Cash was always the bedrock of financial life for previous generations. It was the paycheck you put off, the bills you added up, the savings you stashed away. But “Gen Z, I don’t think the cash is just outdated — it’s seen almost as a joke,” he added. You ask anybody in their teens or 20s, and you hear the same thing: Cash is make-believe money, something that barely exists in the world as they experience it.
If that sounds melodramatic, just spend a day watching how Gen Z deals with money. Nearly all of them haven’t handled cash in months. Some don’t even know where their closest A.T.M. is. The concept of strolling about with bills in their pocket feels old-fashioned, unnecessary and even a little chaotic. Everything in their world goes through apps, transfers, taps, swipes or digital wallets. Money is not something you hold anymore — it’s something you move.
Some of this change is due to pure convenience. Gen Z came of age in a digital economy where you split dinner on Venmo, pay for rides on Uber, groceries are delivered through apps and friends pay each other back with emojis attached. The whole concept of counting out bills or coin feels like a slow-motion relic from another age. Who’s going to take paper when you can tap your phone?
But the more fundamental reason cash feels phony to Gen Z: It’s because most of their financial life happens behind a screen. Balances aren’t physical. Paychecks appear instantly. Money flows through apps, from one account to another.” And that money can even become cash. Their bank isn’t a place — it’s an interface. Their spending is not recorded in receipts — it’s heard in notifications. So it’s no wonder that when you give someone in Gen Z a $20 bill, it feels like Monopoly money as opposed to something attached to their financial identity.
There’s also an emotional element. When money is digital, it feels like a liquid. Less painful. You swipe or tap your way through the commerce of life without feeling that sting of surrendering something physically. Which is why cash, paradoxically, feels less serious. Gen Z doesn’t use it, so when they encounter it — a random bill in a birthday card or a few crumpled dollars from the tip jar — any argument that cash is “real money” falls deaf on their ears. It’s akin to stumbling upon an outdated currency that no one uses.
This view is connected to how Gen Z sees value at large. They prioritize convenience over tradition. They prefer transparency over nostalgia. And they’d prefer to spend money in digital ecosystems where they already reside: subscriptions, delivery apps, online shopping, virtual items and experiences booked through platforms. Cash doesn’t fit into that world, so it becomes irrelevant.
Even the companies they serve reinforce the mentality. Cafes are going cashless. Events use QR codes. Stores push contactless payments. Friends expect instant transfers. Landlords collect rent through apps. Teachers accept digital submissions. The message is unequivocal everywhere they go: Cash is at best optional and — at worst — dirty and dangerous. When an entire cohort hardly ever holds physical cash, it soon feels as if it no longer exists.
Older ones sometimes read this as irresponsibility, but it’s actually adaptation. Gen Z came of age in a time of turmoil — recessions, inflation, unstable job markets, rising costs of living. Because those old ways don’t mirror the surrounding world anymore, they do not romanticize the old ways of handling money. The idea of digital cash seems efficient, trackable and speedy. For them, cash almost seems to take on the feeling of something you’d put into a drawer rather than as part of their strategy to keep and continue earning that hard-won money.
Still, this mindset has consequences. Virtual money can feel too abstract for some, and it can be easier to overspend. For others, it creates separation from traditional financial behaviors like budgeting or saving. But Gen Z would say their methods just got a little more sophisticated — budgeting apps, automatic transfers and digital envelopes took the place of manual systems previous generations relied on.
What is going on now is not a rejection of money. It’s a redefinition of it. Money isn’t king any longer, and that’s because the economy Gen Z is growing up in doesn’t require a king. It is requiring speed, flexibility and simplicity. And nothing serves it up like digital currency.
So when a Gen Z kid laughs and tells me, “Cash isn’t real,” they’re not being glib. They are telling the truth about how their world really functions — a world of $20 interest rates and cumulative student debt, where green paper slips through our fingers and is replaced with plastic or a few zeros on screens in seconds.
