Episode: 2574
Title: HPR2574: Personal cash-only finance
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2574/hpr2574.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:57:15

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This is HPR Episode 2574 entitled Personal Cash Only Finance.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 30 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is Klaatu discusses the advantages and disadvantages of going mostly cash-only.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hey everyone, this is Klaatu and you're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
This is an episode about personal finances.
I talked about personal finances in previous episodes, speaking very specifically toward
the big mystery of saving for your future and investments and things like that that
no one ever explains to you.
So in this episode I want to do a complete 180 and talk about what if you don't do any
of those things, the conventional wisdom, what if you reject that and decide to take part
in none of it.
Now part of this episode is really just a thought exercise, something to ponder, to imagine
what would happen if I went cash only entirely, no bank accounts, nothing like that.
But part of it is experiential.
I've flirted with this a little bit and so I'd like to share at least some of my experiences
and also some of the things that has kept me from actually implementing it, at least
completely.
Whether or not that's a good idea is up to you and I think largely whether it's a good
idea or not really depends on what kind of future you are intending to build for yourself.
Because certainly there is no denying that if you do not invest your money in something,
your money will then not increase, it will not grow.
That's what investment is, it's taking in this context your money and purchasing some
thing that will in the future be more valuable than it was when you first obtained it.
That's all investment really means.
So to turn your back on the idea of conventional job, paycheck, banking and so on and attempting
to live your life without those features slash limitations, it's kind of an interesting idea
to explore and I'd like to explore it here because it's something that I've had a little
bit of experience with, although not to any real extreme, which at least as a thought
exercise I think might be kind of interesting to consider.
So here we go, let's consider it.
So first of all, not having a bank account has a couple of different benefits I guess
and that would be that there's really no way for any one or anything to leverage a
judgment against you deciding that you owe them money.
So I mean they can make that judgment but there's no way for them to then get to the money
that you supposedly owe them.
So that's kind of cool because a lot of times in adult life you end up owing something
to someone whether or not you agree with that or not.
Not all the time, I'm just saying it can happen.
There are little weird disputes that happen here and there, maybe a landlord claims that
you didn't pay the security deposit and you claim that you did or maybe someone, there's
a car accident and someone says that you owe them some amount of money for a repair and
you claim that they owe you for a repair because of circumstances.
So there's lots of little things like that that happen in the real world and in theory
those things can culminate in one power saying okay well you owe this person money.
Now they can say that and they can declare that all they want but if there's no, if there
is no bank holding your assets then the buck kind of stops with you and if you say truthfully
or not that you have no money to give then there's not really a way to verify or not verify
that.
So that's kind of an interesting angle on why one might not want to use a bank.
And my experience, not having, and of course there's the obvious just kind of like maybe
you want to have the physical asset, rather than abstracting money away from yourself and
into a bank which is pretty much I think a modern defacto.
Maybe you prefer to hold on to the money and say that if you have $1,000 then you want
to see $1,000 in your pocket.
You want to have that somewhere that you can point to it and say yep there it is.
So in my experience, not having a bank account is quite difficult and I've never been without
a bank account entirely because any time that I've worked for practically anyone, a couple
of exceptions but most jobs that I've had and certainly all like real jobs that I've
had, they simply pay you with either a direct deposit or a paycheck and the direct deposit
requires a bank for it to get deposited into and a paycheck requires that you cash that
check.
Now you can check, you can cash a check without having a bank of your own.
You can go to the bank that issued that check and redeem that check for cash or you could
go to a cash checking service which is less optimal because they'll take a cut.
They'll, they'll give you the cash in exchange for the check but then they'll take some
of that cash for themselves because now they have to deal with this check.
They have to, they have to go to the trouble of getting it cashed and they have to take
any supposed risk of maybe that check not being any good.
So either of those two options are available is just the trouble of going to my employer's
bank every time I get paid to go get the cash has been something that I've never really
relished so I've just had a bank and then I get the money from the bank whenever I need
it.
But you can do that, you could, you can work and not have a bank account.
