If you can only carry 1 currency note ($ bill) in your small wallet what would it be?
 

In case of an emergency or a place that won't take credit cards, and you can only carry one currency note ($ dollar bill or euro etc.) in your very small wallet (e.g. MagSafe Wallet) along with a credit card & ID, what would it be? And why? FYI: MagSafe Wallet is a very small wallet that attaches to the back of an iPhone magnetically. It really can only hold 2 cards and 1 currency note/bill. I plan on putting in 1 credit card, 1 ID, and can't decide between a $50 or a $100 note. With Apple Pay on the iPhone and a MagSafe Wallet attached to the back of the iPhone, I'm thinking that's about as minimalist as I can be.

I'm thinking a $20 is too small and most stores won't break a $100 as it's too large, so a $50? But then in an emergency and we can only carry one note shouldn't we carry the largest denomination possible ($100) and not worry if a store couldn't give us all of our change back? I could also just pay the credit card cash advance fee at an ATM if I really needed more cash.

$100 note in the Americas or 100 Euro note elsewhere. There is a 500 euro note, but the 100 euro note would get me change more easily.

I think stores seem to accept $100 notes way more in recent years than was the case a decade or two ago.

I happen to be partial to the $50, probably because they seem rarer than the $100. Though the $100 is certainly more useful if you just want cash for an emergency. I've never encountered a place that refused to break a $100 (unless they didn't have enough cash in the till yet...I had to refuse one when I worked at a bookstore in high school and someone wanted me to break a $100 first thing in the morning), and often overseas a crisp $100 bill is the only denomination they'll take.

I think they discontinued the 500 euro note because they found most of them being used were being used by drug dealers and other criminals.

You have to figure somewhere else to keep a second bill/banknote. Shoe? Pocket? Bra? Car? Plastic holder (not quite a wallet)?

The last of the central banks in the Eurozone stopped printing the 500 euro notes in perhaps 2014, but the 500 euro notes are still circulating and valid for payments. In 2014, they printed over 8 million of the 500 euro notes. They stopped printing them because it was such a big store of value that people -- criminals and otherwise -- were taking them out of routine use and using them nearly exclusively as a store of value since interest rates on current account deposits weren't encouraging their deposit back at banks. Also, the OECD/FATF didn't like that the value was so high that transport of smuggled cash across borders was harder to stop than usual.

For that reason, $1k notes in Canada have long gone extinct, reportedly at the behest of the national police.

I always thought that larger € bills were prone to forgery and do remember shops in France and Italy either being reluctant to or not accepting (posted sign warning) larger notes.

In the Philippines that is the most useful.

Probably a $50 bill of the first-world country I'm currently in. If third world... then a higher bill.
Not too large, but just enough to still be able to buy some necessities.

They were actually less prone to high quality forgery at the time their print runs stopped than other notes in wider use, but the merchants' reluctance to take those notes was usually due to the merchant not wanting to bear the financial risk of accepting a forged note and, less so, to not get used/flagged as a front for money laundering.

When I was much younger, I would always try to run around with an emergency $20 somewhere on me if I was close to home. But if I was away from home/going away from home, it would be $100. Decades later, it seems like I am still often running around with $100, even as what bang I get for the Benjamin has fallen. But that back-up $100 cash is less useful for me for another reason (beside inflation wearing down its value): paying with apps or otherwise online from a smartphone means that the need to use that $100 note is even less than would otherwise be the case if phone-less.

$100 note of the current design and in good condition. I'd probably also shove 100 euros in there too.

$50's are going to attract a strange look. Rare enough that some people may ask questions about whether it's real. They aren't even common in the U.S.

Oh, the $50's are that rare? I never carried a $100 as I was under the impression that too many stores would refuse to accept it.

Too bad there wasn't a way for us to know when banks or ATMs had brand new notes to dispense.

Didn't think of it, but makes sense that overseas would trust $100's denomination the most as they would encounter $100's more often than $20's. I'd say in the US it's the opposite.

When I was in high school my grandpa gave me a $100 bill for emergencies, told me it was a loan, and said he expected me to be able to produce it for him any time he asked in the future. I still have it (well, not that one) and it has come in handy I think three times in the last 25 years.

The 50s aren’t rare. They are just not something you see every day, like a $2 bill. If people are using a big denomination they tend to go for the 100.

Next to the United States two-dollar bill the fifty-dollar bill has the lowest circulation of any U.S. denomination measured by volume.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit...ty-dollar_bill

Go big or go home. 1000 CHF note.