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I've always thought the opposite. When I pay for something with cash I remember it far more strongly than when I pay with card. I pay with a card all the time

I've always thought the opposite. When I pay for something with cash I remember it far more strongly than when I pay with card. I pay with a card all the time and the action is the same no matter the price. I tap it and move on. With cash I remember having to go get the cash, counting out the right amount at the register, and physically handing it over. And then I notice its absence since now I gave up all the cash I had and need to go to the ATM again. I see and feel the loss more strongly. You actually lose something physical when you pay with cash unlike with a card. Especially if its a large purchase, I feel the cash loss harder and remember it longer - hard to forget handing over several bills ($50+) for those expensive transactions.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Out of curiosity, how old are you? I’m in my thirties and think the same.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  I don't think it's tied that much to age, but rather local culture. For example this mindset is prevalent in Germany and Switzerland to the point where many locals look at you weird when you ask them why they prefer cash. (There are other historical reasons here too, but that doesn't take away from the main point.)
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > when you ask them why they prefer cash Would they also say they spend cash more loosely than card? That's the phenomenon being described, not absolute preference.
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      In the conversations I've had with people from Germany and Switzerland it's the other way around, with cash they're more aware and thus more frugal with their spending.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Right. That’s what the article says. OP described an opposite reaction which I share. The hypothesis of local culture doesn’t work because the cultures you named align with the paper, which seems to be the default tendency worldwide.
magicalhippo 3y ago
I'm from Norway, where cash is rare these days. But I feel similar, it's a lot more obvious how much you pay when you need to count bills and hand them over. As a compromise I only keep a small amount of money on my debit card. That way I have to keep topping it up, so I get a sense of my spending that way.
- tracker1 3y ago
  I keep two accounts for my payroll deposits... one which is my day to day usage (fuel, food, entertainment, etc) and the other where bills get paid from. I also keep my large bills and credit cards not autopay. So I have to actually go in at least once a month to pay the mortgage, car payments, and pay off CC. It helps for awareness, but not actively tracking sometimes makes it surprising how much gets spent in a month.
- matsemann 3y ago
  Also from Norway. Haven't paid cash in ~10 years. I have no idea how the new currency looks like. I lost my wallet at some point, and just never replaced it. I pay with my Garmin watch (or phone once in a while). My driver's license is an app.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    you have a "high trust" and "wealthy" country -- good for you. Not everyone lives like that. Here in the USA, tracking people for profit has exploded, and the benefit is not for the person being tracked. I advocate cash for old reasons, and new reasons. Use high-tech payments if you like -- do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA. I sure hope not, but there's been quite a lot of things that have been on the "could never happen here" list that have in fact happened. I have no faith that eliminating cash is inconceivable.
wing-_-nuts 3y ago
I'll say this, spending cash is harder in the moment. There's a real visceral feeling of loss when handing over actual cash vs card. However, when it comes to tracking long term? Cash always seemed to just ...evaporate, out of my wallet where as I can look back and see my credit card purchases and go 'why did I spend that much on that?!' In my experience, there are two types of people when it comes to money. There are spenders, who could usually stand to cut back, and savers, who could stand to loosen up. I'm definitely in the 'could stand to loosen up' camp. I even went so far a set aside a 'fun money' budget but it mostly goes unspent because my frugality has no chill...
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is it exactly - if I spend $2k on an item, I'm going to remember that if it was cash or card, but only card tells me "you spend $2k last month at Walmart".
  - em-bee 3y ago
    so the benefit is that paying by card makes tracking your expenses easier. but the downside is that it also makes makes profiling easier for anyone who can get access to your bank statements which not only includes the bank but more critically also walmart or any other place where you shop regularly. i rather track my spending manually. there are tools that can help with that too, like receipt scanners. granted, it's more work, so one needs to weigh the options. for me though, supermarkets are the last place that i want to be able to track my shopping because most of it happens there.
    - lazide 3y ago
      The challenge of course, is it's easy to lose or misplace receipts, etc. Some of us have issues with (essentially) self sabotage that way. Some of us have also had issues with people in our lives not so accidentally sabotaging (or stealing) things that way. Come to think of it, I don't know any long term married couples that didn't have one of the two do SOMETHING like that at some point. The nice thing (or terrible, if you're worried about privacy) about credit cards is you can go back as long as you need and figure out what money went where, from whom. When cash is gone, it's gone. If someone has to provide receipts/prove expenses to get more, that can be managed. If someone can just pull it out, less so. Pros and cons either way, of course.
tracker1 3y ago
That was my take as well... when I was younger and paid for nearly everything in cash... I'd literally see the amount in my wallet go down, and have to think twice on everything. I was so much more aware of the fuel I was buying, how much I would or wouldn't spend eating out, grocery shopping etc. Now it feels like sticker shock each month when I pay everything off... "how did I spend that much." I think the article makes a lot of conclusions that my own experience would indicate the opposite.
- thingification 3y ago
  I wonder if part of this is a function of time passing / getting older rather than purely cash vs not.
  - tracker1 3y ago
    I can't speak for all, but I came from a lower/lower-middle income family... when I was in my later teens, I generally didn't hold a lot of money to trust in debit purchases not overdrawing. Didn't even have a CC until I was nearly 30yo.
pc86 3y ago
The point is that once your memory fades, that's it. Unless you took a receipt, kept it, don't lose it, AND have a reason to look at it, the purchase will essentially have never happened. If it's on a card it's on that statement forever.
sokoloff 3y ago
As part of teaching our kids about money, I insisted on not only using physical currency for items the kids decided to purchase with "their own money", but on ringing them up in a separate transaction and having my kid actually hand over the currency and receive the change and the item. (This doesn't work for online purchasing, of course, but anything in store, we'd do this way.)
SN76477 3y ago
Yes. Some experiences need friction. For example I do not automate any bills. Each of them are paid manually (with a few exceptions like subscription services) I want to see, feel, know and understand what is happening behind the curtain when it comes to my hard earned assets.
theodric 3y ago
Ehh... Ok so right at the beginning of the Ukraine War I went and pulled €9000 out of the bank (don't have to declare under €10k at Customs) and put it in an envelope labeled "SHTF” and stuck it on the pinboard. The envelope recently became empty. I can't exactly tell you what we spent it on. Not "guilty pleasures," of that I'm reasonably sure, but probably some shit we could have lived without except hey there's this mad crazy money envelope, sure why not grab a couple hundo and splurge...

