Please be very careful how you answer and please make your answers hypothetical!
Since the first lock down i haven’t handled any cash, in fact the £3.75p in cash i had in my pocket i still have.
Every penny i have is in or handled by my bank…fact.
So lets say (hypothetically) someone had a bit of cash tucked under their mattress would there come a time in the not too distant future that they couldn’t use their hard earned pound notes because a bank would not accept them or you would have to answer difficult questions of how you came by your ‘earned’ money.
The last few cars i have owned were bought in cash but i can see a time coming where i can’t buy a car in ‘hard earned’ cash.
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The way Covid’s going world wide, I’d get that cash under your bed spent. Hypothetically of course! Still waiting for the busker’s to offer a pin machine service when you walk through town.
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We might find things change again if the threatened negative interest rates come in.
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Must be different round here - despite hearing that banks are twitchy about cash I paid in nearly 20k in tenners and twenties for a car I sold a year or so ago . Never seen so much money in my life - bank didn’t bat an eyelid , despite my never having made a cash deposit before , let alone one that big. I regularly withdraw a grand in cash to pay the farmer our fishing club’s annual rent and it seems perfectly routine to my local branch .
But since the world turned scary I doubt I average even a fiver a week cash spend
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I’m very close to being cashless since March. Only the window cleaner is paid in cash, everything else has been paid by card. I’ve even ordered my new car from the main dealer online, I knew exactly what I wanted and so no need to visit the showroom. So in your hypothetical case I can’t see me returning to using cash much in the future and so I’d better get the money from under my mattress down to the bank, that is if the local branch is still open!
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I used to, and will do, a lot of working trips to India. You can’t really get Rupees outside of India, due to currency controls. On one trip, I came back with about £200 worth of Rupees in the wallet, which I thought no issue, I’ll spend them on my next trip.
But then India decided give essentially 40 minutes notice in withdrawing the 500 and 1000 Gandhi Rupee notes from circulation. Notes could be exchanged, in India, in a 50 day period, with bearers asked to justify where the momey came from. The whole effort was to remove Black Money from the economy (money under the mattress), which it didn’t really do, but also to accelerate adoption of digital payments, which it did (for a while). Chip and Pin is everywhere now in India.
So now I have a pile of worthless Rupees. I couldn’t get them changed in the UK, and couldn’t really even send them to colleagues in India to get changed up (long queues appeared at banks as people got their money changed, with, in some cases, people charging to hold your spot in the line, while you went for lunch or dinner).
In this country, I have been stuck with withdrawn notes. Not in England, but in Northern Ireland, where you have to take the note to the bank that issued them for a swap. I ended up with an early 70s Bank of Ireland Sterling fiver with a Shorts Sunderland in the design. Rather than seek out a BoI main branch, I decided to keep it. No doubt it had spent most of its 20 years under a mattress, not 20 years in circulation.
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I heard an interview on the radio with a woman who used to live and work in Beijing.
She went back a year or two ago and had a big problem because they had gone cashless.
She couldn’t easily use cash and her cards didn’t work either.
Apparently, people begging for money had a barcode printed so that donors could donate with their phone…
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Just remember that any banks are mandated by law to report any cash transactions - in or out, that are over £10k to HMRC. They may ask questions if they are so minded.
I to have virtually stopped using cash, even small payments are using a card. I feel sorry for charities and people on the streets. I always used to put any change less than £1 in either a charity box near a till or give money to people on the streets. Now I do neither as I do not have any change. I also do not go near any shops as much anyway…
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We scratch about between us sometimes looking for a pound to go in the shopping trolley if we go into one particular store.
The last holiday (well a long weekend break) in March last we still had a bit of cash left from that in June such is how things have gone.
I still notice certain folk pay cash at the supermarket tills, we’ve gone all scan and pre authorize your card stuff now to avoid the queues, I think it will stay that way.
Even the farmer who delivers our meat, eggs etc has a card machine or we pre pay online, also the chippy, I would always pay cash there, now card.
I wrote a cheque out last week, it was the first time in around 5 years I’ve done that. I could have done it online but I wanted to be awkward about the payment, make them work a bit harder to get it rather than me press a few buttons 
but that’s another long story.
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I was using card for most transactions before all the Covid stuff started. I’m using cash less than before but only because the places I would use cash have been closed.
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5k will require proofs of source at my local Clydesdale ( now Virgin owned)
Even when an electronic transfer from a known source (eg) a building society is involved.
I did not know this till 2 years back when helping my son buy his first home ex Army.
He had saved multiple 10’s of thousands up over 11 years service, and the mortgage manager got a bit of a start to say the least. Money laundering is the issue.
Ironically, his credit rating was poor simply as he had, and never will like me, use credit so he had no “footprint” as they call it. He even paid cold cash for his first car. Zero track record.
It did not impact his application, given he only required a 54% Loan to Valuation mortgage and Mum & Dad have their pension lumps lodged at the same branch, plus we have been there 40 years and he had had all his MOD waged paid to them so they had a paper trace.
Never the less, I use cash still for everything bar Amazon & Tesco home delivery.
I just take out a certain amount every month and bung it in a cash box…it’s a good discipline for me as, frankly, otherwise I’d probably over spend. Yes, I’m as tight as a duck’s backside in a Force 8.
