In this paper, we examine cash holding determinants using a large dataset of private firms from 15 European countries. Since, in this type of firms, there is an incomplete separation of the finances of key stakeholders from the finances of the firm, we complement the precautionary motive traditionally considered in the corporate finance literature, which typically takes the form of the hedging motive advocated by Acharya et al. (2007), with an attitudinal precautionary motive that takes into account stakeholders’ risk attitudes and, in particular, their prudence and temperance. Under this motive, the firm-level demand for savings and cash-holding decisions is driven by determinants similar to those that drive the demand for savings by households and their holdings of cash. Our empirical results suggest that, in our sample of private firms, this novel precautionary motive naturally complements or even supplants the traditional one, which is hard to reconcile with evidence on a negative relation between cash holdings and both investment and leverage.