Completely aside from the privacy issues, I rather bemoan the decline of cash, for the very simple reason that handling physical currency makes it much harder t

Completely aside from the privacy issues, I rather bemoan the decline of cash, for the very simple reason that handling physical currency makes it much harder to spend carelessly. It's too easy to swipe your card and receive an item. It's a lot harder to fork over $483.71 in tangible, handle-able dollars. After my wife and I analyzed our spending habits, we found that we were bleeding money specifically because of the tremendous number of small - $5 here, $10 there - transactions. These completely fly under your mental radar when you're paying with a card. We've since switched to a cash budget, where we withdraw the money we need for the next two weeks for various things (groceries, hobbies, entertainment) and spend exclusively out of that. If we're out and about and want something and don't have the cash on us, we don't buy it. When I open up my wallet and see that I only have $X left of the grocery budget, I consider whether I really need that thing I just put into my cart. Internet purchases still get made on a card, but we "pay" for them with cash from the budget into a pool that we withdraw from the next period to refull the budget. We've become much more sensitive to sales, discounts, and smart shopping - and all because we have the continual feedback loop of physical cash. Our monthly margin has substantially improved as a direct result, and we've been able to make substantial progress on all our unsecured debt - we should be free of it this year. There's more to it than just cash, but it's really about being aware what you're spending and finding ways to make sure you only spend what you have; cashless transactions practically encourage you to be unaware of what you have and what you can afford. For a society that is utterly crippled by debt, and in a culture that is practically begging us to spend money every time we turn around, it seems like the last thing we need is to go cashless. It's convenient, it's easy, it's fast...and that's a problem. I'm not saying that cashless payment methods are bad. I love them. Paying for things on my phone Google Wallet is magical. Amazon has completely transformed how I buy stuff. There are lots of really great things about cashless economies, but for anyone that is less than perfectly disciplined, it's a very sharp two-edged sword.