A RECENT survey has shown that ‘this here province’ is the highest cash user throughout the UK, even though contactless payment seems to have well and truly taken over the world.
I knew that times were changing when my own ma learned how to pay for goods using her mobile phone - the same woman who couldn’t figure out how to turn the volume up on the handset just a year ago.
I shouldn’t be surprised that the north of Ireland is holding on firmly to the old ways, not to mention that cash is yet another method of making sure the king of England’s face stays fresh in everyone’s hearts and minds – in a place where “cash is king” both literally and figuratively.
I learned the love of a fresh fiver in my paw from a young age, visits to family members ending with the clandestine handshake where your granny slips you a few coins as though she’s doing a drug deal, then gives you a conspiratorial wink.
I adored the fact that she would tell my ma off for suggesting ‘I save it up’ by saying: “Money boxes only make misers out of the kids and thieves of the parents.”
She wasn’t wrong. I still haven’t got my First Communion money back from my ma, who probably spent it on frivolous things like heating and groceries - the fiend!
Gone are the days of ‘pay packets’, where you would rip open the wee brown envelope and count out your earnings on the bar while siphoning off enough to do you through the next week (or in my case, spending it all in a drunken fit of friendliness and figuring out who to tap for a loan). But the point is that many of us prefer the use of cash and are wise to the benefit of having physical money.
Some business owners are willing to shave off a few quid if the buyer is handing over the wonga in person. After all, the fees that come into play with card transactions don’t apply, so why shouldn’t we see the difference?
It’s also argued that budgeting is easier when we can set aside the physical amount for each bill, knowing it’s all too easy to tap a card in a few shops, only to check our bank balance and wonder how a quick trip to the pound shop cost £45.80 when we only went in there for a packet of batteries.
It seems that NI is charting highly in many areas these days, including being the one of the poorest regions and having the lowest disposable income in the UK, with families left with an average of £95 per week after paying for essentials.
Sometimes I spot the number on the display above the National Lottery till and before I know it, I’m asking for two Lucky Dips and daydreaming about what I would do if I won.
It’s an enjoyable wee thought exercise that everyone has toyed with, and probably the only form of exercise which I do regularly.
I asked the fella who served me what he would do if he bought a winning ticket and he answered with “I’d just sit about all day and do absolutely nothing”, to which I guffawed: “Mate, you don’t need 18 million quid to do that. In fact, doing nothing goes hand in hand with being skint.”
Obviously concluding that he wasn’t getting rid of me that easily, he offered: “OK, I’d probably buy a house and go on a big holiday.”
It’s the first thing I would do as well, but isn’t it sad that things which should be achievable for everyone in the world’s third-largest economy have become ‘If I won the lotto’ scenarios for many working people?
The old saying goes “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”, but if hard work equated to money, then there would be far more single parents and unskilled labourers in the millionaires club.
I would say that’s my two cents worth but I can’t afford it. Lend me a fiver until the end of the Troubles?