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Out of curiosity, how old are you? I’m in my thirties and think the same.

Etheryte 3y ago
I don't think it's tied that much to age, but rather local culture. For example this mindset is prevalent in Germany and Switzerland to the point where many locals look at you weird when you ask them why they prefer cash. (There are other historical reasons here too, but that doesn't take away from the main point.)
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > when you ask them why they prefer cash Would they also say they spend cash more loosely than card? That's the phenomenon being described, not absolute preference.
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    In the conversations I've had with people from Germany and Switzerland it's the other way around, with cash they're more aware and thus more frugal with their spending.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Right. That’s what the article says. OP described an opposite reaction which I share. The hypothesis of local culture doesn’t work because the cultures you named align with the paper, which seems to be the default tendency worldwide.

magicalhippo 3y ago

I'm from Norway, where cash is rare these days. But I feel similar, it's a lot more obvious how much you pay when you need to count bills and hand them over. As a compromise I only keep a small amount of money on my debit card. That way I have to keep topping it up, so I get a sense of my spending that way.

tracker1 3y ago
I keep two accounts for my payroll deposits... one which is my day to day usage (fuel, food, entertainment, etc) and the other where bills get paid from. I also keep my large bills and credit cards not autopay. So I have to actually go in at least once a month to pay the mortgage, car payments, and pay off CC. It helps for awareness, but not actively tracking sometimes makes it surprising how much gets spent in a month.
matsemann 3y ago
Also from Norway. Haven't paid cash in ~10 years. I have no idea how the new currency looks like. I lost my wallet at some point, and just never replaced it. I pay with my Garmin watch (or phone once in a while). My driver's license is an app.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  you have a "high trust" and "wealthy" country -- good for you. Not everyone lives like that. Here in the USA, tracking people for profit has exploded, and the benefit is not for the person being tracked. I advocate cash for old reasons, and new reasons. Use high-tech payments if you like -- do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA. I sure hope not, but there's been quite a lot of things that have been on the "could never happen here" list that have in fact happened. I have no faith that eliminating cash is inconceivable.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago

