The world's most glamorous credit card is issued by American Express. It is called the Centurion Card after a high-ranking Roman officer and categorises the world. There are a lot of poor people, wealthy people, rich people and a few super-rich people. The first three groups cannot afford the card - worse still, they are not even asked if they want to become a Centurion. You can't apply for the 8×5 centimetre card, and if you don't have an average wealth of 6.7 million euros, you shouldn't even wait for American Express to ring your doorbell. They will have to make do with the Platinum Card or the meagre Gold Card.

That doesn't bother me. I only have a credit card from the local savings bank, and even that I only use on a few occasions - involuntarily, because supposedly progressive companies are moving towards organising their business predominantly without cash. For me, that's rubbish. I am a great lover of cash. There's a simple reason for this: cash is an honest story. Unlike the colourful array of credit cards in circulation, you can't bluff with cash in your pocket. You are worth just as much as you put on the table.

It's different with credit cards. Many a small-time crook has armed himself with more of these plastic pieces than Bayern Munich has won German championships. Although these cards have the glamorous packaging tinsel of wealthy contemporaries, it is not uncommon for them to hide so many red figures behind the elegantly painted plastic wall that even bankrupt René Benko and his Herkules Holding would fall to their knees in respect. (By the way: Centurion Card - Herkules Holding ... can that be a coincidence?)

But it's not just people with fraudulent intentions who fall into the card trap, as was recently reported in a news magazine: according to a study by the London Business School and Cornell University in New York, people with credit cards spend money much more frivolously than those who still pay for their purchases with honest cash. Apparently, the transfer to be made is simply too complex for credit card enthusiasts. The connection between permanent card payments and knee-deep overdraft catastrophes is apparently only revealed when RTL sets up the cameras in their own kitchens for „Raus aus den Schulden“.

Nevertheless, credit cards are considered practical and identify their users as modern contributors to progress. That is the spirit of the times. If, on the other hand, I try to pay for a smart double room in a hotel with a beautifully shaped stack of banknotes, the receptionist looks at me like a rare creature who has either exported cars to Poland or imported underage prostitutes from Lithuania.

When did it start that cash owners are looked at with the same disdain as boxing stall operators at the funfair? And is it really an argument against cash if it is only used in large quantities to buy used cars and for drug dealing?

No, let's be honest - I don't want to do without cash. I don't have to carry it around with me in rolls of thousands. Cash is king! That's true. My wife thinks it's silly, by the way. But she's also never tried to pin a plastic card to the leg of a dancer in a strip club. She just doesn't see the big picture!