I keep a little cash around, because you never know when it will come in handy or save your butt.
The folks who worry about losing it (to theft, fire, etc.) blow my mind. If you lose it, earn some more! We're balancing risks, here. Whatever risks you're protecting against by having cash around (the need to keep yourself or somebody else out of jail, the need to buy groceries during a banking emergency, the fear of running out of recreational chemicals at 3:00 AM, the sudden need to bribe a border guard and get the hell out of Dodge City, whatever), you just just balance those against the risk of losing the money. Figure out how much the risks will hurt if you don't have cash, figure out how much it would hurt to have the money stolen, factor in how likely you think those things are, and just keep your cash-on-hand to a sum that makes sense. If we're only talking a few days or weeks income for you, who gives a shit? There's more money where that came from, but the anal virginity your sister's dumbshit boy lost in the county lockup over the long weekend because you couldn't round up eleven hundred bucks at 3:00 AM, that's harder to get back.
Just don't do what I do -- don't keep it in what your girlfriend learns to call "the ATM wallet."
