hannah320•1mo agoMost Upvoted

My grandma's coffee can was our family bank for 30 years

I was visiting my grandma last week and she still has that old Folgers can where she kept her emergency cash. She told me younger neighbors laugh at her for not using an app to pay for stuff. But last month when the card network went down for 4 hours in our town, who was the only one who could buy bread at the corner store? Yep, grandma and her coffee can. People keep saying cash is dead but they forget that not everyone has a smartphone or trust their bank to just work. Anyone else still keep a little cash hidden somewhere just in case?

4 comments

4 Comments

valc9113d ago

Wait are we really acting like a 4 hour card outage is some kind of emergency? Like its annoying sure but its not the end of the world. Most stores will just write down your info or let you pay later if they know you. @susansingh asked a good question - my guess is most people with a coffee can fund barely touch it, its more of a comfort thing than a real necessity. Plus if you're really worried about a few hours without plastic you could just keep a $20 in your wallet like a normal person instead of hoarding a whole can of cash at home where it could get lost or stolen.

susansingh1mo ago

Honest question for you - has she ever had to dip into that can for something unexpected, or is it more of a "just in case" thing? I'm always curious how often people actually need their emergency cash.

xena_bailey181mo ago

Totally get what you're asking, and I've actually seen this play out irl. My neighbor has a similar emergency fund in her sock drawer, and she's had to use it twice. Once when the power was out for a whole weekend after a storm, the card readers at the gas station were down, and she needed gas for her generator. Another time when her bank's app was glitching for a whole day and she couldn't get cash from the atm. It's not about the networks going down everywhere, it's about those random local hiccups that leave you stranded without any paper money for something immediate.

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mark_ward1mo ago

Did the card network actually go down for 4 hours, or was it just the store's own system crashing? Either way, your grandma sounds like a smart lady to me.