If you have ears or eyes, it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ve heard or read an urban legend. It’s the kind of thing which usually starts with “a friend of a friend told me that…” and goes on to describe some cool-sounding life hack or shocking fact which raises your eyebrows and intrigues you.
Rather than being completely false, urban legends usually begin with a grain of truth and are then exaggerated to within an inch of their life. Because of the truth element, they’re often quite believeable by even the smartest people.
To add to the confusion, some urban legends have actually been proved to be true, such as the one about the real body hanging in a funhouse, or the fact that Disneyland used to prohibit long-haired males from entering the park.
Urban legends exist for pretty much every area of life, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to look at some of the more common money-related myths and commonly held beliefs. I’ll throw the odd true one in there too!
The anti-counterfit strip in paper money can be used to track the notes
FALSE
The earliest reference of this legend I could find was 2001, and it claimed that the source was told by a bank teller that the plastic strip on the US banknote was actually put there as a way for the government to see, via satellite, how much cash an individual was carrying at any given time.
Another version of the myth is that airport security uses special scanners to see how much cash travellers have; too much and you could be detained as a smuggler.
Having a prayer room in your home exempts you from council tax
FALSE
Until I began researching this article I’d never heard of this myth but apparently it originated as a racist myth in forums, and was subsequently believed by enough people to award it urban legend status.
But, unless the building is a certified place of worship (which a private family home is not), still council tax needs to be paid at the going rate.
A large proportion of dollar bills contain trace amounts of cocaine
TRUE (sort of)
People hearing this story believe that the trace amounts of cocaine are there because of the bill having been used to snort lines of it, and by using the bills they’re at risk of getting high, done for possession, or worse. But this isn’t strictly true.
In actual fact, if just one bill in a cashier’s drawer or bank’s sorting machine was used in this way, all of the other notes in there could become contaminated too.
But because the amount is so negligible, only those with jobs requiring them to handle huge amounts of money on a daily basis (bank tellers, casino workers etc) are at any risk whatsoever. However, the fact remains that yes, there are notes out there with traces of cocaine, but the method of contamination isn’t quite as people often believe.
Writing a cheque in red ink delays the verification process for longer
FALSE
The myth goes that as cheque-scanning machines can’t read red ink, the cheque floats in the system longer, giving the writer more time before the funds disappear from their account.
While it’s true that most cheque scanning machines can’t in fact read red ink, it’s not to the benefit of the writer. What’s more likely to happen, and indeed has, is that the cheque will be marked ‘blank’ and returned as a bounced payment, or even result in your account closed under suspicion of fraud.
So if you do still use cheques, make sure you keep a blue or black pen with your book at all times!
I guess the moral here is to take anything related to money with a pinch of salt, unless coming from a reliable source like a bank manager or financial advisor. Even articles on financial blogs like this shouldn’t replace professional advice; we’re here to guide, inform and help with the research of credit cards, isas, mortgages and other financial products, but never base your decisions solely on one website’s content.
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