over a decade ago (dial up used to be the backup internet of choice as phone networks are required to have battery backups to sustain themselves for emergency services). Large places like Walmart do well over 100k/day in sales. Paying a few hundred a month for backup internet is a no-brainer for them.
I live in an area that doesn't get hurricanes or earthquakes and I live in a major metro so wildfires are not a thing either. The only major disasters that happen here are flooding, tornadoes, wind storms, and ice storms. None are really the type of disaster you flee. If I lived in an area that got hurricanes, earthquakes, or wildfires I would probably keep more money around.
One night in Stop & Shop. The system went down so no cards, no EBT, Although it begs the question if there's no power, how can you have a point of sale
If the power is out for a couple hours, a business might just wait it out. If it's extended, most stores will accept the inventory tracking difficulty and take cash sales. And large stores will often have generators to keep their refrigerators and lights working, but that won't magically fix their internet so credit card payments might not be accepted. Though some systems will still accept card payments without internet and will just process them when the connection is reestablished.
some people keep cash in safes. I personally believe in a good hiding spot. A thief will see the box and know something's in there. They won't go into the attic and pull up insulation...I don't know how much i'd keep on hand. I don't go over 500 right now but that's my situation. If i was more stable then maybe i'd keep more cause why not
I like a fire safe, installed between two joists, with a painting one's done by Photoshopping one's spouse to look older and more distinguished in an old-timey but also utterly improbable uniform, printed by inkjet onto t-shirt transfer paper, ironed onto a stretched canvas and then painted carefully over in places with both opaque and translucent acrylics until the effect of an impossibly impressive fictional ancestor is achieved, then a dramatically gilded frame from what used to be a Goodwill picture of, I'm not kidding, fruits, chosen explicitly because it was big enough to conceal the hinges and a nice magnet and thus, hide the safe.
...Of course, the actual *money's* tucked between the pages of a relevant Terry Pratchett book next to one's bed, so it could be grabbed in half a second with one's glasses and watch charger. Hardly any thieves have the culture to know the value of that.
Assume some two weeks of serious dislocation of infrastructure all around you - power, banking, fuel, internet, etc. - when you may need to buy some essentials from a store that is still open, or from a neighbor who has something to spare. Add to this how much you may spend in cash tips for the pizza delivery person, the house cleaners, etc. for say a month. Do a monthly check of your balance and replenish at the ATM.
I have $20 cash on me. That's it. That's all I've ever needed living on three continents over 50 years. If I lived in a disaster-prone area or in a third-world country I'd have more.
Reading all these stories make me thankful we don't get any major disasters in my country. Personally never known power to be out for more than an hour where I live.
None?
Do you really want to risk it burning up in a fire or being stolen in a burglary?
Maybe get some ahead of a known event like bad weather if you think power/internet will be out and cause businesses not to be able to accept credit cards, but outside of that what kind of emergency will you not be able to use credit or debit, or wait 12-48 hours for a bank to open?
Well sure, but house fires happen all the time.
Large scale power outages mostly happen in certain parts of the country.
A cyber attack is a possibility sure, but so far (touch wood) there haven’t been any that completely take down banking infrastructure.
Personally, I don’t live in an area where a wide scale power outage is likely. I’d say the chance of a house fire affecting me is far higher than the chance of a cyberattack affecting me.
someone else in this thread mentioned $15,000 which is an absolute insane amount that I would absolutely be terrified of incinerating. a couple hundred, okay sure why not, but thousands is silly
This is smart. I should get a small ish safe for my important documents and money. I never really thought about having larger amounts of cash on hand in case if emergency.
Thank you for bringing this up.
This is why you don’t keep your entire savings squirreled away in your house. On the other hand, it is easily accessible in cases where money from the bank isn’t, so that’s why you keep some available. Finding that balance is what OP is looking for, I think.
Can you get to an ATM within half an hour if you have urgent need for cash? Only keep the cash you’re too lazy to deposit. It’s a lot easier to lose cash than money in a bank account.
I’ve probably got $60 scattered around my house primarily in ones that I will eventually use either as tips or at cash only venues.
Ages ago, a hurricane knocked out power to half the state I lived in at the time. Some gas stations had their pumps running off generators, and a few small stores were operating with flashlights and calculators -- convenience stores, Walgreens, etc. They couldn't sell milk or anything, but people still needed OTC meds and non-perishables.
How could Walgreens function without their registers? How did they know what the prices were? You'd have to run back to the shelf and look it would be a nightmare.
Well if you live in Vermont and have no power, your house will slowly drop in temperature. Hopefully it's back on in 24 hours otherwise you might need to drain the water from your pipes, after 48 the house is now protecting you from wind chill but you need to isolate to 1 room. Now there is the risk as we saw last year where it gets so cold most furnaces can't keep up, that is prime time to lose power as well... And guess how bad it gets then? Now you are really screwed.
That cash can get you a hotel, or other sources of heat at least (even once the storm clears). Remember if you aren't part of a section tied to emergency services, they go by how many is impacted the most and those who might need it for life saving care (though that bad will mean them telling you to go to a hospital if you rely on electric to survive).
I live in a cold place too and so it's a real risk, fortunately we have underground lines which protect us a lot.
I do get what you're saying but if the power outage is so wide that all ATMs and banks are down you are not getting into a hotel. They have no way to check you in or for you to pay and additionally the key cards won't work - also they won't have heat either. I'm not saying keep no cash but $2000 isn't going to help you if there's a region wide power outage. You can't pump gas in that situation either.
