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Cash Amnesia

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Re: Cash Amnesia

#131

Post by OkayPhysicist »

marssaxman wrote: post #83
croutonwagon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I straight use credit cards as insurance, especially against scams. I specifically dont use a debit card at all and dont carry it. I only have it to pull money out and it stays locked in a safe at home. CC's allow me to ensure things like Amazon sellers arent scamming you, or worse, random websites with awful return policies. With a CC merchant that have a motivation to work on your behalf (ie: to get you to pay them…

We all have different perceptions of risk, don't we? My approach is the opposite of yours - I carry my debit card everywhere, and use it for every non-cash purchase - because I am far more concerned about the everyday risk of getting into debt by spending more than I can afford than the relatively unlikely prospect of getting scammed. I did have to recoup stolen money once, but this was quick and straightforward sinc…

The big difference between the risk profile of a credit card vs a debit card is that if I willingly put myself in debt by spending more than I can afford, that was an action I chose to take. If my card details get stolen and someone racks up a bunch of charges, I had little to no input in that action. At most, I was too trusting with my choice in vendors.

I'd rather control things within my control, e.g., my spending, than those outside my control, like thieves and scammers. So I use my credit card everywhere.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#132

Post by CuriouslyC »

sanderjd wrote: post #122
callalex wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already a completely solved problem in most of the world. They simply cap the fees card companies can collect from merchants by law.

That sounds unlikely to me to be "solved" rather than "a different local maximum". I'm very skeptical that any governments know the single perfect solution to the formula of the precise level of merchant fees that is the best possible solution.

If you cap fees, all that will happen is high risk businesses won't be able to accept cards and the processors will find ways to nickel and dime (+pos fee, paper billing fee, customer service fee, etc). It's still a better world though.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#133

Post by theandrewbailey »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #97
sneed_chucker wrote: post #92

When I pay with cash, all purchases are essentially rounded up to the Dollar, since I will literally never end up spending my change anywhere once it enters coin form.

I'm curious: Do you go grocery-shopping yourself? If yes, do you use a self-checkout option? And if yes, does it support paying with cash? In my case, the answer to all the above is "yes", and I found paying with cash is a good way of getting rid of the change that I've built up. Every self-checkout I've come across that supports cash will also support splitting payments, allowing me to pay the rest with credit card.

I started doing that a year or two ago. A self checkout won't get angry with you for pulling out a bunch of change and having to count it. And I'm usually shopping during off hours (~9 PM), so no one else is around to get annoyed either.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#134

Post by superdug »

Meh. Come out with the hard truth, most expenditures we make are not fulfilling. The idea that we are spending money to gain something is a bullshit lie we convince ourselves of. Unfortunately non-tangible investments are the most terrifying expenditures. You physically have nothing to show for the money you no longer have and you question its validity and go so far as to course correct and buy something you can hold onto forever. What are these expenditures? Donations, endowments, and just using some of your means to give to someone who can benefit more than you could ever imagine. You know your neighbor who could use a night off, deliver dinner to them and their family. Your cousin who just got out on his own, deliver a weeks worth of essentials from Walmart. I could go on and on, but my personal way of expending my disposable income now a days is to do a free to sub-$100 favor for someone I know would appreciate help, but is too proud to ever ask for something that they weren’t deathly desperate of needing. You come off as an empathetic and generous human being and you don’t ever feel taken advantage of because you’re the one who initiated it.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#135

Post by mistrial9 »

matsemann wrote: post #128
magicalhippo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Norway, where cash is rare these days. But I feel similar, it's a lot more obvious how much you pay when you need to count bills and hand them over. As a compromise I only keep a small amount of money on my debit card. That way I have to keep topping it up, so I get a sense of my spending that way.

Also from Norway. Haven't paid cash in ~10 years. I have no idea how the new currency looks like. I lost my wallet at some point, and just never replaced it. I pay with my Garmin watch (or phone once in a while). My driver's license is an app.

you have a "high trust" and "wealthy" country -- good for you. Not everyone lives like that.

Here in the USA, tracking people for profit has exploded, and the benefit is not for the person being tracked.

I advocate cash for old reasons, and new reasons. Use high-tech payments if you like -- do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#136

Post by majormajor »

em-bee wrote: post #110
bombcar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it exactly - if I spend $2k on an item, I'm going to remember that if it was cash or card, but only card tells me "you spend $2k last month at Walmart".

so the benefit is that paying by card makes tracking your expenses easier. but the downside is that it also makes makes profiling easier for anyone who can get access to your bank statements which not only includes the bank but more critically also walmart or any other place where you shop regularly. i rather track my spending manually. there are tools that can help with that too, like receipt scanners. granted, it's…

We can't be that far from the facial recognition in stores/at registers building that same profile for cash customers :(

Re: Cash Amnesia

#137

Post by OkayPhysicist »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #97
sneed_chucker wrote: post #92

When I pay with cash, all purchases are essentially rounded up to the Dollar, since I will literally never end up spending my change anywhere once it enters coin form.

I'm curious: Do you go grocery-shopping yourself? If yes, do you use a self-checkout option? And if yes, does it support paying with cash? In my case, the answer to all the above is "yes", and I found paying with cash is a good way of getting rid of the change that I've built up. Every self-checkout I've come across that supports cash will also support splitting payments, allowing me to pay the rest with credit card.

The time spent handling small coins is actually worth more than the coins themselves. If you value your free time somewhere in the ballpark of $80/hr, then you should spend no more than 2 seconds acquiring, maintaining possession of, and then spending, a nickel. IMO, that makes anything less than a quarter worthless.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#138

Post by BeFlatXIII »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #68
chrismcb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America started to do this to try to collect taxes on small transactions. Not to prevent money laundering.

And I don't mind it at all. Unreported cash transactions create a whole separate economy that is exploited. Take your local AC guy. Writes receipts, reports income, charges sales tax, gives the employees insurance etc... Now the other guy, who doesn't do anything, and because of that is able to undercut the guy above by 10%. Short term? Great, your AC is 10% cheaper. Long term? You got 5 people in your neighborhood w…

I'm not in the business of paying higher prices to keep people employed.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#139

Post by sanderjd »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #132
sanderjd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds unlikely to me to be "solved" rather than "a different local maximum". I'm very skeptical that any governments know the single perfect solution to the formula of the precise level of merchant fees that is the best possible solution.

If you cap fees, all that will happen is high risk businesses won't be able to accept cards and the processors will find ways to nickel and dime (+pos fee, paper billing fee, customer service fee, etc). It's still a better world though.

Maybe? For some people? I dunno, that sounds like it would mostly be worse for me, to have fewer points and fewer places that take cards. But even if it's better, it definitely doesn't seem "solved" to me... I think "solved" would be more like, fraud protection without credit, competition among card processing network driving merchant costs to access a network very low, people almost entirely using convenient fraud-protected debit cards like cash.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#140

Post by Animats »

I'm more into how likely it is someone will run up an extra charge on my card, or how much of a pain their POS system is. (Can it split checks? Do I have to sign on a touch screen with my fingernail? Is performance so bad it acts like the credit card terminal is on dialup and the line is in use? Encountered all three of those in the last month.)
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