The Power of Cash w/ Jay Zagorsky #995

Summary

Podcast Title: How to Money
Episode: The Power of Cash w/ Jay Zagorsky #995
Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
Release Date: June 11, 2025

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of How to Money, hosts Joel and Matt engage in a profound discussion with Professor Jay Zagorsky, an economist from Boston University's Questrom School of Business and author of the newly released book, The Power of Cash: Why Using Paper Money is Good for You and Society. The conversation delves deep into the declining use of cash in favor of digital payment systems, the societal and personal implications of this shift, and the enduring importance of maintaining cash circulation.

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Guest Introduction

[02:10] Joel: "Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel. I'm Matt, and today we're talking about the Power of Cash with Jay Zagorsky."

[02:36] Matt: "Our guest today, well, you, you better believe he disagrees [with the cashless trend]. We are joined by Professor Jay Zagorsky, who is the author of a new book that was published just a couple of months ago, The Power of Cash."

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Key Discussions

1. Privacy and the Use of Cash

Professor Zagorsky emphasizes the privacy benefits of using cash over digital payments. He illustrates this with a personal anecdote:

[06:14] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "When I use cash and buy something, my wife knows I bought it, but she doesn't know the price. She enjoys the purchase without questioning the cost, something that digital transactions like Visa or MasterCard receipts make transparent."

This underscores how cash transactions can offer a layer of privacy that electronic payments often lack, preventing others from having detailed insights into one's spending habits.

2. Digital Payments and Spending Behavior

The hosts and Professor Zagorsky explore how digital payments can lead to increased spending due to the "pain of paying" being minimized.

[10:00] Joel: "What has the shift from cash to credit impacted us as a society? It seems to have led to a lot more debt."

[10:00 – 11:20] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Electronic payments encourage us to spend more because there's no immediate mental impact when swiping a card or tapping a phone. Cash, on the other hand, acts as a hard limit, making us more mindful of our expenditures."

He elaborates on the concept of the "pain of paying," explaining that handling physical money creates a tangible sense of spending that digital transactions do not, leading to more impulsive and higher spending.

3. Impact on Society

The conversation extends to the broader societal implications of moving away from cash, including the economic effects of credit card fees on merchants and ultimately consumers.

[13:19] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Visa and MasterCard charge about 2% per transaction, and more premium cards with rewards can cost merchants even more. This cost is often passed on to consumers through higher prices."

Additionally, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services, which charge merchants a 5-6% fee, are discussed as a catalyst for increased consumer spending, as they lower the immediate financial barrier to purchases.

4. Emergency Situations and Resilience

Professor Zagorsky highlights the necessity of cash during emergencies when digital systems may fail.

[17:45] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "During power outages or other disasters, electronic payments become unusable. Cash remains a reliable medium for transactions, ensuring individuals can continue to purchase essentials."

He references recent power outages in Spain and Portugal as examples where cash was indispensable when electronic payments were impossible.

5. Global Perspectives on Cash Usage

The episode examines how different countries handle cash usage, with a focus on Japan, Germany, China, and Sweden.

[27:49] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "In Japan and Germany, cash remains king. In contrast, countries like China and Sweden have largely moved towards cashless societies. For instance, in Sweden, accessing cash requires appointments weeks in advance, limiting its practicality in emergencies."

6. Teaching Financial Literacy to Children

The hosts discuss the importance of using cash to teach children about money management and mathematics.

[33:20] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Using cash teaches children essential math skills, such as counting and understanding fractions. Cash transactions make financial decisions tangible, fostering better budgeting habits."

He argues that reliance on digital payments can erode these fundamental skills, making it harder for children to develop sound financial practices.

7. Health Considerations

An intriguing aspect of the discussion touches on the health implications of cash versus digital payments.

[35:25] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "When you pay with cash, you are more conscious of your spending, leading to healthier financial choices. Additionally, the physical handling of cash can keep certain cognitive skills sharp, like mental arithmetic."

While not heavily emphasized, the conversation briefly touches on the notion that using cash requires more deliberate action, which can have subtle benefits for mental health and cognitive function.

8. Cryptocurrency and Cash’s Role

The role of cryptocurrency in the modern financial landscape is also explored, with Professor Zagorsky expressing caution.

[45:42] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Cryptocurrency requires electricity and an internet connection, making it as susceptible as other digital forms during disasters. Unlike cash, if digital infrastructure fails, access to cryptocurrency can be lost."

He likens cryptocurrency to credit and debit cards, emphasizing that it doesn't mitigate the vulnerabilities associated with digital transactions.

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Notable Quotes

• Privacy and Cash:
  [06:14] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "I pay cash when I splurge on my bottle of wine, and I get some privacy. My wife enjoys the wine without knowing the price."

• Spending Behavior:
  [10:00] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "It's called the pain of paying. When you use cash, you feel a bit of regret, but with digital payments, there's no immediate impact, leading to increased spending."

• Societal Impact:
  [13:19] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Stores and banks love electronic payments because they encourage us to spend more and get deeper into debt."

• Emergency Resilience:
  [21:20] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Cash is a muscle. You need to use it regularly to keep its utility and functionality intact during emergencies."

• Teaching Children:
  [33:20] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Cash transactions teach children essential math skills and help them understand the value of money in a tangible way."

• Global Perspectives:
  [27:49] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "In Sweden, cash has become so scarce that accessing it requires appointments weeks in advance, limiting its practicality."

• Cryptocurrency:
  [45:42] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Cryptocurrency isn't fundamentally different from credit or debit cards in terms of vulnerability during disasters."

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Practical Takeaways

1. Incorporate Regular Cash Usage:
   Professor Zagorsky recommends using cash at least once a week to maintain its circulation and keep financial habits in check.
   [03:58] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Use cash at least once a week."

2. Maintain an Emergency Cash Reserve:
   Aim to keep a week's worth of expenses in cash to prepare for potential disruptions in digital payment systems.
   [47:28] Professor Jay Zagorsky: "Keep roughly about a week around in your wallet... approximately two to three weeks' worth of cash."

3. Be Mindful of Spending Triggers:
   Recognize how digital payments can lead to overspending and consciously limit their use to areas where budgeting is essential.

4. Promote Financial Literacy in Children:
   Encourage the use of cash transactions with children to help them develop crucial math and budgeting skills.

5. Advocate for Cash Accessibility:
   Support policies and practices that ensure cash remains a viable and accessible payment method for all, especially in emergencies and for vulnerable populations.

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Conclusion

This episode of How to Money underscores the multifaceted benefits of maintaining cash usage in an increasingly digital world. Professor Jay Zagorsky provides compelling arguments on privacy, financial discipline, societal resilience, and the importance of cash in emergencies. By adopting even minimal cash-centric habits, individuals can enhance their financial well-being and contribute to a more robust and inclusive economic system.

For more insights and resources, listeners are encouraged to visit thepowerofcash.com to explore Professor Zagorsky's work further.

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For additional resources, links, and show notes, visit howtomoney.com.