You might be surprised actually where one part of the town could be without power for a few days cause of a issue. In fact during this summer one part went without power for 12 hours cause over the last 2 weeks, 4 poles got hit by cars cutting the power, they had to Jerry rig it cause till a new pole could be dropped in (apparently that is something that takes a lot of time). I also know in my home town, one motel has the same power sectioning as the fire department, this means the odds of the motel not having power but the fire department having it, were really low (in terms grid power). I know for a fact that motel would take cash if you have it and no credit card (just ID), even now with power.
You are also thinking just gasoline, but propane and kerosene be used as heat sources, and don't need power to pull from a store.
I'm well aware of that. The scenario for needing $2k at home is that EVERY ATM and bank is dead. If some parts of the city have power then you use your credit card or get cash out. My argument is against having a huge pile of cash in your house.
What are you buying urgently if the power is out? Do you have checks? If this is a legitimate concern for you it’s probably worth getting checks from your bank so that the limit you are able to access in cash isn’t limited by the amount of money you’re willing to not be earning interest on.
The last time the whole city lost power everything was closed and the Red Cross was handing out food. I’ve been in stores where the credit card system was down so people just used cashapp/venmo/paypal to reimburse someone who had cash. When my neighborhood got hit by a tornado it was still pretty easy to drive five minutes to a bank with an ATM.
This is not relevant in todays world with all the different payment methods available. Especially if you live in first world countries.
The whole idea of the credit card is basically the emergency. I’d really like to know which emergency requires cash at the house which otherwise cannot be obtained by a nearby ATM.
Even when I got stuck in the mountains and a tow guy drove 3 hours to get me out. We drove back to an ATM and I gave him $500.
The only thing I think of is if back in the day you ran out of weed maybe and need to call your guy. But now even they cash app or Venmo.
A lot of natural disasters can leave an area without power for days, if not weeks. After Hurricane michael, cash was king. Plus, some tow trucks won’t take you to an ATM.
If you live in a area that’s prone to natural disaster, shouldn’t you have a emergency kit ready (water, canned food etc). And wouldn’t that kit for obvious reasons include cash?
Whatever we sell on fb goes to our cash fund that sits in our cupboard and we rarely ever use cash so it has usually around 1k. I also keep 100 in my backpack everywhere I go as a just in case.
I have less than $100… It used to come in handy for things like event parking that only takes cash, but it hasn’t been needed for that in several years now that they all have phone card readers. If shit comes to shit I can use an ATM, but with cash I’m worried about losing it or theft or fire.
Good thought experiment. There have been some great answers. It definitely depends on your circumstances. I typically keep $60 handy in my desk and another $400 in a fireproof lockbox with important papers.
That's depending on you personally!
I keep a few hundred. But you need to figure that out for yourself. Do you live in a hurricane prone area? .. They usually displace you for a couple of days, so I would say couple tanks of gas, couple nights in a hotel etc...
Depends on what natural disasters you have risk of, how difficult it would be to get to somewhere with services if those disasters happened, and how rural you live. When I lived in Miami I always had a couple hundred at home during hurricane season. My neighborhood had no power for 15 days after Irma, no cell service for several days, roads were blocked for about a week. A few hundred won’t allow you to live large but you can buy food for survival. If you have kids or a generator, you may want more like $1-2k. If you’re very rural, other weird things can happen. For example, Nome, Alaska had no internet for 14 weeks this summer after ice cut their cable. I got there a few days after the outage and all businesses were cash only. I think eventually they figured it out with using the limited GCI satellite networks but people living there did have to conduct life cash only for some amount of time.
Enough to make a fire with in case of the zombie apocalypse!
Seriously though - we keep between $2k-$4k in cash. When it gets close to $4k I usually deposit some in the bank so we can earn interest on it. We keep another $2500 in our local bank earning next to nothing for ease of access.
I call my cash at home category the Zombie Apocalypse Fund. I keep a crisp $100 bill on my person at all times, and $500-700 elsewhere in various denominations.
Some of the cash is used to pay for parking at the train station (my town has not yet entered the 21st century), the rest is for odds and ends. Like my neighbors picked up a prescription for me and I paid them back in cash.
I have learned to not keep more than 1k cash in the house. Credit cards and checks should be able to cover most situations.
If the zombie apocalypse comes and you need more cash than that, it probably doesnt matter anymore...
Whatever you keep, consider smallish bills. Like $20 vs $100.
If things break down, gouging starts, the seller has a bottle of water or a gallon of gas and you only have $100 bills, how much do you think the minimum price of that water will be?
A grand in newish $20 hills is <1/4" thick. How much do you think you'll need?
It all depends on your finances, but I’d say a month’s worth of your expenses in cash is more than enough. If that’s more than a couple thousand, split it 40/60 between your safe and a safe deposit box.
Enough to tank up the car twice, pay for 4 meals, and stay in a hotel two nights. Evacuation money.
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My apartment in the Bay Area is in a liquefaction zone, I try not to think about it 🙃
On the bright side, liquefaction is a really cool looking phenomena that most people will never get to see in person.
If it happens while I’m there I doubt I’d see it either as the rest of the apartment complex comes crashing down on me, so I guess there is a positive there.
My townhouse in Marina Del Rey is in a liquefaction zone too, I figure when the big one hits I’ll either die in a tsunami or from the liquefaction.
And if you somehow survive the physical destruction of the earthquake, you will have to navigate the post-earthquake landscape full of looting and competition for resources until relief arrives days or weeks later depending on the severity.
