I’m not sure what the heck is happening but….do schools teach maths much?
I’m always doing a count in my head so I know I won’t be paying full price when specials are on.
That’s my computer….(points to head) up here.

Yesterday I shopped in woolies supermarket, I am paying cash, and the deliberation of counting, checking what the change is supposed to be from the machine…
It was painful. I almost thought I wasn’t going to get any change with the fiddling of notes and putting in order etc. I had no idea what was going on.

The dreaded cash paying customer (me) 

My D.I.L. at work, was called by a younger employee to help sort a cash payment.
It was $170. The customer gave 3x $50 notes and 1x $20 note. The exact amount.
She asked for assistance as she said she was nervous handling cash.
My D.I.L. separated all the notes and showed her mathematically how it adds up.

I’m a little horrified but not surprised as I had noted a decline with maths aka money and a few times I’ve had to say it’s wrong it’s supposed to be this amount.

I think the blame is credit cards more than ever.
I thought how great it was to have credit card yet still do cash but that’s for my gen and my kids gen (millennials and X gen) to still understand and can grasp it.
And that’s about it!

So our discussions we had with our kids and their partners was that cash will disappear as a result of younger gens not being savvy with cash handling and mathematics of it.

By 2030 it will be more evident.
I think crypto currency will take hold then, despite its poor performance recently.

Drive-thru at McDonalds. Ordered a meal that came to $15.70. Handed the girl at the window $20... and then another 70 cents, so that she could give me back $5. She said, you are just giving me more money. It seems the concept of relieving yourself of excess change does not occur to the younger generation.

Then again, some Baby Boomer came into my workplace and paid cash for her order. I gave her the right change. She abruptly said "No" and gave me more money and asked for the right change to be given. I did the math and just gave her back a straight $10 note swapping the $10 in change that she gave me. Again, she said "No" and then gave me back the $10 and asked for a $5. Basically, she ripped herself off by $5 because she thought she was being honest and correcting an 18 y.o. on how to handle money.

I struggled to contain my laughter as she walked out the door shaking her head in disbelief. The manager/shift supervisor asked me to do a play-by-play of what I did. I told him, given that my memory was super clear that day. He agreed that she ripped herself off.

Seven years later, that 70-something-year-old woman and her middle-aged daughter decided it was a good idea to not look both ways crossing the road in front of me riding a bike. Avoiding a crash, I rode behind them, given both ladies a fright. "Kids on bikes" the daughter shouted out at me. I pulled up the bike and did a u-turn to go back and give her a lesson on accountability. But, I might as well be talking to a brick wall.

Some days I wonder if I was part of the last generation to have any common sense.

Yeah, those little bastard coins were a bit of a problem for me. Round things to 10c and discard the 5c coins over the next few years. I remember when we got rid of the 1c and 2c pieces back in 1990.

As a pizza delivery driver, almost every order I got in the late 1990s was unpaid. A $19.95 pizza order would have the customer give me a $20, and they would say "keep the change". This was much the way things were for a while. The supervisor counting up the money at the end of the night told me to "keep the 5 cent tips on you. The money will add up at the end of the week".

I followed that sort of philosophy into my 30s when I started wearing a carry bag around town. If I paid by cash, the change would be put into my carry bag. Over time, I could just buy the occasional drink with the change. My latest wallet does not have a section to carry the change anyway.

I filled up a Coca Cola bottle with $2 coins and took it to the bank -- in the bottle. Perhaps I would be embarrassed to do that now. But, I thought the teller would be understanding of me tipping the coins onto the bench for counting. The teller told me that the next time I want to do that, I can just use money pouches and put $50 into each pouch. Then she can weigh the pouches as a way of counting the coins.