Cash in the BOB? Should you have cash in your bug out bag (BOB) or other emergency kit? I see that question pop up from time to time. Here’s my take on it.
What seems to be a running theme in many forums, is that cash will be worthless in a major collapse, such as an EMP. While that’s probably true, cash has value right up until it doesn’t. If the disaster hasn’t reached national proportions, odds are that those dollars and cents will still be accepted in most places.
Cash
Don’t get me wrong, if there is a financial collapse and the bottom falls out of the dollar, then of course our current currency will be worthless. But again, it still works just fine up until that happens.
Cash can solve an awful lot of problems in an emergency. It can get you a place to stay for the night, food to eat, clothes to wear, and just about anything else you need. Cash is king 99.9% of the time.
How many greenbacks?
How much cash should you have in your BOB or with your evacuation supplies? I’d recommend at least enough to pay for a full tank of gas, a decent motel for a night or two, plus meals for a couple of days, maybe a little extra for a cushion. Stick to small bills, nothing larger than a $20, as many smaller businesses don’t like big bills or may have trouble making change.
Related to this is whether you should keep gold or silver in your BOB. If one has to choose between cash and precious metals, I’d go with cash every time. While there are definitely SOME gas station attendants who would gladly accept gold or silver instead of US currency, I know that ALL of them will accept cash.
The problem with precious metals
Even though you might be utterly confident as to exactly what that gold coin is worth, the 17 year old manning the register at the Mobil station in the middle of nowhere might not have a clue and may be reluctant to accept it in lieu of what he sees as real money. If things are so serious that you’re needing to use gold to pay for gas, do you really want to waste time trying to convince him that it is real?
Let’s put it this way. If you and I pull up to the same gas station at the same time and I have $100 cash and you have a gold coin, want to bet which of us is going to be able to put gas in their vehicle or buy some food?
If you have the means to keep precious metals in addition to cash in your kit, go for it. I’m just saying that if you need to choose between the two, cash is likely to get you further.
Plastic… is it fantastic?
What about credit cards? If there is a major power outage, many places may not be accepting credit cards because their systems will be down. In those cases, they may still accept cash.
However, if you have a card you that can use for as long as those systems are running, that can extend your money supply for a bit. Every purchase you can make with the credit card is one you don’t need to spend your cash on, right?
If you’re thinking that there’s no way you’d ever need to spend money on anything during an evacuation, you lack imagination. There are any number of things that could happen that would cause you to end up deviating substantially from your bug out plan. Better to be prepared than to be caught flat-footed.
PODCAST:
Salty & Spice did an article podcast on this subject a couple of years ago, here’s a link to that show!
About the author
Jim Cobb is a well known freelance author on survival and other topics.
Want more information about Jim? You can find him and his publications on Facebook by clicking HERE!
Read other articles by Jim Cobb on 3BY by clicking HERE!
Cash, CC, Pmsā¦ use all three for bob.. You have three chances to survive your BOB location.
There are plenty of scenarios where the power goes out, but it is still possible to buy things with a small amount of cash.
I’m trying to think of a situation where you are out on the road and nobody will take cash anymore… seems to me you are in a bad spot. Don’t get me wrong, it could happen to anybody. For example disaster strikes while you are a thousand miles from home. Its hard to carry 60 gallons of gas in your go bag.
If a business is no longer taking cash, they probably feel there will be no resupply. To buy more inventory you need money, not chickens. At least in the short term, cash is helpful.
Actually it happened to a friend of mine last week, she stopped for gas and she went inside to prepay. The clerks said the station had switched to credit at the pump only. The rest of the stuff in the c-store they had the customers hold the goods to the clerk could hit the UPC with a hand scanner, then pay by card on the card reader on the other side of a clear acrylic shield.
That gave no contact between customer and clerk whatever.
My friend, who doesn’t do plastic… at all… was furious and vowed never to shop there again. Me? I can see both sides of the issue.
Wow! Thanks for sharing that. There is a good lesson there; We need to be prepared for just about ANY contingency. I lean toward agreeing with your friend, but can see a certain wisdom in card only due to the contagion. On the other hand, that protects the cashier, but customers are all touching the same keypad…
It feels like a slippery slope toward a cashless society though. These are truly frightening times.
If the power is out, the credit card machine may be down, but the pump won’t work either. At this point in time you need both cards and cash. In an emergency one or the other is likely to work.
You can have a backup power supply to run the pumps but in a power outage the internet could be down also or just the phone lines which CC transactions go through. I manage an Auto parts store in California and I am sure everyone knows that we at times lose our power. We can run a cash register on deep cycle battery;s and a power inverted but can’t do cards
POwer was out and the cashiers at Dollar Tree couldn’t take cash.
Everything was a $1, but the manager wouldn’t let the cashier write bar codes on items and take cash…X .06 % for tax.
Well if you are only worrying about end of the world situations then maybe cash in the BOB wouldn’t be any good but what if your grabbing your bag because a fire is coming? What if your leaving because of a hurricane or other storm? What if a tornado hit your area and you need to bug out to your relative in another state? There are lots of reasons to have cash in your BOB
Fire, tornado… In these two scenarios, driving up to 15-50 miles gets you in an area where everything works, including card readers. In case of a hurricane, you may need to drive a hundred miles to get back into an area with power. The point is, whether fire, tornado or hurricane, you are more than likely in your bug out vehicle (which may be the lowly family car). Having cash in your BOB is fine, but your BOB will probably be sitting in the trunk while you’re driving (not walking) to your temporary evac location. In a true, full blown TEOTWAWKI situation, cash would probably become worthless within 72 hours.
Ok, a SHTF scenario happens and the power is out for and extended period of time and rioting and chaos becomes rampant. You decide to bug out into the country with your tent, provisions,weapons,MRE’s,fishing gear etc.
Several days into the chaos and mayhem, you start to run out of food and the stores are all closed. You run across some like minded people that have plenty of supplies but they don’t want to trade with you, but will take cash, and all you have is a credit card. Good luck with that!
First, thank your for the comment Scott.
The situation you describe is a bit of a straw-man argument, because none of us have said that a person shouldn’t have other valuable trade goods to bargain, nor is anybody saying (in this or other articles we’ve had on this subject) that fiat money / paper money would remain valuable long-term in a TEOTWAWKI situation.
What we are talking about is having cash available for those that will take it, because it’s light, it’s easy to carry and everybody knows what it is. Early on in a crisis, people will take cash.
As somebody who lives “in the country” where a lot of people are planning to bug out to, there’s not a whole lot that people can carry with them that will impress me enough to let them stay on my land… unless somebody has a definite place to go set up ahead of time, bugging out and living out of a BOB long term is not a very good plan.