Transcript

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

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[Joel]

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[Matt]

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[Joel]

Welcome to how to Money. I'm Joel. I'm Matt and today we're talking about the Power of Cash with Jay Zagorsky.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

That's right.

[Matt]

Yeah, Joel. So here's something that we are hearing more and more. You can just sell me or Venmo me. It's sort of like I'll just uber to the airport. I think once a company name has become a verb, you know that it's completely ingrained in our culture. And honestly, like, what's not to love about it? It's easy, it's fast. It's like, I mean, virtually instant. It certainly makes life easier for me to pay rent for our little office here. It definitely takes the hassle out of receiving rent from my tenants as well on the investment properties. And I think that they would say the same thing. But our guest today, well, you, you better believe he disagrees. We are joined by Professor Jay Zagorsky, who is an economist at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. And he is author of a new book that was published just a couple months ago, the Power of Cash. Why using paper money is good for you and society. And we'll see if Jay can convince us to toss the plastic to grab the cash instead. We'll see if cash is king. But, you know, the actual physical cash, that's what we're talking about today. So, Jay, thank you so much for joining us.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Great to be on your show, Matt and Joel. And let me say my goal is not to convince you to throw away Zelle Venmo, PayPal, your credit cards. My goal is much smaller and much simpler. All right, here it is. The punchline. Use cash at least once a week.

[Joel]

Once a week.

[Matt]

Once a week.

[Joel]

Okay.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Just at least, at least you want to use it more than once. Guys, you'd make me really happy. Everybody uses cash at least once a week.

[Matt]

All right.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

We would keep it going in society because cash very powerful. But if no one uses cash anymore and it's only available, for example, in emergencies, and we'll talk about that a little bit later in the show, then cash becomes powerless.

[Joel]

Okay. And we want to keep that power cash around. We'll talk about that. First question though, Jay. What do you like to splurge on and are you using cash when you're splurging?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I definitely do. I have one small weakness. It's sort of like my kryptonite for Superman, my Achilles heel. I love large bottles of nice wine, not 750 milliliters, but whenever I see, you know, one of these magnums or terrible magnums, I just go, have to have it. Now let me say that I understand that buying large bottles of, say, laundry detergent saves you money, but when you buy large format bottles of wine, you're actually spending extra money. You can Google. I've written a number of articles on this.

[Matt]

So the economies of scale actually work against you. And is that like how many milliliters.

[Joel]

Are you harder to ship those.

[Matt]

Are we talking about when it comes to a Magnum?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Well, for example, most standard bottles of wine are about 750 milliliters. So if you buy a 1.5 liter bottle of wine, a nice wine, not a jug wine, you're going to actually pay more on a per ounce basis. And let me tell you why. That my splurge is related to the power of cash. I want to talk to you about three. Three things. The book has at least 20 things about why cash is powerful. But I want to talk to you about three things. Privacy, the ability to pay, and it reduces prices. Those are the three P's that I think we can cover in our time together.

[Joel]

I'm curious though, on your splurge, if wine costs more in the bigger bottles, why do you gravitate in that direction?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Because we're not all rational.

[Matt]

The whole key here.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I see a bottle of wine, I go, like a true economist, I'm not perfectly rational. But let talk about privacy and bottles of wine for a moment. Okay. My wife knows when I buy a bottle of wine. I walk in the door, I'm like, oh, man, I bought this bottle of wine, you know, and she sort of rolls her eyes because once or twice I told her how much I was spending on some of these giant bottles. And she was like, you're what?

[Matt]

No.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

You spent how much money? That's ridiculous. So now I pay cash when I go out and splurge on my bottle of wine, and I get some privacy. And my wife, she enjoys the wine. She doesn't ask me how much it costs. And she can't go through the Visa receipts or the MasterCard receipts or anything like that. No, no, no, no. We have a pretty open marriage. She knows I bought the wine, but she doesn't know the price. And she can enjoy it without going, this is just totally ridiculous.

[Joel]

So you're a marriage saver there.

[Matt]

You're doing it for her own good is what you're saying.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Jim, I'm doing it for my own good.

[Joel]

All right, let's talk. Digital payments are easy. Matt talked about it kind of in the beginning, right? Like cash, it's easier to lose. If I drop my credit card, hey, it's okay because I can call the credit card canceled and then nobody can spend on it. It's not going to impact me negatively. But if I drop.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Not true, not true.

[Joel]

Okay, tell me where I'm wrong.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

People are like, oh, man, I don't want to carry cash. I get lost, stolen. I can get mugged. And that's true. About two years ago, the data come out kind of slowly in the United States, about $400 million worth of cash was stolen last year. About two years ago. Okay, but how much money was stolen on credit cards? Over 20 billion. Not million, but billion. And you can say, ah, well, it didn't affect me. I lost my credit card. Some thief, you know, took it. They charged in, you know, 3,000 miles away. Things. I just called up the credit card company, they canceled the credit card, they refunded the charges. But Matt and Joel, somebody had to pay for what that thief stole. And that could be the store. And how does the store make you pay? They raise their prices to take care of shrinkage and theft. Or it could be the credit card company is going to take some losses and they basically end up charging everybody. So, yes, cash gets stolen, but when theft happens via electronic means, everybody in society has to pay.

[Joel]

Gotcha. That makes sense.

[Matt]

Do you feel differently about debit cards? I mean, I guess in that case, initially it is us as the debit card holder, as the savings account or checking account cardholder, we see that money immediately leave. But then ultimately, as we were trying to fight and claw that money back, I guess again, at that point, someone does end up paying. But in that case, it's the bank.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Not really. It really depends on how fast you notify the bank that your debit card was stolen. So if you notify the bank before any thief uses your debit card, no problem. The bank is on the hook because they have to shut that debit card off. And if they don't in time and you notify them and you actually have a record that you notified them, then the bank's on the hook. But if you don't actually look at your debit card transactions, you don't constantly check your account for seeing what's going on. And you wait a while, you could basically be on the hook for everything. And not only that, they could drain your account, and you have no recourse if you wait long enough. Now, there's a whole bunch of different dates and times, and I don't want to get into the specifics because I don't want someone saying, but Jay Z said on this radio, on this podcast, it was 14 days, and it turned out to actually be 13 or something like that. I don't want to get into that kind of issues here, but you could be totally on the hook on a debit card if you don't notify them immediately. Sometimes people lose debit cards and don't know they lost their debit card.

[Joel]

From a macro perspective, Jay, when we look at the transition from cash to credit in this country, people used to just pay cash for stuff. They don't anymore. What has that looked like and how has that impacted us as a society? Does it? I mean, it certainly seems like it's led to a lot more debt.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

And that's the big problem if we and you and I start using cash more often. Cash is basically a hard limit. When you're out of money in your wallet. When you're out of money in your purse, you basically have to stop spending. With a debit card, you can spend all the way up to the limit of the amount of money in your account. With a credit card, it's all the money in your bank accounts, plus whatever your credit limit is. So stores love and banks love the ability to do electronic payments. Why? Because it encourages us to spend far more to get deeper into debt. But if you're trying to maintain some control over your finances, basically to improve your wealth situation, you want to use electronic payments as little as possible. And it's for a very simple reason. It's called the pain of paying. The pain of paying. You start pulling pieces of paper out of your wallet or purse, you feel a tiny bit of regret. You pull out your cell phone or your credit card and sort of swipe or tap as you walk by a cash register. Eh, Nothing actually happens mentally because you're gonna pay like a month later. And that's so far off in the distance that you're not thinking about it. There's no pain. And because of no pain, because there's no pain, you end up spending more.