It is possible.
The first thing that you might worry about are things like rent and food.
So I mean, food's fine, you can get that with cash so far.
But the, the rent thing is, is a little bit trickier depending on what your living arrangement
is.
If, if you are very low, let's say maintenance and you're just living however you might
live, maybe you've got a roommate that you can give cash to, maybe you don't have
a home at all, maybe you have an arrangement where, where the landlord is nearby and
you can bring them cash.
Now I've done that several times.
I've, I've had several.
In fact, I don't think I've ever, no, that's not true.
I did have one apartment for like a summer that was like one of those big kind of, um,
big corporate sort of control departments, you know, where, where you don't know who
the landlord is because the landlord is like this company that owns the building, you
know, management, you know, property management company and they own the building and, and
you have no, there's, there's not really a person behind, behind the, the living arrangement.
It's just, it's the apartment building and you send in your rents by a certain time
or they threaten to kick you out within a day, you know, it's, it's, it's very draconian
and faceless and really kind of a disgusting way to live.
But I mean, if you need a place, that's what you have.
But a lot of times those places don't, don't make it easy for you to pay in cash.
Sometimes you, you can, you can go to their, their office and, and deliver cash to them
for your, your rent, but they tend to expect you to either do a direct deposit or send
in a check.
So those are options.
You can, you can, you can make arrangements to pay in cash in your, for, for your living
space, but I feel like the, the bigger and more official your living space, the less convenient
it is for you to, to pay in cash, which is weird.
But this, that's going to be a reoccurring theme throughout because it, it, it seems like
the, the more convenient you, the more convenience you want, though, the less cash can actually
purchase for you, which I think traditionally, like at one point, the, the exact opposite
was true.
Cash was a lot more convenient and could get you, could get you certain, certain deals
that, that, you know, we're a little bit above and beyond the, the check or credit card
method of payment.
Okay.
So there's rent, there's food, there's pay, pay days sorted.
What else do you need money for?
Well, money does things like get you, um, internet service and utility bills and things
like that.
Now, once again, most of these places have options for you to pay in cash.
Not all of them, to be honest, but most of them do, uh, but you, you would have to make
the physical journey to their office with cash because it's not something that you could
really do safely through mail or anything like that.
So you'd have to go to their, their location and, and pay your bill in cash, which it is
possible.
It just takes a lot.
It takes a chunk out of your day and it's something that's reoccurring.
It would be kind of cool if they would take really large prepayments.
I think that would be super convenient, you know, where you could just say, look, let's
just figure I'm going to have your service for a year and let me come in and just put
a bunch of cash down and then you can take that cash and you can divide it yourself each
month.
You just take whatever you need off that stack every month and, and we'll just call it,
call it even.
But it just doesn't, in my experience anyway, that's not usually how businesses want to
work.
They, they, if they are billing you monthly for a service, then that's what they expect.
And some, some services are, are variable in amounts anyway.
So your utility bill, whether it's electricity or water or, or, or, or, what's the other
one?
Oh, gas.
All those things they, they tend to be a little bit variable.
So it would be difficult to prepay unless you overpay intentionally and I guess that
would work out.
It, it, it, it gets a little bit more complex.
Other stuff that you might need in real life are, you know, the things that you get in
general.
So, I mean, for me, it would, things like coffee and, and food at a, at a cafe where, where
I tend to, to do my work.
Well, I'm, I'm saying, where I tended to do my work.
A lot of, a lot of all of this is, is a theory for me now because I'm undergoing a bunch
of immigration things that require me to do a lot of stuff sort of very visibly for
the, for the local government to, to observe that yes, I am making money.
I am not relying on social services to survive and weird things like that.
So a lot of this is right now on hold for me because I, it's in my vested interest
to, to maintain a healthy bank account to, to, to demonstrate that I, that I can manage
a credit card, it responsibly, stupid things like that, which in real life I couldn't
care less about.
But for immigration purposes, I'm trying to put on a good, a good demonstration of my
responsibilities.
So that's, that's in real life right now.
