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Cash Amnesia

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Re: Cash Amnesia

#151

Post by fullspectrumdev »

majormajor wrote: post #136
em-bee wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

It’s still socially acceptable to wear a face mask in public

Re: Cash Amnesia

#152

Post by em-bee »

lazide wrote: post #129
em-bee wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The challenge of course, is it's easy to lose or misplace receipts, etc. Some of us have issues with (essentially) self sabotage that way. Some of us have also had issues with people in our lives not so accidentally sabotaging (or stealing) things that way. Come to think of it, I don't know any long term married couples that didn't have one of the two do SOMETHING like that at some point. The nice thing (or terrible,…

well, it depends on how you look at it, no matter how much you deceive yourself (or your partner), in the end it only matters if you spend above or below your means. if you spent to much it doesn't really matter where the money went in the past, you need to fix the spending in the future. finding who or what to blame is only half the problem. either you both agree to manage finances or you don't. if you can, put some money aside in a locked savings account that noone can touch. (i had a special savings account that would only generate interest as long as i didn't touch it, but kept paying into it regularly). that's a good way to prevent money from disappearing.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#153

Post by JohnFen »

mistrial9 wrote: post #135
matsemann wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> do not think they can be mandatory here in the USA.

I sure hope not, but there's been quite a lot of things that have been on the "could never happen here" list that have in fact happened. I have no faith that eliminating cash is inconceivable.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#154

Post by gochi »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #95
bern4444 wrote: post #80

I've always thought the opposite. When I pay for something with cash I remember it far more strongly than when I pay with card. I pay with a card all the time and the action is the same no matter the price. I tap it and move on. With cash I remember having to go get the cash, counting out the right amount at the register, and physically handing it over. And then I notice its absence since now I gave up all the cash I…

I'll say this, spending cash is harder in the moment . There's a real visceral feeling of loss when handing over actual cash vs card. However, when it comes to tracking long term? Cash always seemed to just ...evaporate, out of my wallet where as I can look back and see my credit card purchases and go 'why did I spend that much on that?!' In my experience, there are two types of people when it comes to money. There a…

Conscious spending could help out both camps. Spenders tend to spend too much on things that don't matter to them, and savers spend too little on things that matter to them.

The problem is conscious spending requires more initial setup that a lot of people don't want to do. They don't want to look at their bills and tally up the monthly total, automating that to be paid first, and then looking at their savings/investing/donation goals and taxes/limitations and dedicating certain amounts next per month. That's all too much initial work for them, but once you're on the other side it's glorious. I see how much is in my spending account, and spend it freely if whatever it is matters to me more than just the thrill of spending.

So many are just not honest with themselves and what actually matters to them. They have a huge house not because it makes them happy but because it's what they feel pressured to have. But this is a trick, remaining in this state winds up burning you out so much faster because you are not nourishing what your soul wants. What they actually would rather be doing is travelling the world, and yet they only put aside 1% monthly to a travel fund, and 70% goes to a home they don't care about. They wind up never travelling because they distract themselves with irrelevant things, get burned out at their job, feel like moving cities, etc. It happens all the time!

To make this clear, this isn't about downsizing. If a big home does matter to you, that should obviously take a much larger portion of your monthly bills. But you can't make these decisions without going through that above work honestly.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#155

Post by em-bee »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #151
majormajor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s still socially acceptable to wear a face mask in public

not everywhere. at least some european countries and aparently some places in the US too ban the wearing of facemasks, some only on large public assemblies and some ban it in general. covid of course made mockery of those laws.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#157

Post by lazide »

em-bee wrote: post #152
lazide wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge of course, is it's easy to lose or misplace receipts, etc. Some of us have issues with (essentially) self sabotage that way. Some of us have also had issues with people in our lives not so accidentally sabotaging (or stealing) things that way. Come to think of it, I don't know any long term married couples that didn't have one of the two do SOMETHING like that at some point. The nice thing (or terrible,…

well, it depends on how you look at it, no matter how much you deceive yourself (or your partner), in the end it only matters if you spend above or below your means. if you spent to much it doesn't really matter where the money went in the past, you need to fix the spending in the future. finding who or what to blame is only half the problem. either you both agree to manage finances or you don't. if you can, put some…

Ah, sweet summer child. The problem cases almost always agree to manage finances together and be reasonable!