But OP, the concerning thing our Bank Manager said, and she meant it, was unless we took risks and played the markets with our not inconsiderable savings deposits lodged with them, we’d be better spending it silly style and having a ball.
In real terms over the last 5 years, each thousand is worth in the region of £940.00 retail power due to the stupid low % interest. But then, our son’s mortgage % rate is stupid low in comparison with our 13.5 % plus 40 years back. They cannot give out what they don’t get in obviously.
This old Luddite still prefers cash then.
I do not trust scan-scammers…SWMBO & I have both had to have the Falcon Team at our bank freeze our cards with fraud over the last 5 years…the best one was SWMBO’s card being used in Newcastle in a clothes shop for hundreds of pounds.
Each their own.
However, in my view cash will never die out. Pensioners not online, and those millions in the UK on minimum wage or Welfare will always need cash. Recently, our local Tesco cash machine had one machine closed off, and will now only dispense £250.00 ( a drop of £100.00) per withdrawal…partly due to Covid crowd control and partly due to the volume of cash hits.
A real nuisance.
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Sweden is largely cash free. Been there a few times with work, and just use the card everywhere, even for small change purchases.
You can use cash some places, but not all.
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In my line of work we still take a decent amount in cash and cheques. Those hiding behind computers in their big offices isolated from the real world cannot understand this and think that everyone should live as they do. The fact is many (especially the older generation) still continue to use cash and cheques because they prefer to. Personally I have come to use by debit and credit card 99% of the time but I respect peoples free choice to use whatever currency they choose.
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Its a good job " Penny for the Guy " died out, you’d get nothing now, remember it well, it paid quite well in London in the 60s and 70s , then down to the shop for Bangers, even though we were about 12 years old 
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That’s true.
Instead of the Scout’s Bob a Job week, how does £5.00 to empty your bin sound?
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Thankyou all for your input, but i would like to expand this a little further if i may.
Hypothetically.
I own a million pound house, (paid for).
I have three million pounds in the bank, (earned).
I have two Sons and one Grandaughter.
I would like to leave a million pounds to each of them.
Now lets say next week (God forbid) i have to go into long term care, how the heck could i make sure my kids get their inheritance without the government ‘raping’ my money and home to pay for the care home when people who have been dole cheats all their life pay nothing.
I have a neighbour who has been in care for the last eighteen months and has now lost all his savings and is now about to loose his home.
I also have a distant relative who has been in a care home for twenty years ‘dimentia’ who has lost a massive amount of savings, i am talking close to a million pounds, and has lost her home, leaving her Grand children nothing but the £16,000 the government allow.
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I get that.
We had a long discussion with our Solicitor 5 years ago when we made our respective Wills.
There is no real escape from the Treasury, i’s one of their cash cows especially in terms of inheritance taxes. Hence, we see many former historic grand family piles being taken over by English Heritage etc.
My “idea…cough” was to sell our home to our son for a quid, then pay him “rent…cough” to stay in it. Nope. Local Authorities are all over these sort of wheezes like a bad suit and will retro-investigate up to 20 years.
If one of us goes into a home, but the other is over 65, they cannot touch the house values to syphon off care home costs. These matters would only click in if we both went into care.
That’s in Scotland anyhow.
I think the best thing to do is to employ the services of a good tax accountant and plan out stuff like Trust Deeds etc. We did, but TBH our level of so called wealth made it not really worth while to go into the complexities and instead our only son will inherit all our property & cash. The only thing I’ve said to him was not to sell our house but use a pukka rental company to rent it privately as an additional pension for his own retirement…he especially will not get the State under current rules until 67 or 68…even if by then the State Pension still exists.
I’ll have first dibs on yer Mx5 though…being your new Bestie in all…
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Apparently a big factor in China going cashless is that they can monitor the population even more effectively as every transaction, amount and location, is logged.
Combine that with face recognition cameras everywhere and big brother is right there with you.
A travelling salesman has just spread covid in China and they even know what seat he sat in on the train, without him having to tell them.
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As I understand it you cannot give cash to your kids without them having to pay tax on it, as if it was income.
If you use your money now to buy an asset which you gift them, as long as you survive more than 7 years after transferring the gift, it will escape inheritance tax. Otherwise after the inheritance tax limit on all your estate, the tax man will get 40% of everything and what is left can be split according to your will.
Alternatively you will have to set up Trusts - which are expensive to maintain, but again, the kids will pay tax when they withdraw money from the Trust, but the total value of the Trust should escape inheritance tax when you die, depending on how it is set up.
I have a close friend who has many millions, from selling businesses. He says that having money is an enormous pain! Obviously it has benefits and he certainly doesn’t expect sympathy, but he says the amount of time managing it is a nightmare and something you would not expect. It also means that many people he knows have a different relationship with him due to his wealth, which is not great.
If you are happy to accept that you have to pay tax and it may be a lot, then you can avoid all this, but the more that tax man takes, the less fair it seems and you try and find ways to make sure that as long as you stick to the rules, you try and maximise what you can keep hold of.
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I’ve already seen it, with some of the ‘living statue’ performers in Stratford upon Avon. They have a contactless setup preset to a couple of pounds