Is CASH going away?

Well it’s that day…the day all the contracts are to be turned in to the resort office if you are intending on returning to Lake Huron Resort next summer, and there are still a lot of contracts to come in. So Miss Laurie will be busy today with all the last moment folks…I understand not wanting to part with your money until you have to but just for heaven sakes just post-date a cheque. The whole waiting until the last minute to bring in cash and then it having to be counted twice just seems so back alley kind of dramatic. First of all the whole process of going into the bank to withdraw that much money is a pain in the butt from the get go for everyone involved.

The teller counts the money and marks down how many of each of the bill denominations that is being withdrawn, then the teller counts it out again to the person withdrawing the money, so there already it has been counted twice. Now if your like everyone else your going to count it at least once before tucking it into an envelope, now you have to put that handful of cash somewhere, and  lets face it we are not a cash rich society anymore. Canadians use their debit card for almost all their purchases, we all know someone paying with cash just slows the whole supermarket check out process down. In fact if the debit machine is not working on a particular day the world comes to a stop and mass hysteria almost takes over, hell I even get upset when the “TAP” doesn’t work, (and in Goderich that is most of the time).

So now you have this big wad of cash that you have counted at least once, and probably two or three times by the time you arrive at the resort office, after all you don’t want to be embarrassed by being $20 short. Now you hand it over to our Miss Laurie, who is going to count it twice, once to herself and a second time back to you, this is the way she and everyone else that handles cash has been taught count it twice, remember the your  teller did! Now it is put back into the envelope or clipped to the contract where it is recounted by the person processing the payment into the book keeping system and is set aside with other cash to be counted at least two more times when the bank deposit is made up.

And then off to the bank to deposit the cash, back to where it started just a day or two earlier where the teller will again count it twice to ensure accuracy before crediting the business account. Just a quick count of how many times those dollar bills are being counted brings me to at least nine if you the person paying the bill only counted it once which is highly unlikely, so how much actual time has be spent counting these monies, if Miss Laurie counts each payment twice and if it is in twenty dollar bills, that’s about five or six minutes per contract, say half the contracts are paid with cash, so now you get an idea of how time consuming handling cash can be.

Now don’t get me wrong in my world “Cash is King” but it is becoming more and more difficult to use, most stores won’t take any bill larger than a twenty, and I know many membership golf courses where they do not accept cash, because it is too time consuming, too much risk for loss or theft, too dirty (you can’t handle money and food  without washing you hands – health board rules), and the final kick in the butt, at my Royal Bank which has my business account I’m charged a 2% handling fee for depositing cash, now how wrong is that.

Now cash has an important place in our world, the underground market is alive and well, and works strictly on cash, lets face it is untraceable, and in a society that is as highly taxed as todays world any untaxed and discounted service or products are welcome, now I’m not condoning it bit I may have dabbled in it occasionally,  hell we all do, every garage sale is a cash, no sales tax event, even half the stuff I by on Amazon has no sales tax and that is all traceable, I still don’t even have my head totally around that completely.

If there is no advantage to use cash we pay for every thing with credit cards, why you might ask, points and perks, if they are giving it away, and yes I know that there is a cost to the perks that is being bore by the retailer, and the people that don’t pay their balances off on time but that is not my concern so I will continue to collect the points and pay cash where it has a significant advantage, nudge, nudge, wick, wink.