The money still disappears.

No records just makes it easier to be gaslit, or blamed by the actual perpetrator in a court of law.

At least when it’s recorded by a third party it’s harder to bullshit about. Two separate friends of mine had their spouses (when under stress) nearly bankrupt both of them using credit cards they signed up for without their knowledge.

They found them on their credit reports due to something unrelated, and at least was able to track down what had happened. Both wives had been shredding the statements. One had racked up $80k, another $70k.

Personally, I had a large and very vague amount of cash disappear (approx $10k) through likely fake expenses just before getting hit with a bunch of false accusations - when I tried to get away from an abusive ex. Considering I’d been trying to get her to sit down with me and discuss household finances for awhile and how much gaslighting and confusion she was making on the topic (and I really wish I was projecting on this), it was probably a whole lot more. But very difficult to discern.

The legal chaos she created shortly afterwards meant I never could get an answer what happened. And frankly was a drop in the bucket compared to the other damage she did.

Could have been worse - I have an acquaintance who’s husband got a HELOC on their house and then bailed with all the money before she found out. 5+ years of drama.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#158

Post by pests »

brewdad wrote: post #102
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While that's certainly an option, it would require both that I remember to grab my accumulated coins before leaving for the shop and that I spend extra time feeding them into the machine. These friction points will probably lead me to my current path of least resistance, tossing my coins into a container on my dresser and dealing with them about once a decade when it fills up.

Self checkout machines around me have just a port you dump all the coins in at once and it counts them up.

Re: Cash Amnesia

#159

Post by theodric »

bern4444 wrote: post #80

I've always thought the opposite. When I pay for something with cash I remember it far more strongly than when I pay with card. I pay with a card all the time and the action is the same no matter the price. I tap it and move on. With cash I remember having to go get the cash, counting out the right amount at the register, and physically handing it over. And then I notice its absence since now I gave up all the cash I…

Ehh... Ok so right at the beginning of the Ukraine War I went and pulled €9000 out of the bank (don't have to declare under €10k at Customs) and put it in an envelope labeled "SHTF” and stuck it on the pinboard. The envelope recently became empty. I can't exactly tell you what we spent it on. Not "guilty pleasures," of that I'm reasonably sure, but probably some shit we could have lived without except hey there's this mad crazy money envelope, sure why not grab a couple hundo and splurge...

Re: Cash Amnesia

#160

Post by em-bee »

lazide wrote: post #157
em-bee wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, it depends on how you look at it, no matter how much you deceive yourself (or your partner), in the end it only matters if you spend above or below your means. if you spent to much it doesn't really matter where the money went in the past, you need to fix the spending in the future. finding who or what to blame is only half the problem. either you both agree to manage finances or you don't. if you can, put some…

Ah, sweet summer child. The problem cases almost always agree to manage finances together and be reasonable! The money still disappears. No records just makes it easier to be gaslit, or blamed by the actual perpetrator in a court of law. At least when it’s recorded by a third party it’s harder to bullshit about. Two separate friends of mine had their spouses (when under stress) nearly bankrupt both of them using cred…

sure, but those are cases of outright deception, where, with a bit more energy by the deceiver, tracking expenses through the bank may not have helped. and i am sorry for what you had to go through. your experience makes me think of a discussion just a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36767454

i don't know how one can protect against that. the only thing i can think of is to prevent anyone in the family from having a high credit limit. or avoid credit cards altogether. but that's much easier here where credit cards are less common.

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