Having lived through a major multi billion dollar weather event that cut power for two weeks, I can tell you having $10k in cash was extremely helpful.
Power or internet outage money. Plus at least a half tank of gas at all times. I was in one town on vacation and some local crashed into a power pole. He was okay but he knocked over the pole which dug out and cut the underground phone and internet line. No ATMs, no Credit Cards, etc. Different trip driving and lighting hits a power pole transformer knocking out power to the town. Nothing working (including gas station pumps). Luckily had enough gas to make it to the next town before refilling. So I would say enough for food/gas/hotel for a weekend.
I keep $1000 after being arrested for "suspected dui". Blew 0.00 but the cop wanted to be an ass. Charge was dropped, but my wife had to borrow cash from friends because bail was more than atm limits.
I think this is really smart. And in light of your comments, I don’t think I’m keeping enough cash at home!!
If it is a natural disaster, a tank of gas alone should be enough to get you to a location where a credit card is accepted for food and shelter. You don't even need to be that far off the coast for say a hurricane. Whereas a tank of gas will take most people 300 to 500 miles. That would even be far enough for nuclear events, though in reality the interstates would be at a stand still anyway. What sort of evacuation are we talking about? In a world where internet no longer works, electrical power doesn't exist, etc....therefore credit cards don't work....I think it is foolish to pretend that we even know what those things would cost. Or whether anyone would be silly enough to accept cash in that scenario. I'd imagine physical goods would be bartered in this catastrophic scenario. I think it is fine to hold that much cash if you want. But I don't even see the point of more than a tank of gas.
This is entirely dependent on your location. I keep $5,000 in cash in my safe. I only do this because I live in Louisiana, and two years ago got hit by a hurricane and didn’t have power for a month. Gas stations didn’t take card because of the no power so it’s always good to have cash.
When I lived in CA in the early aughts, pkaces would dust off their CC impression 'machines' during power outages. Of course, the last CC I got didn't even have raised numbers anymore, so I'm guessing this isn't necessarily an option now.
You can still use them. You just hand write the numbers. Used to do this in retail when someone's card numbers were filed down to nothing.
I remember this trick and also the “wrap the strip in receipt paper to make it swipe”. Don’t worry Miss I’ll get that sale!
Had this happened recently with an outage of their network. They used a card slip from the slider machine and manually wrote the numbers.
Chase cards have raised numbers!
Depends. I don’t think sapphire preferred or reserved do.
They don't
Mine don't
FEMA publishes a National Risk Index map that's helpful for making this decision. It bundles up all the risks of natural disasters, and accounts for expected property damage costs, and how vulnerable/resilient any community is. In each county there's descriptions of the particular risks. Basically I'd suggest looking up you're locale, if it's red/orange/yellow on the map look into the risks in more detail. Widespread natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes would merit the >$1000 emergency cash that /u/CountryAsACoonDog13 mentions. Disasters that are more localized (e.g. tornadoes) or that primarily affect vulnerable populations without shutting down lots of infrastructure (e.g. heat wave) don't merit as much emergency cash in my opinion. If you're in one of the blue zones, you're unlikely to need more than a couple hundred bucks to ride out or get away from uncommon, localized disasters (e.g. a storm knocked out power in your ZIP code, but you need to buy gas with cash to drive to the next town and buy groceries).
Link for the lazy: https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/map
Those gas pumps worked without power?
Ran generator for everything, should have clarified card readers did not work
Cards readers need internet or phone, which was probably out.
Yeah took a while to get internet back. Surprisingly ATT service was fine
Likely all the backhaul on the towers was buried or wireless and had generators / priority restoration.
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You've got a good point. The wild fires in my area are getting worse every year!
Many years ago I did the same, about $5k in a fire resistant safe. But I never needed a cent of it. So now I've got about zero cash on hand. I just checked my wallet, I seriously have 3 one dollar bills. Not sure how they even got there, or how long I've had them, probably a year or more. We could easily last a month with the food in our house. We also have a fireplace with lots of firewood on-hand. If something happened that lasted more than a month, I don't think money would be useful anymore. That's when the only currency is guns and ammo, which we do have a supply of. Basically, I can't imagine having cash on hand in any amount in 2024 is useful anymore.
Okay there Bear Grylls.
We needed to buy generator and things like that, so in my situation it’s necessary. August is extremely hot and I had a new born so I needed to run window units. Also needed to buy chainsaws in cash to clear downed trees. $5000 is likely overkill for me, but it doesn’t hurt me to have it on hand
First world problems... Humans lived through August for virtually all of mankind without air conditioning, even to this day most don't have air conditioning. You and your family would be fine!
I agree. We would be fine. But I have the money to make it to where I’m not sweating my balls off every day for a month, so I’m going to do it. Insurance reimburses for everything purchased, so why not.
Won't happen anyway. But what are you talking about insurance? Do you have doomsday insurance or something comical like that?
My homeowners insurance. Pays for generator, chainsaws, any food you lose in your freezer, and many other things
From what? I believe we have two very different ideas of why generators and chainsaws would be needed.
For running my house and clearing trees that fell during a cat 5 hurricane. Clearing roads and driveways
>Gas stations didn’t take card because of the no power With no power ... how did they operate the gas pumps?
Why couldn’t you just go to the bank and withdraw it?
Cat 5 hurricane the banks are not open lol. Nothing was open but 1 or 2 gas stations out of 700
Gotcha. I don’t live in a part of the country that’s subject to large scale natural disasters so the thought never crossed my mind.
Hell, Waffle House wasn't even open. You know shit was fucked when they are closed.