[Matt]

That's future Matt's problem to have to deal with. Not present day Matt, but future Matt's.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Gonna show up in 30 days.

[Joel]

That's true.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Yeah.

[Joel]

It's not just around the corner.

[Matt]

Exactly. I will say we've had listeners reports out too. This isn't just anecdotal with our audience, but there's a lot of folks who say, especially younger folks when, when I pay with. For something with cash because cash isn't their system that they transact in when they do use cash. It feels almost like pretend money. It almost feels like, like monopoly money or something like that as opposed to the charges getting tracked and then it goes into their budget and as they reconcile their spending at the end of the month. What are your thoughts?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

There's so a lot of it has to do with how you understand money. But for me, the best example is Casinos. I'm not encouraging any of your listeners to go to a casino, but when you walk into a casino, they're going to ask you for cash and they're going to hand you chips. And then after handing you chips, you're going to gamble. And if you have some chips left over, or maybe you have more chips, if you get lucky than you actually started with, you then transform it back into cash. Why do casinos do this ridiculous whole process of taking paper money, transforming it into plastic chips, and then handing you back paper money at the very end? It's kind of expensive. They have to count chips. They have to have all these people running around in cages doing all this transfer. And the whole idea is by doing this transfer, taking it out of cash, it makes it no longer real.

[Joel]

Yeah. Then it again desensitizes you from the money that you're losing. I'm curious, too. You mentioned that we're all paying higher prices because of the shrinkage involved in credit card theft and the fact that credit card companies, they take a fee every time. But, man, as consumers, we're addicted to the rewards that those credit cards offer. Visa and MasterCard, they crush. They've done incredibly well. But how much has that shift away from using cash as individuals? How much has that really impacted prices? Can you put a number on it? Any detail there?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

In General, Visa and MasterCard charge, and I'm being rough here, about 2%. And it really depends exactly on which particular credit card or debit card you're using. The more your credit card has rewards on it, the fancier your credit card, the bigger the cut the banking system is going to take from the merchant. And more importantly, Buy Now, Pay later has become really popular, especially among your younger listeners. Buy Now, Pay later takes sometimes between 5 and 6% as a cut for merchant.

[Joel]

And that's because when people use Buy Now, Pay later, again, much bigger shopping cart sizes, much bigger spends.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Yes, the retailers love Buy Now, Pay later because people are like, I don't have the money, but wow, I can pay for it over four installments. I can actually afford this. And Buy Now, Pay later for merchants is very good because instead of showing the whole price, instead of showing a hundred dollars, it says $25, payable in four installments. And mentally, even though we all know we should be doing the math, the multiplication, we don't. So we see $25 over four installments, we go, yeah, I can afford that buy. Instead of looking at $100 going, ooh, that's a little outside my budget range.

[Joel]

We're just less price sensitive, which then.

[Matt]

We just get on that endless cycle of making these payments. And so you're talking about prices here and in relation to the wine example. Jay, go back to privacy for a second. So, like, we're talking about prices. Let's jump back to privacy. Do you think that we should be worried about, in your case, you're talking about your wife knowing how much you spent or didn't spend on one of those Magnum bottles. But should we be worried about other people or companies knowing what it is that we're purchasing? How much we're buying or should be targeting us? Yeah, or target. That's what I was going to get to. Like, there's a. It reminds me of, like, cookies on, like, social media apps. And all of a sudden they're able to serve up relevant ads that sometimes, I'll be honest, I actually don't hate. Like, sometimes I'm like, oh, I wish they didn't know that, or I can't believe that they know that about me. But then, like, there's a pair of shorts. I own multiple pairs of these shorts that it was served up to me and I would never have known about these shorts had it not been for cookies. And so I guess I'm trying to create some sort of argument, I guess, for being tracked, but talk about how terrible it might be for us to actually be tracked.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Matt I teach at the questrom School of Business, and tomorrow is questrom's graduation day. It's the depth. Depends when exactly you listen. But right now, it's the middle of May. And what I really notice about my students is when I talk to them about privacy, they're like, ah, I have an open book, right? And they post pretty much everything they want on social media, right? And right around graduation day, I see my undergraduates do something really bizarre. They start scrubbing their social media because they're like, oh my God, I have to now have to get a job. I can't actually have all these things out there. So while in school, they say they don't care about privacy. At a certain moment in their life, when they sort of transition from college students into adults, they go, wow, privacy is important. I really don't want my entire life to be an open book. And when you start using electronic transactions, you are creating a permanent record that cannot be scrubbed. Like your social media feed, you are telling banks, you are telling Visa and MasterCard, you are telling shops your entire purchasing history. And sometimes that entire purchasing history can be either embarrassing or not. The Type of history you want to show people. Let me tell you a quick example. Amazon's been around for a very long time. And I remember trying out Amazon probably 25, 30 years ago when it was pretty new. And I had a niece who really loved samurai things. And she was like, oh, uncle, can you do me a favor? I want a sword for Christmas. Like, sure, why not? I mean, so I bought her on Amazon a samurai sword. Amazon for decades put me into a basket as somebody who wanted guns, knives and swords all the time. And it was really hard. I had young children at the time and they would come by and daddy would be sitting on the computer and like, daddy, you don't let us play with guns, knives and swords. How come they're always showing you these big guns, knives and swords? And I was like, it's a little hard to explain to a small child that dad once bought this for somebody else and is now pinned as a particular type of individual.

