Cash is dead to me. Is that why I have no money?

The one percenters add up, too. Surcharges for card transactions have become de rigueur, and while 14c here and 28c there seem harmless in isolation, these little skims off the top compound the evaporation. Bank profits are at record levels for many reasons, but surely one of them is that we’re having more money sucked out of our accounts, sliver by silver sliver.

The loss doesn’t feel real when it’s just digits dancing on a display. The pay comes in, then the mortgage, childcare bill and direct debit treadmill eats it up, and whatever is leftover can be spent in a slip of the thumb.

Some of this feeling can be written off as the responsibilities of middle age, some of it’s down to the cost of living crisis (and millions are doing it much tougher), but there are times I’ve found myself not treating money seriously. As if it was just electrons on a screen and not really mine anyway. Fritter, fritter. Because it’s made of energy, it doesn’t seem to matter.

A change came over me recently when change was handed to me. Banknotes slotted into an unfamiliar part of the wallet and it felt like I had real money again. It reanimated a dormant part of me, and it became clear how differently I weighed and calculated using cash. Breaking a $50 note is a big deal in a way that handing credit card details over for a family-sized streaming plan isn’t.

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It still feels a bit wrong, like a throwback to a more primitive time, but it has adjusted my thinking. There’s even been some old-fashioned top-of-the-head addition and subtraction, which disturbed a few cranial cobwebs. Had I not been doing maths homework with a seven-year-old, I would need to learn how to count all over again.

Having a couple of twenties on hand is a reminder that money is finite, and that’s the next problem to be fixed: how to get endless riches. The banks seem to have worked that one out. Now if only they’d share it with the rest of us.

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