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Comment by Hnrobert42 | Hacker News Reader

In that case, it might be wise for you to withdraw some cash now (depending on your financial situation). I keep a couple hundred in crisp bills of varying denominations in a go bag.

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I second this, although I'm not as well prepared but I like having an extra $80-$100 in cash around the house for "just in case" situations... you never know when you'll need it.

How long would that last you, though? I’d go through that in a week…

If a widespread power outage lasts more than a week, you would have bigger issues to deal with and (hopefully) community resources to draw upon. Otherwise, there is a good chance that things would be brought back up piecemeal, and you would be able to get cash or pay via credit/debit at least somewhere.

Typically go bags are emergency items meant for immediate "GO"ing during or right before a natural disaster, forced evacuation, civil unrest, or condemnation of your living space. So it would a week to get your feet under you.

If there is like a hurricane and your whole city is out of power for a week and you can't leave, there will be distributions of water and food pretty quickly.

IMO you need the cash more to make the first day or two easier, or if there is a card payment outage as happened last year here in Canada,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Rogers_Communications_o...

Moneris just had an outage a week or two ago on Sat.

How much would 0 dollars last you?

My whole life.

Hey - where do you live? When are you not present in your place? Just asking out of curiosity.

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