[Joel]

Yeah. One of the other reasons that you state in the book that cash is superior to digital forms of payment is if a natural disaster comes along. So can you maybe highlight a time in recent memory when something happened, whether it was like a hurricane or a fire or something like that, and cash was just a necessity for people to transact where digital payments wouldn't suffice and maybe how that's even potentially more a problem given kind of what happens in modern warfare these days.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So why did I write this book? I wrote this book to talk about two things. One, individuals and two societal reasons. And you're now switching into the societal reasons. But only two weeks ago, the entire country of Spain and the entire country of Portugal suffered a power outage for a very long time, well over a day before they were able to get the power back. All electronic payments need three things. They need electricity. That's why they're called electronic payments. They need communication networks because when you're in some store or some shop, they have to communicate to the central servers. And number three, they need computers that are robust, that have not been hacked. And in natural disasters and in man made disasters, none of those three things necessarily work. For example, the Spain and Portugal examples, electricity went out. There was no way to do electronic transfers. But many of your listeners when I looked up are from the United States. Not all, but many. And let me talk to them about why they need to use cash at least once a week. And it's called pspss, Public Safety Power Shutoffs. Back in February, we had wildfires in Los Angeles. Who's going to be blamed for those wildfires, who's going to have to pay billions of dollars of damages. And the answer is power companies. Right now, what happened is the land dried out, a little bit of drought, primarily because of global warming. And then an electrical cable fell from the power company onto the ground, ignited some fires, and people are going to sue the power companies. Power companies, basically from west of the Mississippi river all the way to Hawaii, are looking at massive, massive liability suits. And their answer to these massive liability suits is whenever there's a drought and high winds, we're going to preemptively shut off all the power. And in the next few years, you're going to see PSPSS. Oh, well, L.A. is shut down for three days. All the power. Why? Because the local power company doesn't want to be sued for $10 billion or $20 billion if a PSPS happens in your neighborhood. Electronic payments don't work. So why do I encourage all listeners to use cash at least once a week? Why don't a lot of people say to me, well, whenever a PSPS shows up, I'll just stuff some money in my mattress, I'll pull it out and I'll use it then? That's the wrong way to think about it. Because unless cash is being used all the time, for example, clerks don't know how to handle cash. Banks aren't there. They don't have bank branches or ATMs that can accept cash. There's no transport companies, no armored cars able to move cash around. You need to be using cash all the time so that when one of these emergencies, like a psps, like an earthquake, like a hurricane happens, that the society is like, okay, no problem. We have cash. We know how to use it. People have it in their wallets. Clerks know how to handle it.

[Joel]

It's a muscle. We don't want to atrophy.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Right? It's a muscle. It's like swimming. You know, you don't. When you fall over the side of the boat, you don't want to say, hmm, I think 20 years ago, I knew how to swim, but I haven't done lately. You know, you need to do it every now and then to keep going. And then when you fall over the side of the boat, you're like, damn, I'm getting wet. I lost my beer over the side of the boat, okay? But I can swim back to the boat, okay? It's the same thing with cash. Now, let me tell you a quick story. I went to the supermarket a couple of weeks ago. I Handed the lady some cash for my payments, and I was supposed to get back 40 cents and change. And she smiled at me. She pulled out four nickels, handed it to me. A nickel is 5 cents. That's 4 times 5 is 20 cents. I smiled her and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, not the right amount. And she kind of stared at me blankly. And the head cashier was two aisles over, saw what was going on, and came over and had explained to the cashier the difference between nickels and dimes and said, ah, I see the difference. Okay, now I get it. She handed me four dimes. I handed her back the four nickels and I got my 40 cents. But it showed me that people are starting to lose the ability to even recognize coins. Now, it's not only coins. My wife went to the doctor just about a couple of days after this experience happened. And my wife owes a $5 copay when she goes to visit the doctor's office. Okay, $5. My wife only had a $10 bill on her. She pulled out a $10 bill, handed it to the receptionist. The receptionist said, yes, we can handle cash. Opened the drawer and. And handed my wife a $50 bill. Now, my wife said, thank you very, very much. You made my day, but I don't think you really meant to do that. And the receptionist kind of looked at her blankly and was like, what? I handed you to change. Like, go sit down and wait for the doctor. My wife was like, you gave me back $50, not $5. And she held out the 50. The receptionist looked at the 50 and was like, amazed. Like, she's like, I didn't know those existed almost exactly. Was what my wife said. Right? Like, wow, five and a zero. Oh, that's. So we need to be using cash so that people, a, understand it. And B, as I said a couple of moments ago, there's the resources for moving cash around in society.

[Joel]

Yeah, no, that makes sense. We've got a lot more we want to get to with you, Jay, including, like, okay, how do we actually transition in a world where digital payments are the standard and it's kind of what everyone gravitates towards, how do we kind of buck the system? We'll talk about that and more right after this. Looking for a smarter way to teach your child to ride a bike and support American jobs at the same time? Most kids bikes are just cheap imports. They're heavy, clunky, hard for kids to control. Guardian Bikes is changing that. They're assembling bikes right here in the USA with plans for full US Manufacturing in the next few months. It's a commitment to higher quality and American craftsmanship you can trust. Each bike is lightweight, low to the ground and built to help kids learn to ride faster, many in just one day. No training wheels needed.

[Matt]

And here is the real game changer. Guardian's patented SureStop braking system. One lever. It stops both wheels, giving your child more control, faster stops and it prevents those scary head over the handlebar accidents. It's so easy that even a two year old can do it. And so if you are ready to support American jobs and keep your kids Safe, head to guardianbikes.com today. You'll save hundreds of dollars compared to the competition and when you join their newsletter, you'll get a free bike lock and pump, which is a $50 value.

[Joel]

That's gu guardianbikes.com built in the USA made specifically for kids.

[Matt]

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[Joel]

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[Matt]

Nice.

[Joel]

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[Matt]

That's right, man. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code [e-mail] in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com with code howtomoney it's an interesting time for business.

[Joel]

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[Matt]

NetSuite is the number one cloud ERP for many reasons. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one suite. You have one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time forecasting, you are peering into the future with actionable data. And with AI embedded throughout, you can automate a lot of those everyday tasks, letting your teams stay strategic. We're a super small operation with just the two of us, Joel, but if we were any bigger, NetSuite by Oracle is what we would use.

[Joel]

Yeah, if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Download the free ebook Navigating Global Trade. Three insights for [e-mail] howtomoney that's netsuite.com howtomoney.

[Matt]

We are back from the break, talking with Professor Jay Z. And Jay, right before the break, you talked like you were getting into the impacts on society. It's almost like a public service that you are doing and that you are encouraging all of us to do, at the very least to do this on a weekly basis. But is this one of the reasons why we've seen some countries resist the, the cashless sort of society? I was actually surprised to see Japan being cited as a country. Like, you think of Japan, or at least I do. I think of Tokyo.

[Joel]

You think of like super modern.

[Matt]

Super modern.

[Joel]

Like, like everywhere.

[Matt]

Like Blade runner. Yeah, like 2055. Like kind of modern. But talk to us about how different countries are approaching cashless societies.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

We have a variety of ways that cash is being handled. In places like Japan and Germany, cash is still king. And countries like China and Sweden, people look at you when you hand them cash and they're like, we don't have any ability to handle cash in Sweden. I was talking to somebody two days ago who lives in Sweden and she said, if I want cash, I have to call up the bank and make an appointment two weeks ahead of time.

[Joel]

What?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

That's what she said. I believe her. She said, I lived in Sweden my entire life and that cash has disappeared so much in Sweden that I have to pay, make an appointment two weeks ahead of time for cash. And that the only places in Sweden that accept cash, she said, were supermarkets, grocery stores and drugstores. Right. So you can get food with cash and you can get medicine, but no place else in Sweden accepts cash. Now, I said to her, this is a national defense problem. And why? Because the Swedes are very concerned about Russia. And if Russia Decides to invade. Well, there's many ways of basically bringing a country to its knees. You can bomb it, but a simpler way in an all electronic society is prevent people from spending money.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Joel]

Is there, is there like a. More.