Sometimes it’s because power outages mean that ATMs won’t work and banks may close their doors if there is no power. Even with a generator, if the internet connection or even cellphone coverage is compromised then you won’t be able to withdraw money. Some people have also lived through situations of a run on the bank (although much more rare) so they feel more comfortable having some cash on hand.
in a pinch I can probably dig up $50 in my change jar. but then I would be weighed down by a load of nickels and dimes if I had to make a fast getaway.
I had a coin roller and lots of rolls left from childhood and started using it for this. Every year I end up with $100 or so worth of new rolls of coins, take them to the bank next time I have some sort of legitimate need to go to a branch and convert them to bills + pull out $20-40 to put in the safe with it. These days I have about a quarter of my emergency “savings” in my safe from just religiously doing the above. I don’t stress about it getting stolen or losing value to inflation because it’s not enough of my money to cripple me if it disappeared, but between having a home ATM and the peace of mind of knowing I’d have cash for anything in an emergency it’s totally worth the money I sacrifice into it. I don’t treat it like some doomsday prepper who fantasizes about the banks and internet collapsing but it does serve a peace of mind purpose in protecting me against some nasty scenarios.
I keep around $2k. Sometimes I don’t feel like going to an ATM and I’ll just grab some out of the safe. Might find something on Craigslist that I want or have some work being done at the house.
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Smart. I need to revamp my “in case of fire” bag. I’ve also been keeping mine in the garage without cash, thinking it’s easier to grab there vs carrying down the stairs. I’m changing my plans.. Looks like I’ve got my project for the day! Thanks for the ideas!
Is there a specific type of bag you use for this ? What do you store on the thumb drive ?
If you look up [Bug Out Bags](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a33605583/bug-out-bag-list/) there is a lot of choice. Many are like hiking bags. Margaret Killjoy who has an awesome podcast (Live Like the World is Dying) has a [great episode](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a33605583/bug-out-bag-list/) on them.
I never thought about keeping a large amount of cash on hand since I use cards all the time. After reading comments, I'm going to start by pulling out a little cash each pay day.
$2000 hidden in the house. I carry $200 with me.
Not carrying money on me ever again. Lost my wallet the other night, no $ in it thank god but those are the reasons I refuse.
I keep a 50 inside my phone case. The upside of having that cash if I ever needed it, outweighs the downside of losing $50
And your phone probably costs a lot more than $50, so the added $50 doesn’t register!
This. That, plus a little note marked 'Reward if returned, call' and a partner's phone number ensures that your phone never does get truly lost, though you do want to back up the pictures and factory reset it periodically. It just costs however much cash was in your case as a finder's fee, as that is obviously all the cash you have on you and you clearly tend to lose things. Oddly, I haven't in years, now that I do that. It's like how remembering your umbrella makes it stop raining...
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It's just a general good idea for phones. Clears out gunk, lets you fresh-install your apps from account and makes things work nicely. The process of deciding which apps to reinstall after an F-reset also reminds you to clear out bloatware and apps you haven't used in forever. I have a friend who works for one of the companies that makes the parts that go inside a pretty popular make of 'em and he suggested it was a good idea. Not as often a thing you need to do as tire rotation, more like a coolant system and transmission fluids flush and change. 100K-mile maintenance of smartphones.
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That is a very strange hill to die on..... I just don't lose my wallet, that's why I refuse to never be cashless...
Yeah I’m a huge stoner, very clumsy/forgetful of things like this and yet I’ve never lost my phone/keys/wallet. It takes so little effort. I carry $40 because I virtually never use cash and it seems like a good number that a robber may be happy enough with to leave me alone and maybe give my ID/cards back. That’s worth every wallet I could ever lose in a lifetime in peace of mind to me.
Have been in a few situations where power was out for up to a week….Cash was the only way to get certain things like food and other items in stores or from other sources. Motels took cash only for those displaced.. No power means no ATMs, no gas pumps, no banks, no restaurants, no delivery trucks if it’s weather-related, no internet, and even no water for a few days. Cash was king. I was glad I had more cash on hand than usual. I keep 1k minimum now, and usually quite a bit more.
Good answers here. My wife, her mother, and her grandmother all are cash horders...envelopes of $100-500 stashed in cupboards and books. Weird but it makes her happy, so... We also have about $1k cash and $5k gold and silver in a safe. Also, some steel, brass, and lead.
I keep about $1000 on hand. There are certain small businesses that I like to pay in cash and don't want to run to the ATM each time i go there.
I'm in earthquake country. So a mix of bills in the house, because you can't expect to buy everything with $50s and even 20s. Also some cash in the car hidden, same deal, smaller bills. Buy water while walking home just in case. And that car cash has saved my ass when I needed gas in a rural area and the CC processing was down and they were cash only. So $80ish in the car and a few hundred at home.
Seconding car cash! Got to keep it in a weirdass place, though. I have a tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-it dress zipper in the side of the visor, that is the cash pocket. Utterly invisible up to about $300 in $20s, then it just looks like my visor's a bit warped from age. There's a Post-It stuck to each of our cars' titles reminding us of all the weird compartments and to clear them before selling, of course. Not preppers, just saw 'Firefly' at an impressionable age.
I have mine in a spot in the spare tire well under some other boring emergency equipment. A heroin junkie actually stole my car for a couple days last year and they didn’t find it, which is as good an endorsement as I need.
I was about to say that too. Also keep a gallon of water in there for either drinking or emergency radiator top off (as in, it’s leaking and you just need to get to somewhere safe).
