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Not paying with cash

rubenerd.com

141–150 of 259 posts

Re: Not paying with cash

#141

I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.

> profusion of "no cash accepted" signs How this is even legal baffles me

As I understand it, the argument is: cash is valid payment for all debts public or private. But a sale isn’t a debt. The business that refuses your cash sale is refusing your business at the time of sale.

Re: Not paying with cash

#142
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…

> The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip this is false reasoning on their part. They never have thought about how much cash costs them so it looks like extra money but it really isn't. they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay, then the time to count the money in the till at the end of the shift. Each count above is 2 counts at best the average…

Many banks also charge fees to process cash deposits for business accounts, as well. It's still often a tenth of credit card interchange fees, but between that, labor to balance your cash drawer, and actually go to the bank to make the deposit, the difference isn't as substantial as you'd make it out to be if you only look at the direct surcharges to process the payments.

That said, while I default to using Apple Pay for basically...everything, I too do not wish to live in a society where large companies get to govern every transaction I make. Or, for that matter, every transaction I make being on a ledger that the government can monitor.

Re: Not paying with cash

#143
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2 bills?? You’re gonna get the occasional one who thinks you’re scamming them. It’s crazy that Canada, being so similar to the US, got rid of the 1 and 2 like 30 years ago.

I had a funny experience with a French cheese shop in SF for this - I tipped a $2 bill and he called me back in confused thinking it was fake, but was good natured when I showed him it was real.

Last time I was in Mexico (walked across the border so many Americans in the area and they list prices in both us and mexican currancy) I paid with twos because that is all I had, which really confused the clerk, but her manager had no problem.

Re: Not paying with cash

#144
post #132
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…

>The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". Because tax evasion? Otherwise credit card interchange rates are nowhere that high, typically 3%.

Square is 2.6% + 15¢, so to get 5-7%, you could be doing most transactions under $5. That seems to require fairly high sales volume to make any decent wage though, so there is an added transaction cost for them to “keep good change” instead of serving more customers

Re: Not paying with cash

#145
post #132
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…

>The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". Because tax evasion? Otherwise credit card interchange rates are nowhere that high, typically 3%.

If it's 3% + $0.30, that can easily be 5-7% for smaller transactions, which are the ones where I most often get asked to pay cash.

Re: Not paying with cash

#146
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…

> The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip this is false reasoning on their part. They never have thought about how much cash costs them so it looks like extra money but it really isn't. they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay, then the time to count the money in the till at the end of the shift. Each count above is 2 counts at best the average…

> they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay

Do they? Unless the shop's always serving customers, this may be free time.

Re: Not paying with cash

#147

I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.

> profusion of "no cash accepted" signs How this is even legal baffles me

NYC outlawed cashless operations after it started to become popular and the marginalized were increasingly locked out of everyday commerce. Hopefully it catches on in the rest of the US.

Re: Not paying with cash

#148
I'm very sympathetic to both the cash-as-privacy and cash-as-fair-access (for unbanked people, to goods and services) arguments, and I won't support any business that doesn't take cash.

Credit cards are a snare for the chronically indebted, to shake pennies from their pockets to transfer to the wealthy.

However, if you have no debt (which is enough to be considered "wealthy", IMO), you'd be a fool not to use a credit card for most transactions. Because the rewards they hand out are built into the prices paid for everything by people who pay with cash.

In my own case... I got my first credit card at 18, and by the time I was 22 I had racked up $20k in debt. I took drastic action and stopped using cards completely, and lived only on my income from multiple jobs, going without anything I wanted to buy for several years. Beans, rice, pasta, one pair of shoes, three shirts. Until I paid it off. By the time I was 24 I had paid it off waiting tables, driving taxi. Then I cancelled my cards. And so for reasons unrelated to privacy, I had no credit cards for 15 years after that, and only used cash or debit cards.

It was only in my mid thirties that I was put wise to the fact that I was losing 1% to 3% of my average spend by not having a card. So I got the most expensive card I could with the best payback ratio, and have never carried a balance on it at the end of a month. Over the ten years I've had it, it's paid me back somewhere around $30k, all siphoned from the pockets of people who don't pay their debt off.

Is this a vile and rapacious system? Absolutely. Would I be stupid not to take advantage of it after doing my time and learning the hard way? Yeah.

I still pay cash a lot, because I don't need a record of what I'm up to. And I'd support a ban on credit cards which would lead to merchants dropping prices for everyone. But here we are.

Re: Not paying with cash

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> profusion of "no cash accepted" signs How this is even legal baffles me

As I understand it, the argument is: cash is valid payment for all debts public or private. But a sale isn’t a debt. The business that refuses your cash sale is refusing your business at the time of sale.

Apparently that explanation is even an FAQ on the fed website: https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

Re: Not paying with cash

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "for free"? Would you be paying for your travels in full, the next month?

I think it's a reference to awards miles/points... but that's definitely not "for free", you're paying for it with the 2%-3% markup imposed by the merchant processing companies and at the baseline just getting that same amount back on the other side. With that said, with some careful finagling you can get outsized value out of it, especially for flight or hotel upgrades.

It is free because dealing with cash costs the merchant even more than the 3% fees the card costs. If there is a discount for cash it is because they have not counted the costs which are not obvious
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