How much cash would be good for a Bug Out Bag?

I'm trying to build up to $1,000 in small bills ($1's, $5's $10's & $20's) for my "at home BoB"

On the road and on the boat, I have the cash that I'm carrying for the trip and between $10 - $20 in quarters.

IMHO small bills no larger than $20's, I have $5's and $10's in my bag, $500 worth. You need to determine what's uses you may have for the money in a bug out situation and how long you expect to depend on it.

I guess it would vary, depending on the specifics of the situation ... maybe $100 or less for short-term, and I would think somewhere in the $500 to $1000 range might be good for a more long-term event.
I would opt for carrying smaller bills; heavy on $1s, $5s, and $10s, with nothing over $20 bills.
And spread the cash around amongst your carry if possible; so there is less chance of losing all of it at once.

Some coins may be useful, if you expect having to feed a machine that does not accept bills.
And, I suppose you might want to carry some old Silver coins; if the bug-out involves some sort of economic collapse scenario. [Yikes !!!]

More is better, but once you get over £1000 or so, inflation and/or loss of interest start to make it expensive and I think the law of diminishing returns sets in.

I have heard some paranoia about a "banking holiday" as one response to the financial crisis. I've not managed to get my head around what that would look like. For example, this Chris Martenson scenario talks of access restricted to "$250 over every 48 hour period", which sounds reasonable and I don't see much need for large amounts stockpiled. Elsewhere on that site he recommends keeping a few months supply of cash on hand, which seems more extreme.

More the better obviously, and if you can survive the loss of bank savings rate (mine is 7.5% for the first $750, but something like 3.25% for amounts more than that).

One way to accumulate the money - every night, I come home with loose change and dollars in my pocket. I put the $1s and sometimes the $5s and $10s in a drawer. Its done, and the way things work my wife draws from it as necessary for the kids or pizza, and so do I, but it does accumulate over time. $1 bills seem to be the new quarter, you can accumulate them and not miss them if you set them aside. Every now and then I also pocket a $20 this way, and as a result have $750 set aside in small bills, over $100 in ones, and a roll of quarters in each vehicle. I also have $100 in small bills set aside in my car, though I expect that to get stolen during a breakin, but it has been a good idea at least twice to have ready cash in the car. Just accumulate it as you go, as you can. For a long while I stopped at $500, then recently upped it to $750 cash.

I think this is one of those things that is going to be purely situational. I know for a fact I have heavy expenses coming if my wife cannot get her meds from the house for some reason. However if I am alone and trying to get to my family, I won't need nearly as much. (Unless I am in Siberia trying to get back to Texas!!)

I keep a regular cash stash and a medicine cash stash due to the expense of her scripts.

Currently the BOB has $300.00, of which $275 is small bills, 1, 5, 10, & 20s, and the remainder is quarters. A widely accepted credit card on a major bank is also included for the occasion where the event is a personal emergency and not a true "bug out" scenario. Other resources available through a good local "partisan" network if needed. It's great to have like minded friends.

I believe Doug recommends at least $100 in small bills (5's, 10's and 20's) and a roll of quarters in his 3 day scenario/podcast outlined on equipped.org. The max I've seen is $1000/BOB. It is definitely situation and location dependent. I would at least like to have enough on hand to pay last months rent and a train/bus ticket if need be.

We have $500.00 in cash
2x $20.00 phone cards
3 x $50.00 non-expiring giftcards for a 1) national chain restaurant, 2) national hardware/sporting goods chain, 3) national chain grocery store.

All the above is just not for the BOB...chances are we would use the above when any type of large enough local weather related event or local human caused event that would prevent us from getting to a bank in time but no with need to evacuate the immediate area.

Money stays in my wallet on my body. Period.
I am not ever going to stash cash where it can be separated from me by accident.
If there is any more hide away cash I can slip it into the waste band of my pants or the backside of my belt.
I have a cordura wallet with compartments so stuffing a few (5) twenties and a few extra coins into it is no problem.
A tooney, two looneys, four quarters and 5 dimes is the small change department. That adds up to $105.50 as emergency cash.
The spare paper money and ID should be in flat waterproof pouches just in case your wallet gets wet. The little flat pouches I use are the same as you see used for sample collection.

I like the 3x non-expiring giftcards idea. I'll have to remember that.

$1000 in small bills and a couple of ounces of gold and silver for the long term situation.

I remember on 9/11 that the ATM's did not work for several hours. What if it is several days or a couple of weeks?