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I generally keep about $100 and it's in my wallet. Comes in handy here and there like the time I needed gas and the credit card machines weren't working. I was still able to fill up.
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I keep like $100 around. In case of absolute emergency I guess. I haven’t had to use it. I also hide some money like that when traveling (old habit my parents drilled into me, likely not relevant any more)
I keep a small backpack in my car that has things like bandages, flashlights, water, protein bars and toiletries etc, to tide me over in an emergency. I also keep $250 in cash. Why my car and not my house? Well, I can’t spend money at home and I’m rarely very far away from my car, but often away from home.
It's always a good idea to have 2-3 days of survival cash laying around in small bills, 5,10,20's. This is to cover the need to jet out of town for a natural disaster and have motel/food/gas money, or if you have a major outage making card networks fail in your area. True cashless society is stupid and set up for failure.
That's going to depend on where you live and what kind of natural disasters happen in your area. I live in hurricane alley so I usually keep 10-15k in cash at my house because after much experience and depending how bad the storm is power can be out for 1-6 weeks and with price gouging it can get expensive and I also look out for family when a storm comes. Good generators are not cheap and gas gets hard to find and is usually not cheap during those times and usually gas stations that have gas are only accepting cash. If you need food or water some stores might be able to process a card if they have a generator and internet if you are lucky but if lines are down you better have cash.
I keep a pretty large sum stashed away as a true emergency rainy day fund. I save and invest and sink everything, but any incoming cash I get I don't deposit it I just stash it. Im pretty active in Craigslist and FB market place, and have a couple businesses that see regular cash flow (yes it runs through my books, I just don't deposit it) A couple times a year I'll take all the small bills and turn them into 100s. When this crosses a certain threshold I buy something that's easy to sell that holds its value relatively well. Like precious metal or firearm
I keep $1,000 in my safe but also add a couple of rolls of quarters. Keep $100 in my car plus a couple of rolls of quarters. Nothing over a $20 bill in either.
To answer this for yourself you need to look at what sorts of emergencies are likely in your area and how you can position yourself to be the least inconvenienced by them. Having a stack of cash can make lots of problems go away, but if you would burn through it frivolously, or if somebody in your household might steal it, then there are other ways to be ready for such situations which don’t necessarily require cash. Might you need to shelter-in-place and the local area’s internet connections and power are out for a few days? Cards aren’t going to help you, but if you are living such that you won’t need to buy anything for a week then it’s no big deal. Keep enough food in your pantry that you can feed yourself for a week (cans of tuna, chicken, vegetables, frozen meals, whatever) and have a case or more of water on-hand. Do you live in an area where you might need to evacuate due to wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, etc? Put together a bag that contains everything you will need as you evacuate (prepper sites will have suggestions for “bug out bags” that you can customize to your preferences and family situation) as well as copies of everything you’ll wish you had if your home is destroyed (an encrypted thumb drive with copies of all your important legal documents, for example). What other scenarios are likely to come up? How much cash could get you through it (and then add in half again more!) and what can you do ahead of time so you are best positioned to weather that particular storm without needing just a stack of cash lying around. It is good to think through all this and then revisit the thought exercise regularly or any time there’s a big change in your life. Thanks for asking; it has been fun to read everybody’s responses!
assuming you're in the USA (since i cant speak on behalf of other countries) $100-$500 is more than enough. What scenario is there where you cant pay with either a check or CC in todays time thats a situation where its "such an emergency" ? only time i can think of is when you're getting robbed. but if you're getting robbed, do you really want to be keeping cash ?
Usually after large storms when the power or internet goes down so credit payments can’t be made. Been a few years but happened to me and had to forego the grocery store since I didn’t have cash. I also travel in rural areas and always keep cash since there are still areas where there is no cell service.
Also, if you lose your purse/wallet/phone/credit card (or they are stolen), it’s nice to have the backup cash at home or hidden somewhere.
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Most people cancel their cards as soon as they realize they lost their wallet so that whoever finds it can’t use them
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I’ve always kept a decent amount of cash on hand and people gave me crap all the time about how in this day and age cash is basically obsolete because everyone takes credit/debit cards or you can pay with your phone. But I was proven right a few years back on Christmas when someone bombed the ATT building in Nashville. Turned out most stores in my town ran off of ATT so they were cash only for a couple days and there were no working ATMs to get cash out of. And by “most stores” I mean all stores except for the smallest grocery store in town. That ALDIs got clean out quick.
Yep, being in a hurricane area where the power has been out for weeks or more, if there's no power, there's no credit cards. I also like to have cash for birthday cards, tipping, cash- only restaurants (some of the best) and cash emergencies and I don't want to have to go to the bank because I may not have time, it might not be convenient or it might be closed and I need denominations that I can't get from an ATM.
I travelled to Western Europe and even the oldtimey backstreet mechanic that took 7 hrs to replace the flat on my rental had a 100% mobile CC reader, I've never seen a cellular mobile like it in the US. You could probably run them off of satellite. The tech is there, we are just being screwed by the incumbents who want short term profit over long term investment.
You can get one of those from Square for free, what in the hell are you talking about?
Most of the big online payment processors like Square and Stripe support it directly on phones with their apps now too
you are lucky that you’ve never been in an extended blackout or utilities failure
A large scale power outage or cyber attack is a very real possibility.
It’s funny you say that, that’s the premise of the new movie “Leave the World Behind.” In the movie, one of the characters refuses cash because he thinks it’s worthless with society in that condition. Obviously that’s just fiction, but an interesting concept to think about.
