Putting your money in a bank _was_ your choice though; you could have kept it under your mattress.

It really isn't though.

Try paying 600€ worth of taxes in Portugal with cash and all you'll get is a fine because its banned.

Try to buy a macbook? You better have a bank account because its illegal to buy it using cash.

You owe 3000€ to a friend who lent it to you? Can't just give him the money 100€ bill at a time because that's illegal too.

Anyone who says "you're not forced to use banks" or "cash has value because you must pay your taxes with it" is either ignorant or intentionally misleading.

I don't think that law is common, though; even the European Central Bank was quite critical when it was presented by the Portuguese assembly.

Actually...I doubt that. At least in US, for the company I worked for, I don't think there is an option for me to be paid in cash in the first place. Even in reality people use check though, that still requires a bank account.

I've recently had to cash checks without having my own bank account for a couple of months. The experience left me hating the banking industry. Certain banks won't even cash their own checks anymore! Other banks will cash their checks but want to take a $10(+-) fee for the privilege.

I ended up using Walmart to cash a check (the ones which weren't hand-written because Walmart won't do that) and using their moneycard as my debit/credit card for payments. This system worked reasonably well, but I do not want to go back to it.