Ask a prepper forum how much cash to keep at home and you'll get answers ranging from a few hundred dollars to five figures in a fireproof safe. Neither extreme is grounded in how disruptions actually play out for most households, and one of them creates a real security risk of its own.
What cash is actually for
Cash at home solves one specific problem: card readers and ATMs don't work during a power outage, and most regional outages resolve within a day or two, not weeks. The goal isn't to fund an extended crisis — it's to cover groceries, gas, and small purchases for the most common outage window, which is measured in hours to a few days, not months.
A reasonable range
For most households, $300–500 in small bills — twenties, tens, and fives — covers a realistic short outage without creating a meaningful security liability if it's ever lost or stolen. Small bills matter more than the total: a business running on a generator during an outage often can't make change for a hundred-dollar bill.
Where you keep it matters as much as how much. A fireproof, water-resistant lockbox that isn't bolted to anything obvious beats a wall safe that announces itself. And like everything else in a stockpile, it's worth checking twice a year — not because cash expires, but because it's the easiest thing to forget you have, or to quietly spend without replacing.