Fool News: Brits Prefer Plastic To Cash

How much money do Fools carry around? Do you rely on cash or credit? Laura Starkey investigates.

A new survey of Fools has revealed that Brits prefer pounding their plastic to splashing their cash. Of over 2000 Fool.co.uk readers questioned last month, 32% stated that they use their credit cards regularly for everyday spending, and 47% said they withdraw money once a week or less. While cash still accounts for around a quarter of spending, debit cards are used for more than a third of transactions. In fact, the survey suggests that many of us don't bother with bank notes at all - 33% said that they generally had less than £10 on them. Gender and generational differences were also seen in the results. On average, the survey found, men carry roughly £40, with 57% using traditional wallets to hold their notes. Women, however, generally have less than £20 to hand and overwhelmingly keep their cash in purses. Also, it seems that the older you are, the more money you're likely to carry. While Fools of 58 and over carried an average of £43 with them, young people of 18-24 were likely to have less than a third of this amount - a mere £14 - in their pockets. ATMs were also revealed to be less popular with more mature readers, who said they still prefer to go to the bank and withdraw their money from a cashier. And the days of flashing your fifties around are over, according to our results: only 5% of readers said they'd be happy to have £100 on them in cash. A slightly surprising 2% did say they'd be comfortable carrying £200 or more. Still, at least half of them admitted they'd secure it sensibly with a smart money clip. Overall, it seems we believe our plastic is fantastic. But we should remember that our comfort with cards is the result of years of economic ease. I think that our use of credit cards may start to decrease over the next few years. As banks tighten their lending criteria, many of us may find that we must tighten their belts and stop relying so heavily on credit. Moreover, while a tenth of Fools surveyed claimed that they use plastic in order to monitor their spending, this isn't an approach I'd recommend for anyone on a budget. In my opinion, simply swiping your Switch card is no substitute for the pain of handing over cold, hard cash.