You’ve got less than two weeks to spend all your old fivers before the paper note loses its status as legal tender on Friday 5th May.
From next week, shops and restaurants will no longer take the old currency and will only accept the new polymer £5 note, which launched last September. The two notes have co-existed since the new, more durable note was introduced.
There could be as many as 160 million of the old paper notes still in circulation, according to an estimation from the Bank of England last month.
In an ideal world, we’d spend all our notes in time – but, we’re human. So, what should you do if you find a stray note after 5th May?
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Luckily, all is not lost. The Post Office and some banks and building societies may still accept the old notes, but this is at their discretion and you’ll need to be a customer of the bank to exchange your notes, The Sun reported.
Alternatively, you can exchange the old £5 notes with the Bank of England, which will continue to accept them forever, as it does with all old notes that are no longer legally in circulation. You can do this either in person or via post, but the latter option is obviously a little riskier.
If you discover a ream of old notes in your piggy bank or under the bed and need to exchange them all, you’ll be asked to show ID, such as a passport or driving licence.
Following the new £5 note, the Bank of England also plans to release a new £10 this summer, which will feature author Jane Austen, and a new £20 note with an image of painter JMW Turner will be released in three years' time.
However, some have questioned whether the Bank of England should be going to all this trouble to renew our currency. Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief of money.co.uk, said it was "crazy" that the old fivers will become "worthless" from next Friday.
She added: "With more of us using cards and contactless payments to pay, the worth of going to all this effort to replace what soon could be a redundant medium is questionable."