[Matt]

Jay's like a patriot, Joel. Yeah, like, I mean, I mean, and like I say that slightly tongue in cheek, but like it's really true if you think about it. If you think about the kind of scenario that they're in or if you.

[Joel]

What seems more and more likely the electronic. The grid being.

[Matt]

Yeah, like, like Spain and the. In the blackouts before, like, as far as I know, they still haven't been able to identify why that happened. And it starts like, not to get all conspiracy theory, but you start to think, man, it really would not take much to. Like you said, Jay, to bring a country to its knees. Sorry to interrupt.

[Joel]

Taking the grid off is, is like more impactful than catastrophic than bombs, right? Yeah. So Jay, I'm curious too, if you think there's like a moral element at play here, because when in kind of our digital system, more and more people are finding themselves enslaved to consumerism and they find themselves with massive amounts of debt that they can't realistically pay off. So do you think there's. And then on the. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's like a real problem here with how far we've gone in the digital direction that's led to a lot of the financial instability that a lot of households face.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

It's not only financial instability, and I agree with you that electronic payments encourages consumerism, which is why stores really like electronic payments and why banks love electronic payments and are in my mind trying to kill off cash because banks don't really make any money on cash. It costs them money to put up an ATM machine. It costs them money to stock tellers with cash and have them hand out cash with credit cards and debit cards or so it's relatively low cost for them and they can make money because, well, we all tend to overspend. But let's talk about a different part of the moral argument here. There are a number of people who are relatively poor. I don't think anybody who's pretty poor is going to be listening to your podcast. I'm talking about, for example, people like homelessness. I spend a fair amount of time in Seattle visiting, and the neighborhood I tend to visit is very, very high tech and preppy. It's within walking distance of Amazon's headquarters. Tableau is there. Seattle's, Google's, Seattle Headquarters is there and almost every store, almost every shop has a sign, no cash accepted right on the front door. Now Seattle, if you've ever been there, has a massive homeless population. Very, very large number of homeless people. And what does no cash accepted on the front door say? It says you're homeless. You don't have a credit card or a debit card. Stay out. And this is not on every high end store. The place I get my cup of coffee and my bagel in the morning when I visit Seattle, the highest price they have, I think is $14 for like, you know, the smoked salmon bagel sandwich. And there's a guy who sleeps across from this shop that I see pretty much all the time I visit there. That's pretty, you know, his homeless. He's homeless and he lives on this park bench over there. If I give him $5, he can't walk into the bagel shop and buy himself a bagel and a cup of coffee.

[Joel]

It does seem messed up.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

And I'm not giving him my credit card. I'm sorry. I tend to be a nice guy, but I'm not handing him my credit card. I'm not handing him my cell phone and say, hey, dude, go make a mobile payment and go buy what you want.

[Matt]

Sure. One of the other things I think about too just, I mean, we're talking about some of the different implications on society and I mean, in this case, you're talking about the poor. I also think about kids as well. And lately I have found myself, Jay, reverting back to using cash. I think when Joel and I first started talking about personal finance a little more regularly here on the podcast, and we were like, oh man, we're going to do this. I'm not going to say the company's name, but as a company and you have like a little card that's associated with it and you're able to electronically move the money.

[Joel]

There's kids as young as like six or seven. Yeah.

[Matt]

And I realized that we completely, completely just jumped the gun when it came to implementing a system like that. But talk about that, how the elimination of cash and how that could prevent our ability to teach our kids about money spending, saving, I want to talk.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

To you about a four letter word and that's called math, M, A, T, H. And before you can actually start teaching kids about making sound financial decisions, and I'm all for sound financial decisions, you have to teach them how to count, how to basically figure out fractions and things like that. And if we don't use cash Then we tend not to use our mathematical skills. Quick example, if I'm using cash in a supermarket, I am adding up as I throw items into my cart. I'm going, okay, this costs, you know, $2. This costs $4. And I keep a running total because I don't want to be embarrassed when I go show up at the cashier and go, oops, I don't have enough money. Okay. But when I'm using a credit card, and occasionally I know I'm going to be using a credit card because I just ran out of money or I really have to spend more and I don't know what I have to buy. For example, we're having a party and the wife says to me, okay, we got about 20 people, and I don't know exactly what we need, so I'm going to use a credit card. When I use a credit card, I stop counting. I stop doing math in my head.

[Joel]

Is it kind of like using a GPS and how we forget to get. How to get places anymore?

[Matt]

Right.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

You have no idea how to get places, even if it's local and you might have been there four or five times. Like, without gps, I can't do it. That's right. So math is really important for teaching small children. Sorry. Cash is really useful for teaching small children math Ideas, fractions, really easy to explain. Using something like coins.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

What's a quarter? Well, a quarter of something is, you know, 25 cents. You know, four quarters equal a dollar. And when people play with cash at 5, 6, 7 years old, they go, oh, I get it.

[Joel]

Yeah, yeah. What are the arguments you make, Jay, in the book, which kind of shocked me. I wasn't expecting to see. Because you're making the case for math and how the more we use cash, the better our math skills are, especially for kids. It's good, but even as adults. Right. To keep that skill around. But you also argue that using cash keeps you healthier. And I was like, huh? What's that about? Do you have any data to back that up? How do we. How is using cash going to make us healthier people?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So you're talking about one of the points in my book, the power of Cash, which I hope everybody listening to this reads. But there's a couple of studies out there that show when people pay cash, they actually pay more attention to what they're putting in their supermarket shopping cart. And when you're not paying with cash, you're just using credit, you just sort of throw things in. You asked at the beginning of the show, my Weakness. And I told you about large, large bottles of wine. I try and use cash as much as possible. It's very hard to write a book called the Power of Cash and not use cash a lot. But let me be honest with you, I do have a credit card in my wallet, and occasionally I use that credit card for buying things. And typically it's at Costco because Costco is this sort of surprise. You walk in, you have no idea what you're going to see there. And oftentimes I walk into Costco with about $100 in my wallet. And I have three things in mind. I'm going to buy some, some eggs and maybe some fish, and that's it. Bang. I'm gonna have plenty of money left over. And then I walk by, like, the chocolates and the champagne, and I'm like, ooh. And the moment I say, I am not going to use cash. Okay, I can use a credit card, I just start throwing all kind of junk into my cart because it's like, well, I've eliminated the constraint on spending, and I've also eliminated the constraint on eating healthy.

[Matt]

And Jay's also throwing a greenhouse in his cart while he's at it as well.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Wouldn't anything in Costco actually, I looked small Children's Playhouse last week when I was walking through there, it was like $599. I was like, ooh. And the wife was like, come on, it won't even fit in the car. I was like, oh, but this is so cool for the kids to play in.

[Matt]

Yeah.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

But once again, when you suddenly say, okay, I'm not using cash, you lose that constraint. And you can lose that constraint, both nutritionally but also on anything else. That. Why it would be nice to have, wouldn't it? Until you get the bill 30 days later.