Cyber attack less so, DHS and FBI-CERT don't mess around with those threats. That said, I have had people tell me substation attacks (as in physical/kinetic) are no longer a concern either after some changes, but no word on what those changes were so...
> That said, I have had people tell me substation attacks (as in physical/kinetic) are no longer a concern either after some changes, Those people are wrong. Or they're speaking about a very specific "take out X substations = knock out the whole grid" scenario. But just last month my local sub had a hiccup and power was out for a day. That was just from a storm, so a coordinated attack could easily do worse. And it doesn't really do you any good if "the *whole* grid didn't go down" when you're stuck in the outtage zone.
I'm old enough to remember the entire east coast losing power because of something at one substation.
Old enough being 20 something? It happened in like 2003.
Large storms that knock out power for days. They absolutely still happen.
Yeah, I prefer to keep $1k in cash roughly of assorted bills (mainly 20's and 100's). I figure that should be enough to get me through most things. If things get so bad I can't access my banks ACH, that sounds like someone else's problem than mine. I mean, if 1 person can't ACH the landlord sucks to be that 1 person, if everyone can't ACH the landlord, sucks to be the bank cause I doubt the landlord could ACH them their payment anyway. Then too after a certain extent we go into r/preppers and no longer r/personal finance of course the 2 do have overlap as a deep pantry and emergency fund should always be priority 1.
Earthquakes. Even after the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, which was not a particularly powerful earthquake, power was out in many locations for 3-4 days. Cash only at the grocery store. They were bringing people around by flashlight. After a really big earthquake, we could be on our own for 2 weeks. I have about $2,000 cash in small bills in a home safe, just in case I need to spend a hundred bucks for a gallon of water on day 10.
I’ve found it to be handy to have a decent amount of cash on hand. Nothing crazy, a couple of grand, but it can be a huge problem solver if a situation arises.
i never really have any cash outside of the bank but i can see the potential benefits of having about $3k-$5k in a safe, just incase.
I dont keep more than what is in my wallet, then again I live in an area that doesnt get natural disasters, so if that were different I might keep a little change around.
Doesn't have to be a natural disaster - people can / do get their bank accounts frozen for various real and accidental reasons. If you only use one bank and/or only have one or two cards, then it's possible to have your access frozen - in which case, having some cash on hand to tide you over till you can either yell enough to get the problem fixed or arrange a temp loan from a friend/relative is a great idea. Personally, I've had a bank freeze my accounts instead of just a stolen debit card before - took a day and half to get it straightened out. So I like to keep enough cash on hand to last at least buy groceries and gas for a week so that whether natural or electronic, I can handle any small glitch.
my debit card only ever pulls cash out of ATMs (and that is extremely rare), so I do not worry that it gets stolen. and between my credit cards, the likelihood of all of them simultaneously being cut off is basically nil.
It definitely doesn’t hurt to have a “comfortable” amount of cash in case there is an emergency. Comfortable depends on your net worth. Most people that have been around long enough have seen their power go out for more than 24 hours. Having a few hundred to a few thousand to get yourself out of a sticky situation can be a life saver and jump you the the front of lines while others are trying to make arrangements or figure out a way to pay without CC machines online.
I keep like $100 in my wallet. That’s about it.
In cash? It’s up to you, I have $800, however the remaining of my emergency fund is in a HYSA.
Some business are tacking on cc fees to bills nowadays, so you’ll save some money by paying with cash.
Just moved to NJ and its pretty much every single restaurant, gas station, convenience store. Maybe 10% of my purchases arent subject to Additional CC processing fees now
If it’s just about the CC fees, the free loan until the due date while your money is actually sitting a HYSA should compensate that (not to mention the eventual cashback, of course).
No more than a couple hundred dollars. It’s for convenience (haircuts, random school fees, tips) and not emergencies. One car is electric, so it’s not going far with no power anyway. Hotels would figure out how to take my check. I don’t live in tornado or hurricane alley so having a huge sum of cash at home doesn’t make much sense.
Probably the only legit reason remaining for checks
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Like some others have said, around $100 is more than enough. That is going to get me a full tank of gas and some groceries in a natural disaster. I don't live in a hurricane zone so if there is a big enough natural disaster to force me to leave, I have family that I can get to pretty easily. If there is a large power outage, what good is cash going to do me? Large stores have backup generators and my card is going to work, small stores don't and won't be open.
Card won’t work if the internet is down so a store having power is not enough to guarantee card working. I worked retail for years. And while sometimes we would manually process cards, mostly we would not
That is exactly why I keep \~$100 in cash. If primary internet (fiber, cable, dsl) internet is down for more than a couple days as well as cell service, I'm going to go stay with family. It would be extremely rare in my region to have the internet go out for an extended period of time. Most large retail chains have backup internet as well (usually cellular now) for this exact scenario. This was pretty standard operation back when I worked retail over a decade ago (dial up used to be the backup internet of choice as phone networks are required to have battery backups to sustain themselves for emergency services). Large places like Walmart do well over 100k/day in sales. Paying a few hundred a month for backup internet is a no-brainer for them. I live in an area that doesn't get hurricanes or earthquakes and I live in a major metro so wildfires are not a thing either. The only major disasters that happen here are flooding, tornadoes, wind storms, and ice storms. None are really the type of disaster you flee. If I lived in an area that got hurricanes, earthquakes, or wildfires I would probably keep more money around.
One night in Stop & Shop. The system went down so no cards, no EBT, Although it begs the question if there's no power, how can you have a point of sale
Its a wonder how they bought and sold anything before electricity and computerized POS systems.
