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My dad asked me to get some old £20's swapped the other week.
Came out with £2.5k's worth in a tin!!
WTF is it with old folk and stashes of cash. 🙂
Point of note (so to speak!) "legal tender" relates to the paying off of debts, it has nothing to do with spending in shops.
I don't think I've even seen a £50 note.
Don't forget that Legal Tender only applies to being able to use them in shops*, you will always be able to exchange them for new notes, usually via your own bank but always via the Bank Of England. It's due to them having the Treasurer's signature on them so it doesn't apply to coins. A good idea to get them done now but if you find any in the future they're still exchangeable.
My dad asked me to get some old £20’s swapped the other week.
Came out with £2.5k’s worth in a tin!!
WTF is it with old folk and stashes of cash. 🙂
I worked in a bank when the £20 note changed design and the amount of old people that brought in bundles of them in carrier bags, hidden in jackets and one in a suitcase was an eye-opener. The record was in the region of £35k in one bag, a crazy amount of money to keep at home. I know my uncle has in the region of £30k stashed in his bungalow as he doesn't trust banks to look after it and doesn't want the government knowing what he has. I've tried explaining to him that it's protected in a bank account and that by hiding (and not declaring) his savings he is committing Benefit Fraud as he's registered Blind, lives in a council bungalow and claims every benefit going. There's lots more out there like him so there will be old notes reappearing for decades to come. Back in my Bank days it was still normal to see the odd bundle of original £1 and £5 notes come in after someone had cleared am old relative's house!
* Edit: Cougar's point is correct but for most people it's the shop use that matters most.
I don’t think I’ve even seen a £50 note
I have used them to buy cars a few times (less to carry than £20s), some sellers only want £20s though.
Get tradesmen paying cash in £50 notes regularly
My dad asked me to get some old £20’s swapped the other week.Came out with £2.5k’s worth in a tin!!
WTF is it with old folk and stashes of cash.
My grandfather was the same.
On one occasion, he'd been paid in cash for a big backlog of work at the church - they hadn't paid him for ages and ages and he was always too nice to ask for it, didn't want to cause a fuss etc but it was several thousand they owed him and eventually (after intervention from my Mum when she found out), the church paid up, big brown envelope with about £3000 in (a huge sum of money back then).
A day or so later we were all on a family day out and he revealed that he was still carrying this envelope around in a jacket pocket "because it was safer". He hadn't wanted to leave it in the house in case it got burgled. 🙄 This in spite of them having a small safe there and any number of hidey-holes, obscure drawers etc for it. Unbelievable that an old man was simply carrying this amount of money around with him, proper WTF moment. My Mum went mad with him - the amount of trouble she'd gone to to get the church to pay up and he was walking round a prime target for being mugged or dropping/losing it.
Clearing out the house after they'd died, we turned up several hundred £ in random notes lying around the place.
it doesn’t apply to coins.
Are you sure? I found a long-forgotten old piggy-bank not all that long ago - two years maybe? - and it was full of the old-style round £1 coins. I took them to the bank and they exchanged them just fine.
he was walking round a prime target for being mugged
He's no more likely to be targeted for a mugging just because he's got an envelope with him.
It's weird though, I don't know how people do it. Buying my first PC back in the 90s, I pulled out £1,500 from the bank and walked the three blocks to the computer shop. I was shitting bricks every step, felt like I had a big pink neon sign over my head going "mug me!"
I've got a paper fiver in my wallet that I've been meaning to take to the bank for, well, ages.
Are you sure? I found a long-forgotten old piggy-bank not all that long ago – two years maybe? – and it was full of the old-style round £1 coins. I took them to the bank and they exchanged them just fine.
It's at the bank's discretion but legally they don't have to, the day they are no longer legal tender they technically become worthless but there is always an exchange period. The exchange period for the old £1 coins was extended multiple times due to there being so many of them! Banks generally now send them to charities that take old and foreign coins rather than upset their customers.