Previously, however, other things that you might want in real life would have been for
me coffee and food at a cafe where I tended to do a lot of work.
Of course, now I work at home, that's a lot less important for me.
But anyway, I'm trying to get to the point that there are things in real life that you
need.
You just, you end up needing and, and this is an interesting one for me because this
is really demonstrates the power of, of free culture.
So in a lot of different realms of, of interest that I have, there, there's, there's an alternative
to whatever the big obvious target is.
So for instance, with computers, for a lot of us, you, you yourself probably included
dare listener.
There are alternatives to getting a computer.
If you need a computer and you are a hacker, then chances are you know how to find a computer
for very, very, very cheap, maybe even free if you know where to look.
And it might not be something like if you go to a store, like if, if you wake up one
day and say, oh my gosh, I forgot all this time, I needed it, I need a computer by noon
today.
Okay, that might not happen for you for free.
But if, if you're thinking about it in advance, then, then very frequently, at least in my
experience, you can find a computer, whether it's just posting an ad on a bulletin board
somewhere, advertising your services as a data transfer specialist, I can, I can transfer
your data from your old computer to your new computer.
And then you take a couple of those jobs, maybe three at the most, one out of three of those
jobs, you might just say, you know, instead of paying me today, you could just, I'll just
take your old computer if you don't want it anymore, done.
You just got yourself a computer and it's, it's quite possibly a perfectly fine computer.
So or, or, or maybe you just know where to look, like you know the businesses that throw
computers out, you know the loading dock where they stash them before the, the recycler comes
by or, or you know the dumpster that they throw them into or whatever, you know where to
look and you get a new computer again, easy and free.
Now there might be parts associated with that that you have to go purchase, like, oh,
this one's going to need a replacement keyboard.
This one's going to need a hard drive because they took the drive out and smashed it, something
like that.
And, and for that, the cache actually becomes a little bit more difficult because you're,
you're looking at specialized parts for, for a, for an industry that makes different
versions of, of, of every single part, every, every month, it seems, it's, it's insane.
I don't know why there have to be so many different, you know, laptop keyboards out there.
Surely, surely five different designs would do per, per, per language would, would be fine.
But no, it, it seems like everything has to be redesigned every single iteration.
So that becomes very difficult drives, hard drives are obviously a little bit, you know,
better, those are a little bit more standard, uh, RAM, not necessarily AC adapters just as
bad as keyboards.
So there are, there are weird things that you might find that you have to get and a lot
of times it's very convenient to get that online.
You just go on to whatever site you typically go to for your spare parts and you order what
you need and then they send that to you know, obviously that's not going to happen with
cache probably.
So I mean, unless it's a local place where you can, where you can go and pick up the item
and pay for it, but that, that, that'll get a little bit trickier with just cache.
And I think again, that's kind of a theme of this is that the convenience factor goes way
up if you have at least a bank account and, and you'll find that, that cache insisting
upon cache all the time I have found in my experience at least limits the, the options,
the maneuverability you have with when you're looking at an expense, you know, and you're
saying to yourself, okay, I can get this $300 cheap computer, I'll, I know in getting
that that I am now supporting an industry that's producing, that's over producing stuff
and I'm buying something new and it's going to come with Windows, which I'm not even
going to boot into anyway.
I'm just going to put Linux on there and all these other drawbacks of going to really
the trouble of going to get some new computer off the shelf.
I mean, there are benefits as well because you know it's a, or you can expect that it's
going to be a reliable computer, that it's going to, everything that you expect to work
will probably be in working order, that sort of thing.
So there are advantages, don't, don't get me wrong, but, but a lot of times for, for
us, for you and me, that's just not, those are features that are kind of like nice to
have, not necessarily need to have.
So the free stuff is quite good and so you can look at that free thing and say, okay,
this is going to cost me $0 or maybe it'll cost me an afternoon of work if I have to,
I have to help someone transfer their data off of it first before I can take it or whatever,
but it's going to, it's, it's going to be cash light and then I'll have to get some
replacement part for this or that or, you know, I'll need to, I'll need to get a new
battery because the battery's completely shot.