[Matt]

I feel like that there's also something there when it comes to health. And even, I don't know, this might be a little more out there and a little more woo woo. But the germs, even that are like, I guess you talking about being healthy makes me even think about that. Right. And you think about the germs we.

[Joel]

Get from touching cash.

[Matt]

Yes. And like kids who grow up like germs on a farm, they're exposed to other allergens, different viruses, things like that. As opposed to the boy who grew up in a bubble. Right. And there's a big difference when it comes to the antibodies that. And I'm not like a scientist or anything like that, but I know there's a.

[Joel]

There's plenty of what you did sleep.

[Matt]

In a Holiday Inn last packing that as well. But I don't. I don't hear you making that argument necessarily, Jay.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I'm not making the argument, but a lot of people call, you know, it's filthy cash, right. I don't want to touch it. Who else has touched it? And then my response to them is, okay, you just pulled out your debit card, and when you put your debit card into the machine, asks for your PIN number. Right. And you had to type in your pin. Did anyone clean that PIN machine?

[Joel]

No, not in months.

[Matt]

Probably not.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So since no one cleaned the PIN machine, why is the cache cleaner or dirtier than the PIN machine you were just touching with your fingers?

[Matt]

I will say that's why. The double click to pay using Apple, the Apple Wallet, or whatever other different digital wallets they have built in, I think that's a part of why those have gained so much steam as well, because, I mean, you barely have to wait. Yeah. You barely have to wave the card or the phone in front of the device. But I thought Jay was gonna say, it's not filthy cash. It's the filthy data that's being collected.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So a lot of people I also know have said, oh, I just love my cell phone, because only I'm the one touching my cell phone. And you know what drives me crazy is how many people use their cell phone in the bathroom. Excuse me. So you're using your phone. I'm being serious. How many times have you sat in stall and somebody's next to you is, like, having a screaming conversation with their spouse or their children or something like that. And I'm like, true story.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

And, like, your phone is now clean. I don't think so. I didn't see you washing your hands and your phone.

[Matt]

Yeah. The worst part, honestly, is knowing that truth. But then at restaurants or purveyors of food who are selling and they've got, like, you know, they're waiting on the next customer, and they've got their phone out, and then they set it down on the. On the same counter that maybe they're cutting sandwiches. And, like, I know there's got to be health code violations against pulling out.

[Joel]

Germans up in here.

[Matt]

Cell phones. That's just a small pet peeve of mine that we don't talk about.

[Joel]

All right, so I want to. I want to ask Jay, like, you. You started off this conversation, hey, I just want to convince you to use cash once a week. I think you have convinced me of that. Do you have, like an ultimate end goal here. Is it saying, no, I want people to use cash 50, 60% of the time? Is it really just to keep cash around? Or is it all these added benefits that individuals get from using cash on the regular and not pulling out their credit card or their Apple pay?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So right now in the United States last year, the banking System spent over $1 billion advertising credit cards, not including crypto ads or any of these other things, just basic credit card advertising. And I'm up against a one billion dollar advertising campaign. And as we all know, advertising is very, very effective. So I'm trying to start with something really small. You know, use cash at least once a week, keep it in circulation. My hope is that if you start using cash once a week and you read the book the Power of Cash and go, wow, there's a whole bunch of benefits. You're going to use it more and more often. I am an extreme advocate for using paper money, but I would say right Now I'm about 2/3 paper money, one third electronics. And why do I use things electronically? Because there's some places that you just can't use cash. If I use cash and bought an airplane ticket, my guess is I'd be on the TSA watch list for being a terrorist. I'm being serious.

[Joel]

That's true.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I mean, I don't know who gets on the TSA watch list, but it's really tough to, you know, the certain things. If I want to book a hotel for two or three weeks from now for when I'm speaking in some other place, I can't use cash. I can't, like, fly there three weeks ahead of time, pay them cash, and then come back. So I know that there's a place for electronic payments. But what I'm really concerned about is we have lost the idea that cash is useful. And my whole goal here is to convince people cash is useful. It has so many wonderful benefits, and by using it just once or twice a week, you might see more benefits and start using it more often.

[Matt]

It keeps those wheels greased. Yeah. Nah, Jay, you're making a great case here. And we've got more to get to, we'll talk about. For some folks actually transitioning back to cash, maybe what that would take. We'll get to that and more right after this.

[Joel]

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[Matt]

And here is the real game changer. Guardian's patented SureStop braking system. One lever, it stops both wheels, giving your child more control, faster stops and it prevents those scary head over the handlebar accidents. It's so easy that even a two year old can do it. And so if you are ready to support American jobs and keep your kids Safe, head to guardianbikes.com today. You'll save hundreds of dollars compared to the competition. And when you join their newsletter, you'll get a free bike lock and pump, which is a $50 value.

[Joel]

That's Guard guardianbikes.com, built in the USA made specifically for kids. Guardianbikes.com it's an interesting time for business. Tariff and trade policies are dynamic, supply chains squeezed and cash flow tighter than ever. If your business can't adapt in real time, you're in a world of hurt. You need total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real time cash flow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI powered business management suite. Trusted by over 41,000 businesses, NetSuite is.

[Matt]

The number one cloud ERP for many reasons. It brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one suite. You have one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time forecasting, you are peering into the future with actionable data. And with AI embedded throughout, you can automate a lot of those everyday tasks, letting your teams stay strategic. We're a super small operation with just the two of us, Joel, but if we were any bigger, netsuite by Urkel is what we would use.

[Joel]

Yeah, if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Download the free ebook Navigating Global 3 Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com howtomoney that's netsuite.com howtomone let's talk retirement for a second. To me, it feels like it's getting harder for people to reach their goals for the future. We hear about inflation, rate hikes, the changing market. Are we even saving enough? And things keep changing, right? And here is where fidelity comes in. Whether you're saving for retirement or close to living in it, Fidelity can help you get where you want to go. No matter your path or what happens along the way?

[Matt]

Yeah, but how? Well, they'll help you to create a free, personalized plan that adapts as your priorities change. They'll also show you what's called timely insights. These are small tips on ways to save and invest to help meet your goals. And you can monitor your plans so you can stay on target. The future's coming, and so is retirement. Get ready to take it [e-mail] TakeOn.

[Joel]

Expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account. Apply Fidelity Brokerage Services member NYSE SIPC. All right, we're back. Still talking with Professor Jay Z from Boston University. And Jay, you mentioned briefly before the break, cryptocurrency and bitcoin. And it's interesting because you're fighting, it feels like the battle you're fighting is not only this uphill battle against the forces of billion dollar marketing budgets like you mentioned too, but it's also, hey, young people, they're all about trading the cryptos and potentially using the cryptos in the future to buy stuff. So far from cash becoming cool again, crypto is kind of popping. What's your answer to the cryptocurrency movement as someone who is a proponent of cash?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So I'm not against cryptocurrency in any way, shape or form, but the problem with cryptocurrency is you need electricity and you need an Internet connection in order to access that. And as we see more and more, for example, natural disasters or more and more potential for war in the world, the ability for you to use cryptocurrency is, I would say, suspect. And I don't remember the exact place I read it, but I remember the very beginning of the Ukrainian war and they interviewed some person who was really big into cryptocurrency and the guy was like, wow, I thought I was protected because I had cryptocurrency. But we don't have Internet because the Russian missiles, Russian missiles basically take out, took out the Internet. I can't access my wallet. My digital wallet is like offline to me. So the idea of cryptocurrency, that's okay. I don't see any difference between cryptocurrency in my mind and using, say a credit card or a debit card. Except for cryptocurrency isn't going to charge you relatively high interest rates.

