(still couched in terms of 'temporary' ) in place in case of the unexpected. Nobody here is telling people to stop using digital or plastic - or, even more reactionary, pull all of their assets out of banks or investment.

Having about a week's, or perhaps slightly more, worth of cash on hand is not a bad ( nor a terribly radical ) idea. Think about it ...

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It's BMO, a Canadian owned bank.

I started cutting down on digital payments about a year ago. I'm at the bare minimum now. Even my bank has warned me about keeping cash and separating the card account from a non-digital access account, in other words, one that doesn't have cards or electronic payments connected to it. Now, every deposit that's not govt. goes there and I physically transfer SS to it when it arrives.

(and I do something similar where there are some firewalls ... or at least so we think!)

But still - different subject from what the OP and article are discussing. And neither are suggesting that we abandon digital payment in favor of hard currency. (well - at least the article isn't .. )

I keep cash as a backup as well but don't advocate switching to currency only. I doubt that's feasible. But I do use cash more now.

One of my greatest joys is buying a new piggy bank cuz that means another one is full.

But I remember back then thinking they were really going overboard with their cashless society. Short taxi rides, a quick cup of coffee, EVERYTHING was by card. This was about the same year when my wife took pity on a young mother who needed to buy $5 worth of formula (this was in Massachusetts) for her baby, and got to a grocery store right after their electronic card system had failed, so it was only accepting cash. The woman had only a card with her and started to cry because she couldn't pay to feed her baby. My wife took pity on her and gave her the money to buy her formula, and asked her what was she thinking having no cash on her at all?

We HATE the whole concept of the cashless society, since with cards, you leave a trace of everything you do, every place you go, and everything you eat, acquire, or contribute. This is what the socialist governments of Eastern Europe were shooting for, and they collapsed under the weight of having more information on the people that they were trying to control than they could ever monitor. The East German civilian population was appalled when they were granted access to all the files their government had on them. Cashless societies are the control freak government's wet dream. My wife and I pay cash for everything that comes even close to being convenient. Let the bureaucrats guess what we like to eat or which films we want to see and when we want to see them. One "Heil Honecker" was enough.

In a lot of sci-fi stories cash is illegal in cashless societies. And wasn't there a story about 12 years ago or so, of a township that decided to have their own "currency" that they called Barter Bucks & the govt stepped in & said Pretty sure that happened in the US.