So that's maybe a hundred bucks right there, but then how do you get that, that part?
Like how do you actually get it?
And so if, if, if, if insisting on paying in cash is limiting your ability to just say,
cool, I can pay a hundred for a used repurposed thing or 300 for a new thing that supports
an industry that I don't, I'm not really super fond of, then I think I'd rather just
have the bank account so that I can get that hundred dollar part so that, so that enables
me to, to get this used thing rather than saying, oh, I gotta, I have to pay cash so I have
to go to the store and get this thing because that's the only thing in town that I can
pay cash for.
That's kind of the way that I see it and, and I guess it's mainly the reason that I've
maintained the bank account for, for all, you know, for my adult life, I've never been
without a bank account.
It just hasn't really paid as it were to not have a bank account.
So anyway, you have this cheap thing, you need this part or maybe it's something else,
maybe it's something else entirely, maybe it's a, a, a video game that you want to purchase
which has a whole other category actually, but let's just, let's call it a video game.
Or a book, even a book, a, and a really good book that you want to purchase and we all
know that bookstores are basically non-existent now.
So you know, there's, there's an expectation in other words, as we're trying to say that,
that certain items are just, that you just go to the internet for them, that's what you
do and, and of course that means that you need to have a bank account, credit card, whatever.
So there's, there's that, there's that limitation sort of.
Now there are two answers to this, this limitation, this perceived limitation and one of them
is to go to the A store, this doesn't work for everything, and I find it works less and
less as the years get on.
I haven't tried it lately at all because I haven't needed to, but even in, in, in the US
towards the, towards the end of my stay in the US, it was starting to work less.
But in the past, what I could do I, I found was go to a store, talk to someone, usually
it had to be like the manager and, and for this reason, smaller stores were usually the
better bet.
That's a whole other problem because smaller stores are increasingly more difficult to find,
like actually independent stores, but back when that was a thing and you could find them
in certain towns, you could go to a store and talk to the, the manager, slash owner, slash
whatever, and just ask them to order a part for you, say, it's as much like you would like
at an auto shop now, like if you need, if you need some weird part for your weird car,
you just go to an auto store and say, hey, you know, this is my car and this is the part
that I need. Can you find that for me? And now they, they can do that. They have all the
resources that, that they have that I don't certainly understand, but you know, I mean,
it's just kind of like, yes, we can do that. We can order that part, we'll call you in a week,
whatever. And it's, it's really convenient and you used to be able to do that in stores.
You could just go to the manager and say, hey, look, I'm looking for this book or this,
this computer, you know, this exact model of this computer part or whatever and people would
just order it for you. And then they'd, I would imagine I never really asked, but I have always
assumed that they tack their, their markup on top of whatever they've special ordered for you.
And then they sell it to you from there. So you're probably, you know, you're not getting those
magical like Amazon.com or what is it? AliExpress.com or whatever. You're not getting those magical
prices of dirt cheap straight from the factory to your door type, type deals, but you are doing it
completely, not completely, but you're doing it fairly well under any kind of radar. Really,
you're, you're going to a third party, a middleman to say, hey, get an item for me and I will come
back to you and I will pay you cash and then I will have that item. So it's a pretty, a pretty slick
way to go about doing business if you can manage it. Like I say, these days it seems to be a lot
more difficult because you can't, first of all, find an independent store anyway. And then even if
you do a lot of times, they're just not, I don't, I don't get the sense that that's, that's something
that really makes sense anymore maybe. I don't know, I don't own a store, I've never owned a store.
So I don't really know that that's not the politics, but the, I don't know what that, what it demands
of, of someone to just go randomly special ordering parts from stuff that's not on their usual
kind of like delivery list or whatever. So I don't know if that's just not done anymore or, or if
I just haven't tried lately, but other people are perfectly happy to do it. I don't know, but that's,
that's one way to do it. No, the other way to do it, possibly, is to get a prepaid, like a gift card.
