Remember when money was based on a gold standard? Now I'm not even sure money is based on those rectangular pieces of paper in bank vaults. Maybe it has been the 5 years of engineering internships and the magic of direct deposit, but cold hard cash has become so foreign to me. I recently started a child care job (I think we can stop calling it baby sitting when the kids can tell you their favorite rapper right?) and am paid in cash. Upon receiving the money I had a moment of not remembering when cash was my main monetary income, always referring to my online bank account to figure my spending ability. I can't be the only one who has experienced this distancing from cash with so many new and exciting ways to spend money without physically possessing it or even reaching for your wallet. While I know there are still many, many, cash based jobs and businesses; cash for a while now has felt more like a middle school allowance or a birthday gift from the grandparents than the basis for an economy. Cash required situations are becoming far more infrequent, and truthfully one of my strongest motivations to withdraw cash from an ATM has been to not open a tab at a bar (one of those cash based business). Let's be honest with ourselves though, how soon until we're never touching cash again? When will that generation begin where kids grow up not knowing what cash money is, like the kids of today not knowing why it's called rolling down your car window? Eventually things like this become obsolete.
Cash has been under attack for a while now, and the opponent it varied and powerful. Debit and credit cards have been wearing down cash's defenses for years, but the real competitor of cash now are apps like Squarecash and Venmo. Cash was always convenient for small transactions to friends or splitting a bill, but this is what these apps perform, and really well. And this conversation cannot be had without extending the theme of smart phone empowerment to features like Google Wallet and Apple Pay, that allow you to complete separate yourself from your wallet. As exclusive usage of cash dwindles it will be interesting where people will draw the line on cash money importance.
I have still not figured out what the feeling I experienced when being paid in cash was. Part of me wants to believe it was a genuine appreciation for the physical reward of working, but I fear it was nastalgia to a simpler time, which might mean cash's day is heading toward its sunset.
I totally agree that the concept of paying has been slowly changing as people use credit cards and apps to pay for their things more and more. In some ways, it's so much easier to do this every day thing. But that's the fear I have. With it being so much easier to pay for things and the concept of cash changing, did our concept of spending change as well? I feel that all of these new methods have really changed how we spend money. I've noticed that if I pay with cash then I end up paying a lot less then if I had planned to pay with credit card. With a credit card, I feel that I have become numb to how much I have just spent. When I hand over cash, it's feels terrible when I spend so much for something so irrelevant. How will later generations feel about this?
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