[Matt]

Right. Okay. So I'm hearing what you're saying. You're talking about at least using it once a week. Actually, this also makes me think about too.

[Joel]

How?

[Matt]

I mean, we talked about higher prices, but it also makes me think about how, like at restaurants now, more and more we're seeing the discounts where it's just like, hey, by the way, if you pay with credit card, it's going to be 2 to 3% more expensive. I bet Jay loves that. He's always, yeah, the surcharge from gas stations, it makes it clear, it makes it incredibly transparent. But Jay, for most folks who aren't used to using cash, how much would you recommend for them to start sliding in the wallet? You know, I've got like the hidden 20 behind my, behind my driver's license, but it sounds like you're recommending for maybe me to increase that amount. What would you recommend to folks?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So my recommendation is probably what a lot of your recommenders have been before, and that's keep a little bit of a budget. And once you figure out what your budget is, you know, roughly what you spend per week. And my recommendation is keep roughly about a week around in your wallet or whatever.

[Matt]

A week's worth of cash.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

A week's worth of cash. Going to an atm, going to a bank is a pain, right? Takes a little bit of extra time. How often do you want to do that? For me, I like filling up my car like once a week. I like going to the bank like once a week. That's enough. If I have to go to the bank every day or fill up my car every day, that's like, this is a hassle. I don't want to do it. So the goal is to use cash but not destroy your life by becoming. You don't want to become best friends with the teller at the bank where they know your name as you walk in the door.

[Joel]

Yeah. What about pennies, Jay? Is that something we can agree on, that pennies should be eliminated? There's been a lot more talk about that.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

We'll get to pennies in 30 seconds. Okay, but let me go back to restaurants for a minute. Okay, let's talk about restaurants. Waiters, waitresses, bartenders, and things like that. You swipe your credit card, you swipe your debit card. What happens? We'll talk. In the credit card instance, the owner of that restaurant says, oh, the tip that you just gave to the waiter or waitress, I'm not giving them that tip until I get payment from the credit card company. And there's often a multi week holdback period. So that waiter or waitress that you really like to say thank you, great meal, great service is going to have to wait Two, three, four weeks before they get paid. You pay them cash, you say thank you right away. I don't know about you, but I like being thanked immediately instead of having to wait three weeks.

[Joel]

Yeah. All right, Pennies, what are your thoughts?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Okay. Pennies. If you Google Jay Zagorski on the Internet, you will see that I've written a number of articles in defense of the penny, okay? That said, as inflation keeps going higher and higher and higher, pennies, well, they're going to be eliminated sooner or later, okay? Because they're going to be totally worthless. It's a shame, but it is what it is. But let's talk about today, this very moment during the Super Bowl, Donald Trump sent out on Truth Social a message that I have instructed the Mint to stop making pennies. I don't know if you remember that.

[Joel]

I do remember that.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So he basically said the supply of pennies, Pennings, is stopping right now, but he's done nothing about the demand for pennies. Stores need to be legally told to round prices away from pennies up to the nearest either nickel or dime. And the only institution that can do that is Congress. So while Donald Trump says via Truth Social that there's no more pennies, it's not actually true. In stores, without giving you your change or without doing. Rounding up, for example, would actually be breaking the law. And pennies, they're still going to need to be around until Congress passes legislation that says we have to do rounding to either the nickel or the dime.

[Joel]

Level with sales tax, I feel like throws an extra wrench in there, right, that the price, well, you know, what you're charging, and then you've got to throw the sales tax on, which could be 7.2% or 8.1%. And then that kind of of makes the math harder, too.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Does indeed. It does indeed. Which is why I don't think pennies are going to go away until Congress passes a legislation to do that. And I'm in favor. If Congress wants to pass legislation that says, let's round to the nearest nickel or dime, I'd fully support that. But I do not support the ability for a president to say via social media tweets, I've killed the penny.

[Matt]

Yeah, makes sense, Jay. So one last, maybe more personal question. I'm trying to be practical here, and you're talking about folks having a week's worth of expenses on hand. How much, if you feel comfortable sharing, do you have, I guess, either in your house or just somewhere secure when it comes to cash? Because you're talking about the. Just the ability to pay. Right. Like that was one of your P's. And if grids go down, if the different networks are unable to communicate with each other and you've got cash on hand. Okay, well, that buys you a certain amount of time. Like we talk about the emergency fund, right. That we keep in high yield savings accounts, but are you keeping a larger amount of physical cash yourself somewhere that you can access in case something like this were to happen?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So I keep either on my wallet. If I added up everything in my wallet and what I have stuffed in the mattress here at the home, I have three weeks.

[Joel]

Is it literally stuffed in the mattress or are you joking?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I'm joking about stuff.

[Joel]

Okay.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

I think some socks might be stuffed in my mattress and things like that. I am missing a couple that I can't find. So I'm sure it's probably hiding under there. I have about three weeks. Because, you know, things will come back in three weeks. Right. There is all kind of support mechanisms in countries like the United States when natural disaster happens, but you can't assume those natural support, those support mechanisms are going to happen in the first couple of days. So between my wallet and what's stuffed under the mattress, it's about three weeks. And that's really what I recommend to people. I'm not saying keep massive amounts of cash around. Don't make yourself a victim of theft. Okay. But I am saying keep it going. And if we all keep it going, then I would even probably recommend only two weeks. Because if I know there's lots of ATMs around and if I know there's lots of other things that are able to generate cash and get cash recycled into the economy, then two weeks might be plenty.

[Joel]

That's great advice. The book is the Power of Cash. Jay Zagorsky. Professor Jay Zagorsky, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. Where would you send our listeners to so they can find more of your writings and your thoughts about cash in particular?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

So the book is called the Power of Cash. And you can go to thepowerofcash.com all one word, no spaces, no underlines or anything. The powerofcash.com wonderful.

[Joel]

We appreciate your time. Thank you, Professor J.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

It's been a lot of fun. Look forward to being on the show again.

[Matt]

Indeed. Hopefully we will be talking with professor jz. We talked to him initially at the beginning, at the beginning of the episode, I was like, do you mind if we call you Professor Jay Z? He's like, well, that's what my students call me as well. So I think he kind of leans into it.

[Joel]

I was like, you're not married to Beyonce. And he was like, my wife is far more beautiful.