And the gift cards you can purchase at, at least in the States, you can get them at any
pharmacy at a drug store, you know, like a CVS, right aid, Dwayne Reed, whatever, you go there,
you get the gift card, you put money on to the gift card, and then you use the gift card. And I
used to do this quite, quite often. It was pretty dark and convenient. There's, there's a weird
sort of caveat there. And that is that some sites don't know how to take a gift card for some stupid
reason. And I haven't run into this a lot, but I have run into it before where you'll be purchasing,
or you'll try to purchase something. And for whatever reason, the site just will not understand,
I guess, that, that the card, you know, it doesn't actually have your name on it or, or isn't actually
married to your, your billing address or whatever. So there are, there are times where it will not work,
but generally speaking, it works out okay. And that way you can get the things that you want to get
without having an official bank account tied to your name. You can just have it with this
floating bank account that is disposable after a while, or that will, you know, get finished up,
that you used up after a while. There are disadvantages to this as well. In addition to the fact that
some sites just can't handle the fact that there are gift cards in existence. But they,
and by gift card, in case you don't know what I'm talking about, there are credit cards. They
look exactly like a credit card. They, they, the ones that I've ever seen and had our visa branded.
And so you can, I think MasterCard probably has them too, but they've got, they've got that little
logo on them. And you, you just purchase them and you put some amount of money onto them, you know,
or, or you buy them in pre, pre declared values, like a hundred dollar card, you pay like 110 bucks.
And there's another disadvantage is that you're paying to buy the gift card. So there's a little
bit of a service fee on top of that. And I think all the gift cards that I've ever seen, usually in
really, really small print, have an expiry date. So you can get one this year. And if you,
if you, you know, get a hundred dollars and you only use up 50 bucks because you're just super
free and low maintenance and you just don't spend that much money, then especially online,
then, you know, in, but by this time next year or might be longer than that, but it, there's,
there's a time timeframe where that gift card eventually just evaporates, just the money that you
had for no good reason. It just goes away. So I've always thought that was quite strange. And,
and I never really much cared for that sort of, that blatant money grab, but it's a thing. But
by the same token, they're, they're a thing that you can get them. And, and then you have that
flexibility of, yeah, I've got a bank account. Look, here's my fancy Visa card that doesn't have
my name on it and is a gift card. And it's got digits associated with it. So I'll give you those
digits and magically money happens. And that's basically that's what, that's all it is. So those are,
those are an option in addition to special ordering things from, from people with who are connected.
Now, in theory, if we're, we're, and now I'm getting way out of my, way out of my realm of,
of experience, but in theory, if we're talking about, okay, so we're going cash only. And we're
going to live in this super inconvenience, non-connected way. How would we then even potentially
begin to invest in things? And, and the important thing about investment and that concept to
understand is, well, a lot of people say that you should invest or you should, you should say,
for the future, you should take for retirement, whatever. And, and we tend to, I think, get this
idea of what investment is and that generally is what I spoke of in my previous episode on personal
finances, which is either a mutual fund or a certificate of deposit or, or stocks or a 401k if
you're into the whole, let the company and government manage your money and social security,
stuff like that. But investment, like I've said earlier in this episode, investment is just,
it's, it's simply purchasing a, a good that is cheap today and more valuable at some point in
the future. And the, there, there's a guarantee or a perceived guarantee. And, and I guess,
historically, it's been pretty reliable, and for some definition of historical. And, and that is
the guarantee with a, with a big official sort of bank-sponsored investment or, or company-sponsored
investment. There's kind of this guarantee that you're, that, that when you arbitrarily decide,
that's time to sell, time to cash in on my investment, then there's going to be a buyer. So,
in other words, it is completely expected that if you buy your $20 or, let's say, $1,000 shares
of GWO, a new world order, the, the big company that has just gone public recently and their,
their stocks are super hot. So you buy $1,000 worth of stocks and then you wait 40 years and you
decide, okay, GWO has grown exponentially. It's gained a lot of money. There by my, I have gained a
lot of money. My investments are now worth a lot of money. So now I'm going to sell that. And so,
when you click sell in your, uh, fidelity or your e-trade.com account or whatever it is that you
signed up with, uh, someone will just magically buy all, all of your stocks. It'll, they'll just fly
out the door. There's, there's a market there. There's a demand for it. You're going to get the money.
