Show me the money

Kate Stewart

Cashless ... a scenario I am almost too familiar with, but does that make me poor?

Despite the urban legend that teenagers, boys in particular, communicate only in grunts, this week I was enjoying a conversation with my eldest life form about being cashless, in all its forms.

A keen economics student, he buoyed my mood by saying that if you have little to no debt and $2 in your pocket you are richer than half the US population. Yay me.

I try to operate on a cash-only basis. No crippling credit-card debt for me and HPs are a last resort. I rent, which some will see as a bad thing, but I prefer it to a 25-year mortgage where I end up paying for the house bought at an over-inflated price, at least twice over, particularly with Wanganui rates.

I'm certainly not keeping up with the Joneses but I am probably a lot better off financially than most of those who outwardly appear to have it all. How much of their "all" they own outright is a different story and I share that message with my life forms when they compare our situation with their friends'.

Actual real and ready cash seem in short supply and every week, as I grocery shop, I see more evidence of it. The number of people in checkout lines paying for weekly food on an interest-bearing credit card is alarming.

Then there's the TV ad for Visa Pay Wave, the nice, orderly lunch line working like a well-oiled machine as they all opt to pay interest-inflated prices, when in comes some bozo with cash to stuff up the whole thing. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this perceived spanner in the works is, in fact, the only one making a sensible financial transaction, and his reward ... treat him like social leper.

I watched a programme once in which a couple with two pre-school kids paid about $1000 for Christmas gifts for the whole family. They were then told that if they were to make the minimum credit-card payment, they would still be paying it off when their kids went to college. I've never had a credit card since.

But what of the bigger picture ... a real cashless society? We are moving towards it at speed and there will be a cost. Imagine no real cash. No more childhood memories of time spent at the corner shop, agonising over which lollies to put in your 50c bag. No more school coin trails or $1 and $2 sausage sizzles. And what of the community groups and charities who rely on gold coin donations for fundraising and raffles? Some of them can't afford to buy one Eftpos machine, let alone provide one for every street collector.

It's food for thought and, for me, I'm just happy to say, my food was paid for in cash. I won't be paying for tonight's dinner in a year's time and I'm starting to realise I am richer than I thought.

Updating last week's blurb, my bloodlust was satisfied. I succeeded in protecting my young and my lone maternal bone remains unbroken. I'm off to sharpen my claws in preparation for my next battle ... as always, smile loudly.