After 30 June 2010, the older £20 note with a picture of Elgar will no longer be legal tender. More details here.

This may be of significance to British readers who keep a cache of paper money on hand for emergencies. This is a wise precaution. Many urban problems can be solved with money, and sometimes cash is king. The £20 notes probably won't suddenly become worthless, but by the nature of things, emergency money is kept out of the way and rarely thought about. If you do nothing about this now, when an emergency happens in a few years you may be taken by surprise.

If you increased the size of your cache a year or two ago because there seemed to be a real possibility of a "banking holiday" then, you might want to re-assess how much you store now that the financial system seems relatively stable again (or not - you judge).

Don't forget your money belt, cash kept in the car, the bug-out bag etc. I was surprised how many old £20s I had.