The ATM's did not work in the immediate NY area. The ATM's and credit card processors in other parts of the country still worked fine. Even so, after this event, banks and the big credit card companies have invested millions of dollars in improving their infrastructure with multiple redundancy points and automatic load shifting of processing so that one large area interruption does not effect other areas.

If the banks are using redundant data back haul that feeds thru the same C.O. or even the same manhole in the street, it may still be killed out by damage to those structures. You would be surprised how many times I have seen major companies tout their redundant backup plans, only to have the fiber for each redundancy share a telco conduit underground.

This just got me to thinking of a past incident or two during my time with the LEC telephone company. I shall start a new thread.

My question to all is: Do you live in a single strand community?

Even with redundancy remember there was one bank that used Microsoft servers for their ATM database and was down due to a worm that infected all the database servers so there will always be something that wasn;t covered.

You are correct, there is no such thing as being prepared for all contingencies.
There are far too many variables and in the case of the Slammer worm attacks on Jan 25, 2003, this attack could of easily been preventable by ALL companies who were affected as Microsoft had a patch available for the vulnerability months before the attack.

This may be a bit anal, but I "portion control" my preparedness cash by vacuum packing it in increments of $200.
If I want to touch it for a particular situation, it is easier to justify borrowing a $200 packet from myself and easier to remember to replenish. Sort of like freezing the credit cards in a block of ice, you still need to find sizzors to open up a packet. I have gotten some strange looks when I can produce $200 shrink wrapped singles when the neighbors decide they want to play liars poker at 1AM.

In an emergency of the shelter-in or bug-out variety, or if there were simply a mass power outage, it would be priceless to not have to panic about two vital items: gas and cash.

So I keep my gas tank pretty full (a habit acquired post 9/11) and about $1k on hand (more if all the uncounted change were added up -- an item on the to-do list). In my mind, the $1k would be most critical for buying more fuel -- which probably would quickly experience price inflation.

Wealth has never been so precarious as in this digital age.

In a discussion over the banks melting down last fall, I confided to a friend that I had $1k on hand. She would not appear to be the survivalist type, at all, so I thought she might think me a bit extreme.

Then she replied that she had taken $10k out of the bank, just in case.

In a survival crisis, the greatest wealth is tangibles: water, food, shelter, fuel. But some cash could be handy.

$1,000. Minimum.

One thing to consider is that a $100 bill has a different impact than 5 $20 bills. Small bills are what you want to have for most things, but if you have over $500 or so, you definitely want some of it to be in $100 bills.

I always have at least $600 or so hidden in my wallet. Sadly, most of it is in $100's. In the safe in the home on wheels we keep another $500 or so, most of that in smaller bills...

I have never viewed cash as a long term survival need. Only short term. So I only keep $100 emergency funds in a small metal vial attached to my keychain. Of course, the last "emergency" we had was the non-credit-card purchase of a wool sweater up at the Llama Festival in Estes Park (don't laugh - I went along like a good husband!)

If I need lots of cash long term, that means the banking system has failed and so have my communications with relatives scattered across the country. Chances are, in such a widespread event, cash wouldn't be worth all that much anyway. Trading goods would be better. And I don't think gold would be all that great for trading myself. What would one do with a chunk of gold (except hide it and horde it) if what you really needed was food or a rifle? I certainly wouldn't trade my rifle for your chunk of gold (unless I had an endless supply of rifles!)

Most of the banks I've done work for use Oracle on Unix.

I have cash in three places, a folded up stash in my wallet, another stash in my PSK and an old wallet in my BOB. Its split evenly between the three. That way if I loose one I still have the others.

I also organize my ready cash especially when I travel, not in shrink wrap but in snack sized ziplock bags - they fit bundles of US cash perfectly.

I always have a small bison capsule on my keyring with a folded and rolled up $20.00 (VERY tightly rolled up) and a small piece of paper with important family and friends phone numbers, the "800" number and account numbers for a pre-paid calling card with 400 non-expiring minutes on it, and a spare key to my car.

I call it my urban (cash and call for help/or at least drive home) capsule, in case I should lose/be robbed of everything but what's in my pocket.

I keep $40 in singles in my vehicle BOB, and about $800 in cash and silver coins stashed away at home.

I'm not trying to dump on an idea, but you'd probably be better off keeping the extra $150 in cash. In the last year, a good many folks have been left holding now worthless gift cards. I've seen cards demagnetized, the strip scratched beyond use, and companies go out of business. Additonally, being tied to said stores pretty much limits options when you're operating on the fly, late at night, or on a day they aren't open. ...and that is all IF a store doesn't change their card policy (which they CAN and may do).