Opinion

Anita Robinson: Decimalisation did not improve my financial savvy

It is fifty years since the introduction of decimal currency
It is fifty years since the introduction of decimal currency It is fifty years since the introduction of decimal currency

It’s fifty years since the introduction of decimalisation.

Reared in the era of pounds, shillings, pence and big white fivers, when horses and posh frocks were priced in guineas, I suddenly feel old.

And yes, I remember the hoo-haa the changeover created. The new currency was widely regarded as a tawdry substitute for the real thing – the coins light and tinny, the notes flimsy Bank of Toytown money. The transition was painful, not just in the shift from a base of nineteen and eleven pence to 99p, which sounded dearer, but wasn’t. Resistance was futile. We mourned the loss of the ten-bob note, the half-crown, the florin, the bob, the tanner, the thruppenny bit, the big brown penny that bought you a Bubbly or four blackjacks and the fairly useless ha’penny.

As a child, I had a rather tenuous grasp of the value of money. This was carefully fostered by my namesake, Aunt Nita. Being a wee late one with a tendency to precociousness and much in adult company, I was occasionally slipped a half-crown by a benign visitor. Aunt Nita was in there before the door closed behind them. “That silver penny is no good for buying sweets,” she’d tell me. “Give it to me and I’ll give you a nice brown one.”

As I grew in age and grace (note the absence of ‘wisdom’) we children in the street ran errands for neighbours, tuppence reward being the unspoken but understood rate, despite parental decree that we accept nothing. We spent the loot immediately and scoffed the evidence.

Thus began my unequivocal relationship with finance. It didn’t improve on closer acquaintance. As a student on a miserly grant, late night calls home regularly produced a big white fiver folded small in a brown envelope from my father. My first monthly teacher’s salary was gone in a fortnight. The Loving Spouse, when I was fortunate enough to meet him, was considerably more financially cautious. He drew me a little cartoon once of a jail cell window with a pound sign peering through the bars. “What’s this?” I asked. “Every pound a prisoner,” he said. Point made. Point taken – though the day he discovered I wasn’t paying off my monthly Barclaycard account in full is best not described in a family newspaper. Bless him – he was the most generous of men, but his ‘owe nobody anything’ roots ran deep.

They say we’re moving rapidly towards a cashless society. Daughter Dear doesn’t carry a penny. All her business is conducted by card. She mocks me for using a cheque book for larger purchases, but at least I have paper proof of my serial foolishness. I carry a purse clanking with pound coins. How else are you to tip taxi-drivers, waiters, hairdressers, beauticians, use parking meters, supermarket trolleys and access public loos? “Have you got a pound Mumma?” she asks.

I loathe the new plastic banknotes. The slimy little beggars stick together, yet manage to slither out of pockets and creep out of purses – but at least one has the visibly diminishing evidence of what one’s spending, otherwise the monthly bank statement reads like a horror comic. Psychologically, a card is the key to instant accessibility and impulse-buying of stuff you neither want nor need. And of course I do have a bank card or two. (See salutary lesson above.) My problem is recalling the PIN numbers – finger poised over the keypad and memory blank. Fail twice and the machine eats your card. And what a kerfuffle ensues if your card is compromised. I was a stricken hour in the bank where I’ve been a customer for forty years, conveying my details, in a paralysis of panic when you can’t access your own money and days to wait while they sort it out. Moral – always carry emergency cash.

When the Loving Spouse and I returned from honeymoon, we had nothing but a one hundred pound note. We framed it, with the legend underneath, ‘IN CASE OF EMERGENCY – BREAK GLASS’. It’s down to him that it’s there still. Alas, the note itself is no longer legal tender….