right but how much emergency cash is needed? He had a transfer of 6000 plus whatever else? Should one have 6000 in emergency cash available? Seems excessive.

Anyway lots of countries seem to think they are soon going cashless, so good luck with that.

Actually withdrawing too much cash was one of the reasons cited in the article for banks closing down people's accounts ;)

Going off of this article at least, it can take a few weeks for a bank to either reopen your account or send you the balance. Having around a month's worth of emergency cash would make sense to be able to handle an account closure like this.

I am a firm believer of having 10% of ones liquid net worth in cash or equivalent not gatekept by anyone but myself.

This is from extremely hard won personal experience.

Yes, it's a lot of cash. I don't mean keep it all under your mattress.

Edit: A month of your total living expenses including mortgage/rent is what I would deem as both reasonable, and an absolute bare minimum. Not having this on hand would make me feel extremely uncomfortable as you are living at the pleasure and whims of others.

One day, pirates learned they could get better interest on their treasure by putting it into banks than they could by burying it. But many had forgotten where they buried it and were not able to take part in this new world

I suppose the smart pirate would diversify their portfolio. Keeping it all the bank doesn't sound super smart for a pirate who might be unmasked and assets seized.

Certainly no form of wealth storage is without risks!

$200 emergency cash would have allowed him to fill up with gas, and pay for a motel or wherever he was going over the weekend.

Having multiple cards would too (I have a debit card and two credit cards, kept at home, but I don't want to be stuck with no money if my wallet/phone gets stolen)

I have no idea why a university which had received multiple on time payments would suddenly drop someone off the role for paying a few days late (especially with a reasonable excuse like "my bank put my account on hold")

Not to deviate with the original issue, which is banks suddenly freezing funds, with no warning.

The $200 would've helped guarantee food and gas, it wouldn't cover shelter, i was studying in California, the cheapest hotel was $130~ a night. I also tried explaining the situation to the university, but unfortunately you are considered a current student only if you paid your tuition.

There were also programs to help students in crisis (provide them with place to stay, food) but its only available to students who paid the tuition.

PS: As of that situation happening, now i have 6+ accounts with different banks, emergency cash, I do not want it ever happening to me again.

> I have a debit card and two credit cards, kept at home, but I don't want to be stuck with no money if my wallet/phone gets stolen

Ha. The same problem applies there too, and burned me at some random gas station in the middle of nowhere on the way to Spokane--8pm at night on a Friday--the bank raised a fraud alert on my credit card. The customer service agent said I had to talk to Fraud, who wasn't in until Monday. There were no hotels (not that I could pay for one of those either), nor any other customers to beg for change. We had to buy gas with change found in the seats and a miraculous disbursement of pity from the attendant. (This was an account with some no-name issuer, possibly Credit One. Only American Express and Capital One have ever been reliable for me in travel.)

Separate incident before that related to poor credit on my part at the time, but the issuer reduced my credit limit on a credit account without my knowledge.

You can't trust anything in the "cloud" will be there when you need it. Rather than hoarding gold or traveling with large amounts of cash (welcome back, literal highway robbery) the meddling to protect themselves needs to stop. Every bank is becoming PayPal.

Can you even stay at a motel with only cash these days?

You definitely need at least an ID, and often times they'll want a bigger cash deposit than you might expect, and even then they discourage it/many hotels do not allow it.

Well, sadly you are not the only one that did not believe me. My family, the closest to me, said the same thing, and it took a while to convince them i was not in california to play.. that is after coming back empty handed / degreeless.

Please refer to the FAQ from the university i was studying at. #10 to be exact https://sbs.fullerton.edu/about/FAQs.php I was late to pay the tuiton, only because the bank account was suddenly frozen, on a long weekend.

This is the program i was talking about, you can review the eligibility, which states that the student must be currently enrolled. https://www.fullerton.edu/basic-needs/

How long did the bank hold on to your money?

To me that says "talk to us before the deadline if you've got problems paying". What did they say when you said your bank was having problems?

I don't have any context into OP's story that isn't in this thread, but there's no legal requirement for a bank to immediately give you access to your funds if your account is closed, especially if its closed for suspicious activity. My wife had a PNC account closed when she was in college and their official position was that they would mail a cashier's check to the address on the account within 90 days. I'd be shocked if anyone in this situation has gotten access to their money within 30 days.

They said they got access in 1 week. That they got their roll in univ revoked in 1 week that happened to have a long weekend is dubious sounding either side - it all happened in 1 week feels tooshort on univ side or 1 week sounds too short on the bank side

They also said elsewhere that this "1 week" revocation of their university enrollment was the end of a long string of them not paying, not purchasing required insurance, etc.

Basically this happened at the worst possible time and by then the university had had enough of them not paying the bill and not following required policies.

> They said they got access in 1 week. That they got their roll in univ revoked in 1 week that happened to have a long weekend is dubious sounding either side

Yeah, I am not believing this story at all.

No University is going to disown you if you are late 1 week. The rest of the story is just as weak.

Sure it wouldn't solve this specific problem faced by this specific person at this specific time. But I'm willing to venture that a lot of people who had similar problems would have been in a much better spot had they had a bundle of cash in a sock drawer or something.

But cash can't be used for lots of things, even though legally it needs to be accepted anywhere. I can't imagine it would be easy to pay your $6,000 school tuition with a stack of $20 bills. You might be able to get a hotel room if you paid a hefty deposit on top of what the room actually cost, but you'd be just as likely to run into some 20 year old desk agent who can't be bothered to find the form for that, if it even exists.