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Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

nytimes.com

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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#311

Post by skinnymuch »

schrodinger wrote: post #200
dbg31415 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You old? (= I am. My neighbor's kid introduced me to it. Now I can't live without it. Being able to pay my maid or gardener when I'm not home... priceless. I never carry cash or a wallet any more. Slip an ID card in my phone case... good to go.

Be careful, they technically don't allow commercial transactions and will freeze your account (and reverse transactions) if they catch you. I got a stern warning after selling something on Craigslist and accepting payment via venmo, they must have figured it out by the note and lack of network of friends with the buyer.

I've heard getting scammed by people you don't know (I guess people you know too) is really easy on Venmo. Especially in cases like CL. Be careful.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#312

Post by moonka »

bogomipz wrote: post #232
Swizec wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover. When you have a line out the door, turnover matters. Back in Slovenia bill splitting doesn't exist. To me it's a completely American thing. The best they can do in Slovenia is charge everyone individually for their items, but that's not really bill splitting.

>"A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover." How much time time does it really take? Let's compare it to a single check with with cash as the form of payment. Some diner at the table needs to go through the bill and and collect the money or else the bill gets passed around and then everyone antes up their portion, there always come confusion about what…

>Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.

This is where the time becomes an issue. Running each card can take awhile, and when you add up 4-5 cards, you get a real impact on time that the server can't be taking care of anything else. In a job that doesn't have a lot of downtime, 5-6 minutes tied to a computer can be detrimental.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#313

Post by abritinthebay »

shinymark wrote: post #255
abritinthebay wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how old are you? I’m 37 and probably wouldn’t know anyone using it in my normal social circle except I happen to know a bunch of ~24 yr olds (some younger) via a younger colleague. Of those you are younger guess how many use Venmo? Every. Single. One. Not every day, or all the time, but regularly: especially with friends & at weekends. It’s spread so we’ll split lunches at work occasionally with it.…

I'm a 35 year founder of a small company in San Francisco. I had never heard of Venmo until recently. The dividing line among my team is around 30 years old. Below 30 -> use Venmo all the time. Above 30 -> never heard of it.

Sounds about right.

I much prefer it for payments amongst friends than anything else now though. It’s rather good.

I would love to know if the college crowd was a specific target for venmo: it’s nailed it

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#314

Post by abritinthebay »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #267
abritinthebay wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how old are you? I’m 37 and probably wouldn’t know anyone using it in my normal social circle except I happen to know a bunch of ~24 yr olds (some younger) via a younger colleague. Of those you are younger guess how many use Venmo? Every. Single. One. Not every day, or all the time, but regularly: especially with friends & at weekends. It’s spread so we’ll split lunches at work occasionally with it.…

I have not yet seen businesses accepting it as a form of payment, but that's really interesting and implies it's going the way of WeChat payments.

I’m not technically sure they’re allowed to do that via ToS - it’s the owners personal account - but it happens

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#315

Post by mirimir »

rhapsodic wrote: post #278
pacaro wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not putting it in neutral when stopped can contribute to failing your driving test in the U.K.

Aside from reducing wear on the throwout bearing, what is the purpose?

Not having the car jerk forward if your foot slips off the clutch.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#316

Post by taneq »

pacaro wrote: post #252
rhapsodic wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of). It's the throwout bearing. Your father has a point, but I would rather keep the clutch in. Too much thinking involved putting it in neutral every time you stop.

Not putting it in neutral when stopped can contribute to failing your driving test in the U.K.

Interesting. In Australia you're required to keep it in 1st with the clutch in while at red lights.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#317

Post by uiri »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #192
regulation_d wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. But almost everyone I know has one or the other, if not both. That kennitala system sounds really cool, especially if people are conditioned to pass around their account number. I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers. Sometimes I would even say, "You know, the numbers that are on every check you've ever issued.…

>That kennitala system sounds really cool, especially if people are conditioned to pass around their account number. >I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers. I think that uncertainty is definitely part of the problem. The criticality of keeping an SSN secret whilst paradoxically sometimes having to have it on hand to giv…

I don't know if US bank account numbers need to be kept secret.

Yeah, they kind of should be since the number is basically all that someone needs in order to print cheques that take money out of a given account. The US has a "pull" system instead of the more secure "push" system in Europe where giving out a bank account number is totally normal (and was back in the day before electronic banking too).

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#318

Post by webignition »

rhapsodic wrote: post #295
hyperpape wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lets you take your foot off the clutch ;) In all seriousness, that's why I did it. My first stick was a truck, and even though it was small, it has a stiff clutch. You got tired of standing on it.

> It lets you take your foot off the clutch ;) If that's what you like, go for it, but two posts seemed to imply that I'm doing something wrong by keeping the vehicle in gear with the clutch in while stopped in traffic, and I'd really like to know what that is. One post implied that UK law encourages or even requires that the vehicle be taken out of gear when it's stopped in traffic. I've never heard anything like th…

As a UK driver, I was taught to shift to neutral and apply the parking brake when stopped for long enough to do so.

The reasoning given by my driving instructor was that this secures the vehicle and makes things just a little more safe for everyone.

If I am stopped in traffic with my parking brake on and sometime lightly rear-ends me, my vehicle may not move at all. If my parking brake were not applied, the probability of my vehicle not moving at all drops significantly.

If I am rear-ended without the parking brake applied such that my vehicle rear-ends someone in-front of me, I am partially responsible for the damage caused ahead due to my failure to secure my vehicle.

This is only tangentially related to taking my foot of the clutch. I depress the clutch in order to apply the parking brake correctly. Once the parking brake is applied, I simply have no need to continue to depress the clutch.

It takes me very little time to apply the parking brake and then release it and so I tend to do so when stopping for more than a second or two.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#319

Post by nindalf »

aviraldg wrote: post #289
balladeer wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India a lot of people use Splitwise. I am on it and my bill splitting, and personal borrowing/leding records are handled by the app. Though it doesn't handle actual money transfers yet; they have no such integrations. Is Venmo similar? https://www.splitwise.com

They've recently added support for settling via Paytm (which is the most popular mobile wallet in India) and I believe they also support Paypal. I love Splitwise; almost all of my friends at uni use it and pretty much all shared expenses go on it. I also use Walnut ( http://www.getwalnut.com/ ), not for the settlement feature, but rather for the expense tracking which automatically reads SMSes and builds up monthly e…

Think twice about using Walnut. Their business model is selling your financial details to the highest bidder. They claim it's as innocuous as wealthy users being contacted about investment opportunities, but I wouldn't take their word for it.

Far better to use a vanilla expense manager. Maybe it takes an extra second to enter the details of the transaction but at least your data never leaves your device. That's the way it should be.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#320

Post by deftturtle »

rc_kas wrote: post #117
extr wrote: post #77

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end…

"every single person I know uses Venmo" How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.

Most people in my graduating class use Square Cash. The next oldest class, which graduated this year, mostly uses Venmo. Very much a social network effect
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