You paid your university fees in cash? Is this normal?

As a Brit, all these stories about people carrying around huge chunks of cash seem completely outlandish to me. But then, we have free bank-to-bank transfers here.

At the time, yeah - I paid in cash. Financial aid wouldn't free up my money unless I paid my Business Office balance. Business Office claimed I owed $200 from the summer and wouldn't clear my balance until I paid that and the tuition ($734 if I remember correctly). So I walked $934 to the business office (Business Office had the odd policy that they didn't take checks with numbers under 2000 and I didn't write a lot of checks). Took receipt over to the finance office which got my damn financial aid freed up. The Business Office "discovered my payment" which lead to me getting cash and heading back to the bank.

Friend bought a $15,000 truck in cash. We were a bit vigilant about that one. Rural US still has a lot of cash and handshakes.

We do not have free bank to bank transfers and are ornery enough to not want to pay the damn fee.

I still think carrying thousands of dollars around is foolish, but thanks for the examples of ... that's just how things have to work, sometimes.

Why is it foolish? I'm not real fond of being called a fool. I've had more problem with credit card fraud (and the lost money in fees because of it even if the original money was restored) then I ever had carrying cash. I don't honestly get this "you could be mugged" thinking. If mugging happens often enough that its a risk factor in carrying cash, then you need to think about where you are living.

If you drop a credit card somewhere, you call and cancel it. If you drop $1000, well, don't do that. (carry it? drop it? either?)

Weighing that against the risk of being mugged and having all the money suddenly disappear? I understand the 1000. That's an acceptable risk. I've paid for college like that before.

But 15k for a used truck, all cash? No thanks. I don't suppose your friend also totes a shotgun around with him just in case someone decides they want that 15k too?

The vehicle we were in did have a shotgun rack, but someone mugging him was a pretty low possibility. It was a restored truck (very nice old Ford). It would have to be some stranger from out of area. Calling some dumbass's uncle for starting trouble is still a pretty effective crime solving technique in large parts of the US.

[edit] where the heck do you live that muggings are commonplace?

Never said it was common, I'm just saying I don't think it's worth the privacy to expose yourself to that amount of risk.

Also the gov is gonna know you bought the truck when you register it, anyway.

It wasn't about privacy, it was just buying a truck. I never said it was about privacy. Hell, the DMV knew about the truck about 40 minutes after he bought it. The seller reported it as income[1]. This had nothing to do with privacy or fraud, and his bank wouldn't let him write checks for over $5,000 and he sure wasn't going to pay some fee for a certified check that the guy selling the truck wasn't going to take anyway.

We didn't see it as a risk. It was just a bit odd to have 150 $100 bills. Puts a little weight into the cost of what you're going to buy. Good thing he bought it too as his old truck (which I drove back, that's why he brought me not as some security) needed about $3,000 in repairs. He sold it to a farmer who did the repairs himself. My friend kept the truck for about 2 decades.

1) I remember his receipt pad. It was styled like something I imagine came out of a Dickens story. He basically bought wrecks and stuff in garages and restored some or built mods out of others. Pretty good retirement gig.

I'm kind of surprised that the bank had that much cash on hand. I've known people that saved up enough to pay off their mortgages (less money than you were talking about), when they went to withdraw the cash from their savings to take to the bank that held the mortgage, the first bank was down to giving them 20s.

Deal with a lot of farmers and your bank has reason to keep a bit of cash on hand. 15k really isn't that much to them. They did count it twice (unwrapped the paper around the groups of bills).

The only time I want my bank to have knowledge of who and how much I pay is in the small number of cases where I need a neutral third party to be able to vouch for payment details.

For things like paying employees, paying my taxes, or spending other people's money: I want maximum electronic and paper trail. Bank fees are hardly a concern.

For my own spending, I want no third party records even if banking fees are 0.