Why Cash is King: How to Prepare for Banking Outages and Digital Disruptions

Do you keep cash on you? If not on you, do you have cash accessible?

In a world where everything is so digital that many stores don’t even take cash anymore, it’s kind of scary to think about the possibility that one day you might not have access to your money. What if there’s a glitch in the system, or the bank itself has an outage and your paycheck doesn’t deposit? Sounds far-fetched, but one of these scenarios just happened!

The Scotiabank Outage: A Wake-Up Call

On July 26th, there was an outage at Scotiabank where a technical issue affected inbound payments, including direct deposits and cheque deposits, preventing them from being applied to customer’s accounts. People didn’t have access to their cash for several hours and people were outraged on social media.

It’s time to stop telling our prepared friends that they are paranoid for holding cash. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Tips for Saving Cash for Emergencies

My personal approach is to always save small denominations of cash so that if I ever need to barter or make a payment in case of a bank disruption, I have some money to feed my family. Usually, the cash goes to pizza and then is replenished whenever I make a sale on Facebook Marketplace 🙂. Don’t overthink it, don’t overdo it, but also… don’t skip this step, or one day you might regret it.

Here’s a few ways to save small amounts of cash over time:

• Sell items you are no longer using through online platforms (Karrot, Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji).

• Every time you do have cash, take small amounts out of your wallet and put it aside.

• Save cash that you receive in envelopes if you are still lucky enough to get Christmas or birthday money.

• Take out small amounts when you get paid and put it in an envelope

Store Cash Safely and Wisely!

Don’t store so much that it becomes a safety risk or that losing it would cause you to panic. Just enough that if something did happen, you have a bit to work with.

Sorry to everyone affected by the Scotiabank outage!

Stay classy ya’ll,

The Budget Doctor

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