You spent a thousand 40 years ago. You have a million now. You hit sell and now you have a million
dollars. Don't expect that kind of return on investments, um, on anything. But I'm just,
I'm just using lots of numbers. So there's that expectation. Now, if, if you're investing in other
things, so whatever those might be, you know, you, you hear people saying, oh, I'm going to invest in
gold. I'm going to buy actual gold and I'm going to scroll it away in some safe location. And then
in 40 years, presumably gold will be more valuable, uh, or at least no less valuable. And then I'm going
to, uh, I'm going to sell. Now that, that, it kind of means that now you, you're able to find a
market for that. Hopefully in the 40 years that pass, you'll have, you'll have discovered where all the
the rich people who just want gold hang out and so that you can bring your bags of gold to them in 40
years and you'll plop them down on the table and they will give you a thousand dollar or a million
dollars or whatever it is. So there is, there's, there's, there's less of an expectation, I would say,
that there's going to be a market necessarily for whatever it is you chose to invest in. And then
investment, like I say, it can be something sort of classic like gold, but it can also be in, uh,
certainly among the geek community, a lot of people rather famously invest in, in, in memorabilia,
you know, so you, you buy the, the comic book, the, the new 52, uh, the first, first volume of the
new 52 from DC, uh, of all your favorite superheroes, uh, of their, of their new origins or you buy
an issue of all those, those when they hit the shelf and maybe you get the variant covers and you,
you know, you've got everything that you could possibly get for that, for that set. And, and then you
put it in the comic book sleeve and you put it in a safe temperature controlled non-damp environment.
And then in 40 years, you're hoping that those comic issues will be worth substantially more than
you spent on them. So if you paid 15 bucks for, for a comic, then in four years, you're hoping that
they're, you know, 300 or 600, 1000, 3000 who knows. And, and obviously you don't really know what's
going to, what's going to hit, uh, possibly an artist who contributed to that issue will become
very famous and anything that he or she has ever touched will jump up in price and, and, and then
it's up to you to find that market. Again, it's, it's, it isn't like the stock market where it's
super obvious where everyone's hanging out. They're at the stock market. It's, it's a bigger,
fuzzier market that, that you kind of have to just kind of hope that there's longevity in what
you invested in and that there's that, that whether or not there's longevity that you can locate
the person who has the ability and the desire to pay, you know, 20 or a hundred times what you
originally paid for the item in the first place. So those are the theories of investing, I guess.
But more importantly, it's the theory of not partaking in a system that has everything recorded
and tracked and traced back to your name and traced back to who you are and what you've done and
where you've been. It's kind of a cool thing to at least know about even if even if you don't
necessarily go off the grid and close all your bank accounts and and shut down all of your stock
option things, your brokerage accounts or whatever they're called in real life. That's fine,
but it's something good to know about that that sometimes there may be things that you want to
purchase locally because it's less of a footprint or maybe sometimes there are things that you
want to purchase online but not tie it to your bank account for similar reasons. Of course,
if you're logged into your Gmail account by default all the time and you're doing anything and
you think that you're being clever because you're using this card or whatever, trust me. It's not
it's all being tied back to to this database entry of of whatever and whoever you might be. So just
be aware of that. But in terms of of having the ability and flexibility of switching on and off
the traceability of purchases and things like that, it's good to kind of remember that cash
exists, gift cards exist, middleman still exists. You can make certain things happen with smart
purchasing habits. I'm not talking about drugs just in case for a day. If I don't know if I'm being
too mysterious, I'm not talking about drugs or weapons or anything like that. I'm just talking
about the freedom to live your life without necessarily having all of your life jotted down into
a ledger. Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening and I hope this has been somewhat informative or at
least entertaining. Talk to you next time.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio. We are a community podcast
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