I'll say this, spending cash is harder in the moment. There's a real visceral feeling of loss when handing over actual cash vs card. However, when it comes to tracking long term? Cash always seemed to just ...evaporate, out of my wallet where as I can look back and see my credit card purchases and go 'why did I spend that much on that?!' In my experience, there are two types of people when it comes to money. There are spenders, who could usually stand to cut back, and savers, who could stand to loosen up. I'm definitely in the 'could stand to loosen up' camp. I even went so far a set aside a 'fun money' budget but it mostly goes unspent because my frugality has no chill...

bombcar 3y ago
This is it exactly - if I spend $2k on an item, I'm going to remember that if it was cash or card, but only card tells me "you spend $2k last month at Walmart".
- em-bee 3y ago
  so the benefit is that paying by card makes tracking your expenses easier. but the downside is that it also makes makes profiling easier for anyone who can get access to your bank statements which not only includes the bank but more critically also walmart or any other place where you shop regularly. i rather track my spending manually. there are tools that can help with that too, like receipt scanners. granted, it's more work, so one needs to weigh the options. for me though, supermarkets are the last place that i want to be able to track my shopping because most of it happens there.
  - lazide 3y ago
    The challenge of course, is it's easy to lose or misplace receipts, etc. Some of us have issues with (essentially) self sabotage that way. Some of us have also had issues with people in our lives not so accidentally sabotaging (or stealing) things that way. Come to think of it, I don't know any long term married couples that didn't have one of the two do SOMETHING like that at some point. The nice thing (or terrible, if you're worried about privacy) about credit cards is you can go back as long as you need and figure out what money went where, from whom. When cash is gone, it's gone. If someone has to provide receipts/prove expenses to get more, that can be managed. If someone can just pull it out, less so. Pros and cons either way, of course.

tracker1 3y ago

That was my take as well... when I was younger and paid for nearly everything in cash... I'd literally see the amount in my wallet go down, and have to think twice on everything. I was so much more aware of the fuel I was buying, how much I would or wouldn't spend eating out, grocery shopping etc. Now it feels like sticker shock each month when I pay everything off... "how did I spend that much." I think the article makes a lot of conclusions that my own experience would indicate the opposite.

thingification 3y ago
I wonder if part of this is a function of time passing / getting older rather than purely cash vs not.
- tracker1 3y ago
  I can't speak for all, but I came from a lower/lower-middle income family... when I was in my later teens, I generally didn't hold a lot of money to trust in debit purchases not overdrawing. Didn't even have a CC until I was nearly 30yo.

pc86 3y ago

The point is that once your memory fades, that's it. Unless you took a receipt, kept it, don't lose it, AND have a reason to look at it, the purchase will essentially have never happened. If it's on a card it's on that statement forever.

sokoloff 3y ago

As part of teaching our kids about money, I insisted on not only using physical currency for items the kids decided to purchase with "their own money", but on ringing them up in a separate transaction and having my kid actually hand over the currency and receive the change and the item. (This doesn't work for online purchasing, of course, but anything in store, we'd do this way.)

SN76477 3y ago

Yes. Some experiences need friction. For example I do not automate any bills. Each of them are paid manually (with a few exceptions like subscription services) I want to see, feel, know and understand what is happening behind the curtain when it comes to my hard earned assets.

theodric 3y ago

Ehh... Ok so right at the beginning of the Ukraine War I went and pulled €9000 out of the bank (don't have to declare under €10k at Customs) and put it in an envelope labeled "SHTF” and stuck it on the pinboard. The envelope recently became empty. I can't exactly tell you what we spent it on. Not "guilty pleasures," of that I'm reasonably sure, but probably some shit we could have lived without except hey there's this mad crazy money envelope, sure why not grab a couple hundo and splurge...