Here's What Happened When I Tried
A Cash-Only Budget For One Month

At the beginning of July, I decided I needed to take a card-swiping hiatus. I’d just gotten back from vacation and had successfully paid off a too-high-for-comfort credit card bill, so I was ready to go card-free for a while.



I’m no stranger to the concept of all-cash diets, but as someone who favors cards, the idea has never excited me. However, I wanted to find a way to keep my credit card balance low and cut down on food and social spending in the month following my vacation, so restricting myself to cash seemed like a ready-made (and free) budget hack.

At the beginning of the month, I paid my rent and left all of my recurring bills (utilities, car payment, etc.) on my credit card. I then set boundaries for my experiment: I would only be using my $500 cash on groceries (food, toiletries, household goods, etc.), eating out, drinks and coffee out, and any unnecessary spending (“just because” shopping, for example). The only things I was allowed to use my credit card for were ride-sharing services (I left Uber and Lyft linked to my credit card, mainly because I trust myself not to overuse either) and the occasional exercise class. Other than that, the plan was to do absolutely no credit or debit card swiping. I withdrew the entire sum ($500) from my checking account at the beginning of the month, and made sure to put the cash in various places. These are the four lessons I learned during my $500 cash-only month:

Life in 2016 isn’t conducive to a cash-only lifestyle. My cash-only month reminded me that I don’t lead a particularly cash-friendly life. Going out to dinner with two or three other friends inevitably means we put down three cards, or put in one and have the other two Venmo the third person. It slows everyone down to section off one-third of the bill for cash, but I also didn’t feel comfortable volunteering someone else’s credit card and then offering them cash. In the entire month, I spent about $70 on my debit card (and an additional $50 on Venmo) for the instances where I couldn’t use cash to split a bill.