Delhi Woman Quits UPI For Over Two Months, Here’s What Changed In Her Spending Habits

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become the most widely-used digital payment system in India, making everyday transactions faster and more convenient for millions of users across the country. Recently, a Delhi-based content creator Sadaf shared a video on Instagram on her account about her experience of relying mostly on cash instead of UPI for over two months and the changes she noticed during the experiment.

What Changed After Reducing UPI Use

In the video, Sadaf said she has been relying mostly on cash for more than two months and is currently in the third month of the experiment of not using UPI.

She said she has become much more conscious of her spending. According to her, making several small payments through UPI often did not feel significant individually, but they could quickly add up, leaving her surprised to find she had spent around Rs 1,000 without realising the expenditure.

Describing the difference after switching mostly to cash, she said, “Every time I hand over a Rs 500 note, I feel the money leaving my wallet. I know how much I spent and how much is left with me.” According to Sadaf, this made her more aware of her spending and almost completely stopped her impulse purchases.

She also said using cash made it easier to keep track of her budget as she no longer needed to check her payment app frequently. Instead, she could simply look at the cash left in her wallet to understand how much she could still spend.

Why She Still Uses UPI Sometimes

However, Sadaf admitted that relying entirely on cash was not always practical. She said there were times when she did not have the exact amount, or shopkeepers were unable to return the balance, forcing her to use UPI for the remaining payment.

To balance convenience with her experiment, she said, “What I have been doing is keeping about 80 per cent of my money in cash and 20 per cent on UPI for situations like these.” She added that she uses UPI only when cash transactions become inconvenient.

Despite the inconvenience of carrying cash and arranging change, Sadaf said she does not plan to return to using UPI for most of her daily expenses for now. She described the experiment as one that has changed the way she spends money and said she intends to continue with the approach while observing how it works over the coming months.