Also, taking out $100 in 2017 is silly, at least if you spend more than $200 a week, which is most non-students here. I just get out the max that the ATM will let me have and I never regret it.
"But what if I get mugged?" This is silly. If you actually do get mugged, you want to have a big load of money on you, not $3.29. Happy muggers mean fewer dead programmers.
If you're working with euros your largest denomination coin is 2€ . In Yen it's 500 yen! This is not chump change and just throwing those coins into the charity box can leave you with effectively increasing your lunch pricing by 50% if you have a "give all coins to charity" policy.
If you have the cash for it more power to you, of course.
500 yen's over £3, so I'm guessing you don't get many of those in your lunch change? The top result for "how much is lunch in Japan" [1] suggests that your 500 yen coin would just about cover the next day's lunch and is lighter (barely; 7 grams versus 8.75g) than a British one pound coin [2,3].
The coin sorting machines that you might tip a coin jar into take a decent chunk of your money for the privilege of counting it (e.g. CoinStar charge 9.9% [4]).
1: https://www.withhusbandintow.com/costs-to-eat-in-japan/
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)
That works even when coins have non-trivial value.
Most of the rest of the world seems to have lighter coins and more smaller note denominations, which is way more convenient.
Sounds awfully inconvenient. I'm constantly having to travel to the bank to get more cash, it's easy to lose, steal and destroy, the money I get in change might be counterfeit, it takes a lot more effort to track my cash purchases, and it turns out banks charge merchants a fee for handling cash too! (a local example of a fee schedule: https://www.oregonstatecu.com/business#/tab/fees)
Perhaps this all is a cost some feel is worth paying in exchange for privacy, but a cost nonetheless.
Also, you go to the bank to get cash? This may vary by geographic region, but where I live (NYC) there's I'm rarely near a place that doesn't have an ATM within a hundred feet or so.
Guess money could be counterfeit. But I've never encountered counterfeit bills, at least that I know of or that has inconvenienced me, and I haven't heard of it as a problem among the people I know who run cash-heavy businesses (mostly restaurants). Identity theft, however, is an epidemic, and has happened to literally everyone I know, except for (some) of the kids below the age of 14. Some of these cases can take years to clean up, and they often start with using plastic at a big chain, like Target or Home Depot.
Cards are nice for big purchases, like appliances or a large dinner out, or when shopping online . But cash is the thing.
Have any of these ever happened in your adult life? If so, how often?
Oh, my phone is out of batteries. Guess I'll just give up and head home.
Oops, looks like a hurricane/forest fire/proletarian uprising has knocked out local infrastructure. (Luckily, this almost never happens anymore!) Man, it would be great if we had a medium of exchange that would work under these adverse conditions. Guess I'll just barter my Harry's razors and other hipster goods to get some formula for my baby!