Ode to a scruffy fiver

It’s two weeks till payday and as usual I’m about to call on my overdraft to finance the next fortnight. This half in credit half in debt monthly cycle is a depressing indication that I’m living just beyond my means, but then who isn’t?
In fact with personal debt in the UK wavering around a staggering £3 trillion I should be feeling rather pleased with myself that I start each pay packet in the black, even if it is only for about ten days. Like many people, and nearly everyone I know my age, I’m in denial when it comes to my personal finances.
But, as is becoming the fashion in Britain, I’m looking for someone or something else to blame. And I think I’ve found it. In, of all places, my wallet. No, not my poor abused credit card or my equally maltreated debit card, but the crumpled, ripped and Sellotaped five pound note that, until I spend it, is the thin blue cotton fibre line between staying in the black and spiralling into the red. This flaccid, fading, worn piece of rag should read “I promise to pay the bearer this tatty rag”. I’ve torn it again getting it out of my wallet to inspect it, like my finances it is a mess. I’ll be almost embarrassed to swap it for lunch later.
It’s not just my current fiver that’s in a state, though. It seems to be every £5 note that’s passed through my wallet in the last few years. Unless I keep getting the same note, each time in an increasingly distressed state, I’d wager there’s something afoot here. “There’s no conspiracy,” says a spokesperson for the Bank Of England. Honestly? “Honestly. Although, I can see that it might look like that to some people.” Skint journalists for instance? No comment.
So what is the problem with £5 notes, then?
The Bank Of England say it’s down to the fact that there are so many £5 notes in constant circulation, over £1 billon worth. “The circulation really hasn’t changed for a number of years but the way we and business view £5 notes has. For instance, many retailers simply don’t bother to bank £5 notes any more, they keep them overnight in the tills as change which is given to customers who exchange it in other shops, so a five pound note will rarely get back to the bank’s sorting systems who would replace torn and scruffy notes when they encountered them”.
We the consumers are also to blame, reckons the Bank of England, “because we don’t really respect a £5 note like, say a £10 or a £20 or a £50, like the shops we view them as small change, we crumple them up and stuff them in our pockets, they get badly worn and torn and in quite a state, but because, unlike other higher denominations, they often don’t make it back to the banks they don’t get replaced. People seem to accept £5 notes in bad condition, even when they’re held together with old bits of sticky tape. As The Bank Of England we’re not responsible for issuing the notes, and as far as I know there aren’t any plans to recall the old notes and reissue new ones, it does happen but in a very slow trickle”.
So that’s why your fiver’s in such a state, it’s a cycle of abuse. We can’t live with them so we screw them up (I was once in a relationship based along similar lines - I was the fiver - but that’s a different story altogether) and we can’t live without them so we don’t take them to the bank to be cared for. Who knows, maybe the Bank Of England has a special section that rehabilitates old notes with a stern pep talk and a steaming iron.
As it stands we seem to be ashamed of them. In fact a fiver says you’re harbouring a dirty and tatty blue secret in your wallet or purse right now and you can’t wait to get rid of it. But I still think there’s a more sinister game at play and the banks are rolling loaded dice.
As it stands I’m still six pounds in credit with my bank, we’ll call them NatWest, but I won’t be able to go to an ATM and get another fiver out because banks don’t load them in their machines anymore. Which means I have to take a tenner out to buy lunch and bus fares tomorrow, which puts me in the red by £4 and kickstarts the bank charges a full day before they need to.
Yes, I know I could go to the bank and draw the money out, but I only get an hour for lunch and have you seen the queues? I do enough clock watching when I’m at work, I don’t intend to do it in my lunchtime as well.
Thankfully I’m by no means financially stricken (just embarrassed) and, like I say, I’m used to going into the red and have the facility to support it each month. But if I was on the dole or living on a pension then I can immediately see the benefits of being able to draw a lone fiver from my bank account.
The banks can’t, although when it comes to being able to make charges in a round about way I think they can. A spokesperson from one institution, let’s call them NatWest, tells me, “NatWest stopped dispensing £5 notes from its cash machines around ten years ago. Cash machines can only physically hold so many notes, therefore stocking the machines with notes of a higher denomination means there is more cash available for a greater number of customers. As the averagewithdrawal amount at our cash machines is £63, there is therefore little demand for a low value note like the £5”.“Low value” is a telling description that speaks volumes about our changing attitude to money, the one that’s shifted from a religious adherence to saving to a carefree accumulation of credit (and subsequently debt).
Once, a five pound not falling from a Birthday card made a child feel like a millionaire, now you’d feel sorrow and shame for the stingy well wisher.