I have no idea how much cash we keep on hand in the house, as DH takes care of it. However, this thread reminds me of a recent sad event.

DH and I had a garage sale and got rid of a bunch of stuff that was just taking up space. Of course, all transactions were in cash. At the end of the day, DH counted up the money and I privately wondered what I could buy with the money. Then comes the sad part. DH put all that beautiful cash in the safe and I didn't get to spend any of it. You see, most of the cash that we had in the safe was hundred dollar bills left over from an overseas trip, which wouldn't be very useful in a local emergency. And our bank account has never been in a position where I felt comfortable withdrawing a large sum of cash just to put in the safe. Sigh. We put all this effort into getting a garage sale together, and now we have pratically nothing to show for it. All those lovely ones and fives and tens ended up tucked away. However, it was a decent way to accumulate some emergency cash in small bills without taking money away from anything else.

-Kuovonne