At the beginning of May, I stopped using my credit cards (except for online purchases) and started paying for everything in cash.  For whatever reason, it is psychologically more difficult for me to spend $50 on a shirt if I'm paying in cash than if I'm paying on a credit card.  As such, I do less spending on unnecessary items.

However, I was not prepared for another aspect of paying in cash: how difficult it seems to be for cashiers to deal with cash.  I guess they just don't see cash very often these days, so it seems to throw some of them for a loop.  In the past month and a half, here is what I've seen:

- A calculator wasn't working at one place, and the clearly frustrated cashier couldn't figure out how much change to give me.  He offered me $11 in change, when I only needed $8.

- At another place, my total was $36.  I gave the cashier $46, wanting to get $10 back.  She looked at me like I was retarded, held up the two twenties that I gave her and said, "This is all you need."  I explained that I wanted to simplify my change, and she looked at me like that was the first time she had heard of such a thing.  When she opened the cash drawer, there were no $10 bills, so she turned to her manager and asked her what she should do.  The manager had to tell her to give me two $5 bills.

- When eating at a restaurant, I paid in cash, and when the waiter brought back the change, he had decided that it was too difficult to deal with coins, so he just kept them.  Instead of $12.38, he just returned $12.  Needless to say, this affected his tip.

- When buying groceries, my total was $123.54.  I gave the cashier $125.54.  She put in the money, gave me my receipt, but no change.  I started to object, and she realized that she needed to give me some change.  I guess she was just used to have cards scanned, which doesn't require her to pay out any cash.

i like charging everything,, that way i can log into my CC account daily and see how much i've spent for the month,, plus charging 4-5k a month with mimimim 1% cash back rewards equals a nice $500+ check every 10 months. When your bank account and credit card are the same company,, you can also wait until the last day to transfer the balance online..

This first paragraph explains where my trouble comes from, as my only unnecessary & impulsive purchases ARE the online purchases. 

Like you, I don't make unnecessary purchases with cash, so physical shopping is very easy to rein in and keep under control when you're faced with forking over a handful of greenbacks.

Impulsive purchases are much too easy to make online, as the instant gratification from a few easy clicks is where the trouble is, even when using Paypal linked to checking rather than credit.

Great stuff, Crash.  Amusing but not altogether surprising.

I tend to do the same thing (simplifying my change) when I eat lunch at work sometimes.  I once gave a cashier $21.95 for a $6.95 meal, and I could literally see the gears churning in her head as she tried to figure out what to do with that.  She had simultaneously forgotten that a) she could do math, and b) that if she just put $21.95 into the cash register it would spit back out what I should get in change, $15.  She finally clicked it into the register, saw how much change I was supposed to get, and went "Ohhhhh.  Tricky!"  I can't even make that line up.

In Germany and Poland, I pay by cash, and to the penny. (or euro/zloty)

But in the USA its better to just use the credit card, swipe and go.
and then go home and pay it off in a week so that your credit looks good and you have no interest.

This is exactly what I do.  I get 1-2% cash back depending on what I buy with my main credit card.  I've earned over $150 in the past year alone, and that's FREE money as long as you pay your whole balance off each month, which I do.  Plus it really does boost your credit history and score.  I track my score from time to time and it's only gone up since I started using this card on a daily basis.  I still use cash for little things though, like buying a snack or a drink at my local gas station.  I can't stand people who buy things like a pack of gum or a Snicker's bar with a credit card.

Another benefit of favoring credit card usage is, as longhairmike already said, that you can check out your entire purchase history online and keep track of how much you spend and on what.  Mint.com is an excellent service for people who like doing this.  It can really shock the hell out of you though.  Since last September, I've spent $450 at Dunkin Donuts.  That was mainly due to me getting a $5 breakfast every morning and then sometimes a snack in the afternoon.  But thanks to Mint's clever way of graphing that out for me, I have since cut waaay down on my visits to Dunkin.

Ok, that Mint.com is SCARY. I did not want to know how much I used Paypal since March. Quite higher than I thought...

I couldn't help but think of this Dilbert comic.

I never use my credit cards (they are there for "emergencies"), but between my check card and direct deposit I never handle cash. It simplifies things so much, and no one can bum money off of me I have denied business to establishments unable to process card transactions, especially when traveling. I guess the flipside is that I don't have any amusing stories to tell.

One more instance that I didn't work into my earlier post:

I was ordering a pizza to go.  I paid the cashier and waited for my change.  She paused for a moment, then said, "You know, I was never very good at math.  How much change do you get?"

I used to pay for everything with credit cards, but given how much I've spent on them over the years, I thought it was time I tried to cut back a little.  I keep track of each of my purchases in a little notebook that I carry around, so I still maintain my spending records.

Don't most cash registers tell you the change when you punch in how much the customers give you as part of their design? How can this be a problem for some people?

Because some people in this day and age still have difficulty doing the math to turn that LED displayed number into 'green paper and metal circles'.

And Carl, the way that I can limit my online spending is to do the following:

1. Every week, I take out a certain amount of money from my bank account in cash.  That's the money I use to pay for everything other than rent.

2. If I buy something online, I take the cost of the purchase in cash and put it in a box.  Any money in the box is off limits for spending, since it represents money that I've already spent.

3. At the end of the month, any money in this box is redeposited in my account.

I find it easier to avoid impulse purchases online because, to my mind, there is no instant gratification.  For me, the gratification comes from having the item in hand, not from simply making the purchase.  Unless I'm buying a download, I know that I won't receive my order for at least a couple of days, so it's easier for me to resist than if I were to see the product before me and know that it could be in my possession in minutes.

YES YES YES.  This!  I totally don't understand why everyone I know is all gung-ho about all shopping moving in the direction of online because it's supposedly easier or faster or whatever.  How is it better for me to have to wait a couple days for an item than to just drive 5 minutes to a store and walk out the door with it in hand right at that very moment?  Sorry, that's a bit thread derailing, but this made me think of it.

driving in traffic = sucks..
10% Cook county IL sales tax = bigger sucks

There's also the fact that there's sooooooo much more online, especially when it comes to media. Hell, we're on a message board dedicated to music that the majority of time requires importing, so I find it odd anyone would complain about online shopping here...

And yeah, it's easier just to sit at home and browse at will instead of getting in the car, being annoyed by traffic lights, searching through all the stuff that you've seen 100 times before just to MYABE find that one thing. Of course for many types of things it's better to buy offline, and yes there's the instant thing, but still...

Yeah, I don't have any strong desires to acquire common household items sitting on my local store shelves, but I do get strong "gotta have it!!" desires when it comes to stuff from other countries that I can't get otherwise.

The instant gratification of an online purchase is just as much about "thrill of the hunt" and when you place that order, you've bagged your hunt, even though it's not in your hands yet it's "on the way".  There's a sense of accomplishment when you bag a cool item that you're interested in, which is otherwise completely unavailable in your own country.