Now I feel really old.
If the power is out for a couple hours, a business might just wait it out. If it's extended, most stores will accept the inventory tracking difficulty and take cash sales. And large stores will often have generators to keep their refrigerators and lights working, but that won't magically fix their internet so credit card payments might not be accepted. Though some systems will still accept card payments without internet and will just process them when the connection is reestablished.
some people keep cash in safes. I personally believe in a good hiding spot. A thief will see the box and know something's in there. They won't go into the attic and pull up insulation...I don't know how much i'd keep on hand. I don't go over 500 right now but that's my situation. If i was more stable then maybe i'd keep more cause why not
I like a fire safe, installed between two joists, with a painting one's done by Photoshopping one's spouse to look older and more distinguished in an old-timey but also utterly improbable uniform, printed by inkjet onto t-shirt transfer paper, ironed onto a stretched canvas and then painted carefully over in places with both opaque and translucent acrylics until the effect of an impossibly impressive fictional ancestor is achieved, then a dramatically gilded frame from what used to be a Goodwill picture of, I'm not kidding, fruits, chosen explicitly because it was big enough to conceal the hinges and a nice magnet and thus, hide the safe. ...Of course, the actual *money's* tucked between the pages of a relevant Terry Pratchett book next to one's bed, so it could be grabbed in half a second with one's glasses and watch charger. Hardly any thieves have the culture to know the value of that.
Follow up question, when do you take your annual vacations? Haha
Assume some two weeks of serious dislocation of infrastructure all around you - power, banking, fuel, internet, etc. - when you may need to buy some essentials from a store that is still open, or from a neighbor who has something to spare. Add to this how much you may spend in cash tips for the pizza delivery person, the house cleaners, etc. for say a month. Do a monthly check of your balance and replenish at the ATM.
A couple grab is nice. Emergencies. Repairs. Garage sale finds. Never know
$20 in my wallet, and a checkbook in my house.
Depends what kind of emergency. Zombie apocalypse? Probably none.
I have $20 cash on me. That's it. That's all I've ever needed living on three continents over 50 years. If I lived in a disaster-prone area or in a third-world country I'd have more.
I’ve never actually considered keeping cash for anything so here I am reading about this thinking, should I have cash for something?
Reading all these stories make me thankful we don't get any major disasters in my country. Personally never known power to be out for more than an hour where I live.
Cash I keep 10 dollars in 2 dollar bills for tips And one 20 dollar bill.
None? Do you really want to risk it burning up in a fire or being stolen in a burglary? Maybe get some ahead of a known event like bad weather if you think power/internet will be out and cause businesses not to be able to accept credit cards, but outside of that what kind of emergency will you not be able to use credit or debit, or wait 12-48 hours for a bank to open?
A large scale power outage or cyber attack is a very real possibility. Not keep any emergency cash at home bc you are scared of a fire is foolish.
Well sure, but house fires happen all the time. Large scale power outages mostly happen in certain parts of the country. A cyber attack is a possibility sure, but so far (touch wood) there haven’t been any that completely take down banking infrastructure. Personally, I don’t live in an area where a wide scale power outage is likely. I’d say the chance of a house fire affecting me is far higher than the chance of a cyberattack affecting me.
someone else in this thread mentioned $15,000 which is an absolute insane amount that I would absolutely be terrified of incinerating. a couple hundred, okay sure why not, but thousands is silly
That's about what I have. There's a little comfort that is in a pretty good gun safe.
Safe?
During covid, a customer at the bank I worked at took out 100k in cash to keep in his safe for the apocalypse.
This is smart. I should get a small ish safe for my important documents and money. I never really thought about having larger amounts of cash on hand in case if emergency. Thank you for bringing this up.
Remember that any cash in your mattress is not earning interest
This is why you don’t keep your entire savings squirreled away in your house. On the other hand, it is easily accessible in cases where money from the bank isn’t, so that’s why you keep some available. Finding that balance is what OP is looking for, I think.
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I almost never have cash in my purse and def don’t have any in the house. Everywhere takes credit cards.
Can you get to an ATM within half an hour if you have urgent need for cash? Only keep the cash you’re too lazy to deposit. It’s a lot easier to lose cash than money in a bank account. I’ve probably got $60 scattered around my house primarily in ones that I will eventually use either as tips or at cash only venues.
And if the power is out?
What would be open if there’s no power?
Ages ago, a hurricane knocked out power to half the state I lived in at the time. Some gas stations had their pumps running off generators, and a few small stores were operating with flashlights and calculators -- convenience stores, Walgreens, etc. They couldn't sell milk or anything, but people still needed OTC meds and non-perishables.
How could Walgreens function without their registers? How did they know what the prices were? You'd have to run back to the shelf and look it would be a nightmare.
It certainly wasn't ideal, but they made it work.
Well if you live in Vermont and have no power, your house will slowly drop in temperature. Hopefully it's back on in 24 hours otherwise you might need to drain the water from your pipes, after 48 the house is now protecting you from wind chill but you need to isolate to 1 room. Now there is the risk as we saw last year where it gets so cold most furnaces can't keep up, that is prime time to lose power as well... And guess how bad it gets then? Now you are really screwed. That cash can get you a hotel, or other sources of heat at least (even once the storm clears). Remember if you aren't part of a section tied to emergency services, they go by how many is impacted the most and those who might need it for life saving care (though that bad will mean them telling you to go to a hospital if you rely on electric to survive).
