Aussie mum’s cash shock after quitting her credit card and only using physical money: ‘Out of control’

An Australian mum has been left shocked by the true nature of her spending habits after launching an experiment where she could only use physical cash. Frida Deguise is an avid tap and goer with her credit card, but wanted to see what would happen if she ditched the plastic and stuck with only physical money.

The Sydney mum-of-four set herself daily limit of using $100 in cash for 30 days. But she told Yahoo Finance she was only able to last two days before abandoning the pledge.

“I started with $100 and went to the fruit shop, went to the butcher, and then I was like, ‘Oh, I need this, I need that,'” she said.

“It just got out of control,” she joked.

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“I just failed because I realised I spend way over what I had planned to take and I couldn’t do it.”

Before launching the experiment, the doughnut shop owner and comedian admitted she didn’t really think too much about what she was spending her money on day-to-day.

While she aimed to have some cash leftover at the end of the month for savings, as most Aussies do, she was disconnected from her daily purchases because of how mindless paying via Tap-and-Go can be.

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To combat this, she’s switched from doing her grocery shopping in-store to online. In her eyes, Deguise said she now only ever buys what she absolutely needs, and doesn’t get sucked in by unnecessary items that might be on special.

She’s keen on attempting the cash experiment again and would do it slightly differently.

“I’d get a book and I’d work out what I needed this week,” she said. “I’d budget it, write it down, and stick to that.”

She encouraged others to mimic her trial to see how long they could last just using cash.

“Everyone should do it because everyone complains that they’ve got no money,” she said. “It would give them a good insight on how much they’re spending.”

Using cash helps you spend less money compared to cards

The Sydney mum is convinced that if you use cash instead of cards and other contactless payment methods, you spend less money.

“If you go out and use your cash, you will look for bargains,” she said.

“If you only had that $100 to spend, and you had to buy groceries and everything else, you’d get the cheaper options.”

This view has been backed up by researchers who analysed more than four decades of evidence to see how the payment method people use impacted their spending behaviour.

Report author and University of Melbourne senior lecturer in marketing Alex Belli told Yahoo Finance that cash produced a certain feeling at the point of sale, which wasn’t as pronounced when contactless payment methods were used.

“When we make consumption decisions and purchases, we tend to feel some pain and some happiness,” he said.

“You can feel pain because you are not sure if you can justify the purchase that you made or because you feel guilty about buying a certain product.”

He added that cash is a much more tangible asset.

“It’s physical and you know exactly what you have. You can go to an ATM and take out the money you actually need, rather than having an unlimited amount of money like in the case of a credit card,” he said.

Cashless payments, in comparison, can feel much less painful because people can tap and go, sometimes without even seeing the total bill.

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