[Matt]

He's like, but my actual birth certificate does say on there Jay Z as opposed to what's Jay Z's actual name? Carter.

[Joel]

Sean Carter, I think. Is it Sean Carter? Something like that, yeah.

[Matt]

But that being said, great little conversation we had here with Jay Joel. You have a good, maybe a practical takeaway for folks or what was your big takeaway?

[Joel]

I think when he, the line that he said, when he said we have lost the idea that cash is useful is spot on. Like, I.

[Matt]

We've written it off. Yeah.

[Joel]

And I feel that in myself. Like I have kind of lost that idea. And honestly, having this conversation makes me want to rethink some things about how I utilize cash in my life. And in particular, something like Amazon Prime. You and I were just talking about that like, like it's not the $140 a year or 160. I forget what Amazon prime costs right now that I'd be saving by not having Amazon Prime. It's that sort of knee jerk, painless way of buying things.

[Matt]

The fact that the wheels are so greased that, man, it's like our fingers just automatically go to click to purchase.

[Joel]

And I think a lot of smart people might say marketing doesn't impact me or digital payments don't impact me. And I think, think for a long time maybe I would have said that I was in that camp. Like, no, I'm not spending more because I pay digitally, but the truth is I do. And if I did add extra pain points in there, like going to the bank to get the money, I would be more thoughtful about how I use that money. So I don't know, don't hold me to it. I don't know if I'm going to cancel Amazon prime, but it really does make me want to think more and more about leaning into using cash. Maybe I'll take some small steps in that direction and then potentially get to even more extreme measures.

[Matt]

Yeah, I'm with you, man. This is something I've shared over the past few months, but I've sort of, I've been reassessing how it is I use credit cards even. And I've thought through, like, should I just completely simplify and only have a singular card as opposed to trying to jump through the hoops and play the game? And what I'm asking myself is that, is this a game that I Want to continue to play. And you couple that with the fact that there is likely increased spending even at the grocery store. Right. Like not even just like online purchasing, but even like he said, if you have. Have a sort of a finite set amount, a hard limit of money, you know, that's actually in your wallet or in your purse, I think that we are going to be more likely to spend our money wisely on things that provide nutrition as opposed to fun things, even like booze. Right. Like, like that's a fun thing. It's not necessary, but we do it because, yes, we have budgeted for it, but I do think we might be a little more judicious in our, in our spending for sure.

[Joel]

And we're seeing more cash discounts these days, which should incentivize us even more to think about that.

[Matt]

So that's why. So that's my big takeaway. That's why I was asking him specifically, how much do you. Than on your person? Because practically speaking, I'm like, well, I've got a 20 or a couple 20s in there, but that doesn't get you very far. Like that. I mean, that maybe buys my Kate and I a beer. Like if we go to our local brewery with tip. That doesn't get you very far. So him recommending to keep a week's worth. And like he said, you don't want to make your life miserable, but if this is something that you want to try out, take your monthly spend amount, divide that by four or just I guess take a look at the month and kind of allot how much money, how much cash you should have on your person for those expenses. In particular, for us, it would be, it would be groceries and entertainment, as I think through areas of spending where there's perhaps an elevated amount of discretionary spending that we could cut back on.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Matt]

So I don't know. That's. I think I'm actually going to do that. I want to do that. And I was really interested in how much money he kept at his place somewhere secure, mostly because not in his actual address.

[Joel]

And then you're like, what's your address, Jay? I wanted to make sure you have cold bars in the backyard too, that.

[Matt]

He felt comfortable sharing. And I appreciate his transparency there. But I think that's something that, yeah, like you said, you don't want to make yourself a target. But. But do you have enough on hand to weather literal storms that might be taking place, but actual other financial or, you know, like foreign terrorism? Other. I'm not like a prepper But I do think a little bit more in that direction, Joel, than you do, so.

[Joel]

And we don't want to lose that muscle altogether. Like, cash is a society. Yeah. And again, what he said, too, about people who only have cash, like, how they're excluded from certain places. I mean, there's a lot of takeaways, man, that we as a society should care about this.

[Matt]

The beer that you and I enjoyed, though, on this episode is called a Sunkist. This was a tart wheat ale brewed with tangerine by our friends over at Edmund's Ost. And we don't actually have friends over there, but anytime we have.

[Joel]

I wish we did, a beer by.

[Matt]

A brewery that I like. I call them my friends because they're doing something for me. I'm doing something for them.

[Joel]

Yep.

[Matt]

What'd you think of this one?

[Joel]

So good. Tart, Tangeriney. I think Edmund's Oast is one of those breweries, like, I'm only tangentially familiar with. I don't know if I'd call them my friends because I've only had a few beers, but your.

[Matt]

That's one of the breweries I want to go to because it's close enough that it sounds like a fun trip. So it's out there in Charleston.

[Joel]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And it's one of the ones I've yet to visit, but I want to as well. One of these days. I will.

[Joel]

But this one. Yeah. Everything I've had from them has been, like, rock solid good. And this is, like, just a nice, like, sunny summer ale right here. So this is, like, perfect time to be drinking this beer.

[Matt]

Yeah. When we first poured it, something about the way it smelled like. It. It smelled, like, aggressively tart. And I don't know. It doesn't say on here that it was brewed with lactobacillus or whatever. It reminds me of, like, a wild yeast.

[Joel]

Right.

[Matt]

Athena, from. From Comforts. And sometimes it depends, I guess the kind of mood you're in, it can come across as astringent, where it's a little. Ooh. It's almost like, too mouth puckering. Yeah. Like. Like where it almost feels like it's breaking down the lining of your mouth a little bit, like, when you drink it. But I think it's because of the tangerine. They balanced it out, and so it had enough sweetness to balance out the overall flavor profile. So I was. I was. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Was pleasantly surprised. And maybe I shouldn't have been, because. Yeah, I really, really enjoyed this one.

[Joel]

Most def.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

All right.

[Joel]

That's going to do it for this one. If you want links to Professor J's book and some of the the other resource we might have mentioned on this show, check out our show notes. They're up on the [e-mail] you know, buddy.

[Matt]

So until next time, best friends out. Best friends out. Did it occur to you that he charmed you in any way?

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Yes, it did.

[E]

But he was a charming man.

[Matt]

It looks like the ingredients of a.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Really grand spy story.

[Matt]

Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one, I often ask myself now, did I know the true Yan at all? Listen to Hot agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[N/A]

Are there any pictures of you online? Then you could already be in a massive police database without even knowing it.

[Matt]

Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from.

[Joel]

LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

[N/A]

I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, a podcast about how living in the future is affecting us right now.

[Joel]

Police, they are trusting the software with this magical ability to lead them to the right suspect.

[N/A]

In this episode, we dive into how cops are using AI and facial recognition and sometimes getting it wrong and putting innocent people behind bars.

[Joel]

So if your accuser is this algorithm, but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

Of the details about how it works.

[N/A]

Listen to Kill Switch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[E]

OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

[Professor Jay Zagorsky]

This is an iHeart podcast.