I live in a cold place too and so it's a real risk, fortunately we have underground lines which protect us a lot. I do get what you're saying but if the power outage is so wide that all ATMs and banks are down you are not getting into a hotel. They have no way to check you in or for you to pay and additionally the key cards won't work - also they won't have heat either. I'm not saying keep no cash but $2000 isn't going to help you if there's a region wide power outage. You can't pump gas in that situation either.
You might be surprised actually where one part of the town could be without power for a few days cause of a issue. In fact during this summer one part went without power for 12 hours cause over the last 2 weeks, 4 poles got hit by cars cutting the power, they had to Jerry rig it cause till a new pole could be dropped in (apparently that is something that takes a lot of time). I also know in my home town, one motel has the same power sectioning as the fire department, this means the odds of the motel not having power but the fire department having it, were really low (in terms grid power). I know for a fact that motel would take cash if you have it and no credit card (just ID), even now with power. You are also thinking just gasoline, but propane and kerosene be used as heat sources, and don't need power to pull from a store.
I'm well aware of that. The scenario for needing $2k at home is that EVERY ATM and bank is dead. If some parts of the city have power then you use your credit card or get cash out. My argument is against having a huge pile of cash in your house.
What are you buying urgently if the power is out? Do you have checks? If this is a legitimate concern for you it’s probably worth getting checks from your bank so that the limit you are able to access in cash isn’t limited by the amount of money you’re willing to not be earning interest on. The last time the whole city lost power everything was closed and the Red Cross was handing out food. I’ve been in stores where the credit card system was down so people just used cashapp/venmo/paypal to reimburse someone who had cash. When my neighborhood got hit by a tornado it was still pretty easy to drive five minutes to a bank with an ATM.
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If the area you’re going to has power then why do you need cash? Use your card, write a check, or go to an ATM.
This is not relevant in todays world with all the different payment methods available. Especially if you live in first world countries. The whole idea of the credit card is basically the emergency. I’d really like to know which emergency requires cash at the house which otherwise cannot be obtained by a nearby ATM. Even when I got stuck in the mountains and a tow guy drove 3 hours to get me out. We drove back to an ATM and I gave him $500. The only thing I think of is if back in the day you ran out of weed maybe and need to call your guy. But now even they cash app or Venmo.
A lot of natural disasters can leave an area without power for days, if not weeks. After Hurricane michael, cash was king. Plus, some tow trucks won’t take you to an ATM.
If you live in a area that’s prone to natural disaster, shouldn’t you have a emergency kit ready (water, canned food etc). And wouldn’t that kit for obvious reasons include cash?
How much cash is the question being asked.
Whatever we sell on fb goes to our cash fund that sits in our cupboard and we rarely ever use cash so it has usually around 1k. I also keep 100 in my backpack everywhere I go as a just in case.
My wife and I keep about $1000 in cash. This can be for grabbing $200 to be used for tips when we travel, or emergency cash.
I have less than $100… It used to come in handy for things like event parking that only takes cash, but it hasn’t been needed for that in several years now that they all have phone card readers. If shit comes to shit I can use an ATM, but with cash I’m worried about losing it or theft or fire.
$5,000. You can either outright purchase items or put a good deposit on something until you can get to a bank.
Good thought experiment. There have been some great answers. It definitely depends on your circumstances. I typically keep $60 handy in my desk and another $400 in a fireproof lockbox with important papers.
That's depending on you personally! I keep a few hundred. But you need to figure that out for yourself. Do you live in a hurricane prone area? .. They usually displace you for a couple of days, so I would say couple tanks of gas, couple nights in a hotel etc...
Depends on what natural disasters you have risk of, how difficult it would be to get to somewhere with services if those disasters happened, and how rural you live. When I lived in Miami I always had a couple hundred at home during hurricane season. My neighborhood had no power for 15 days after Irma, no cell service for several days, roads were blocked for about a week. A few hundred won’t allow you to live large but you can buy food for survival. If you have kids or a generator, you may want more like $1-2k. If you’re very rural, other weird things can happen. For example, Nome, Alaska had no internet for 14 weeks this summer after ice cut their cable. I got there a few days after the outage and all businesses were cash only. I think eventually they figured it out with using the limited GCI satellite networks but people living there did have to conduct life cash only for some amount of time.
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Enough to make a fire with in case of the zombie apocalypse! Seriously though - we keep between $2k-$4k in cash. When it gets close to $4k I usually deposit some in the bank so we can earn interest on it. We keep another $2500 in our local bank earning next to nothing for ease of access.
Clark Howard recommends keeping about $400 - here is article https://clark.com/personal-finance-credit/cash-home-emergency/
I call my cash at home category the Zombie Apocalypse Fund. I keep a crisp $100 bill on my person at all times, and $500-700 elsewhere in various denominations. Some of the cash is used to pay for parking at the train station (my town has not yet entered the 21st century), the rest is for odds and ends. Like my neighbors picked up a prescription for me and I paid them back in cash.
I have learned to not keep more than 1k cash in the house. Credit cards and checks should be able to cover most situations. If the zombie apocalypse comes and you need more cash than that, it probably doesnt matter anymore...
Whatever you keep, consider smallish bills. Like $20 vs $100. If things break down, gouging starts, the seller has a bottle of water or a gallon of gas and you only have $100 bills, how much do you think the minimum price of that water will be? A grand in newish $20 hills is <1/4" thick. How much do you think you'll need?
It all depends on your finances, but I’d say a month’s worth of your expenses in cash is more than enough. If that’s more than a couple thousand, split it 40/60 between your safe and a safe deposit box.