Remember Cash Money? We Need to Use It, or We'll Lose It

Here at Analog Office World Headquarters, we are spending lunch hour reading our new book, The Power of Cash by Jay L. Zagorsky 📚

Highly recommended. Zagorsky compellingly argues that:

the disappearance of cash particularly makes life difficult for the poor, forcing them to pay for access to electronic funds
if we don’t use cash regularly (not just saving some for emergencies), fewer businesses and agencies will keep the infrastructure to process it
using cash helps small businesses, because e-payment systems take a cut out of every transaction
using cash for tips helps restaurant servers, because otherwise they may have to wait days or weeks for e-payments to process
we spend more when we use electronic payments
we hand over a lot of sensitive personal data when we use electronic payments
electronic funds are vulnerable to cyberattacks and natural disasters, as well as governments shutting down protesters by shutting down access to their digital money – TIL that Canada stopped a truck drivers’ protest by freezing their bank accounts

I may have to revive my old envelope system for at least some of our spending.

Here is an old template I’ve used for printing cash spending envelopes, originally from pennypinchinmom.com.

Here is her updated version (free download), which now includes categories for things like groceries or dining out.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Zimonjic, P. (2022) ‘Most bank accounts frozen under the Emergencies Act are being released, committee hears’, CBC News, 22 February. Available at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-finance-committee-1.6360769 (Accessed: 2 June 2025).

‘Cash Envelope Bundle - Penny Pinchin’ Mom’ (2024), 6 May. Available at: pennypinchinmom.com/download/… (Accessed: 2 June 2025).