Dollar Dollar Bill Y'all

Paisley said:

...when you go cashless you leave a much more detailed trail behind you without always knowing who may view it in the future and whether or not it will matter. It usually doesn't matter but we never know what will "matter" in the future.

That's true.

Very true.

One day you're enjoying a funnel-cake-spicy-chicken sandwich in Frontier Town, and the next the government is at your front door coming after your freedom...

Having reconciled my credit card statement today, I'm sure someone will find out super valuable to know I got the drunken noodles at Pei Wei a lot last month, and paid for my kid's summer camp. That can totally be weaponized.

Well, the machine is doing what it does best and keeping me in my bubble. Right after I read through the thread and posted a reply, this article came up in my feed.

On one hand:

"Cash transactions are increasingly rare. More than half of transactions in the US involved cash in 2010. The number had dropped to 28% in 2020, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to wider adoption of cashless and contactless payment among businesses."

On the other hand:

"But going cashless means a heavier reliance on private companies—banks, credit card companies, payment processors—all of which have delays and fees that hit poor people hardest. At the moment, a cash-free economy would exclude the 7.1 million Americans, or 5.4% of US households, that are unbanked, meaning they do not have a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union, according to the FDIC’s most recent study in 2019."

So, in a nutshell, an article was published yesterday that said exactly what the regulars at CoasterBuzz said days earlier...as usual.

That’s because The Media™ has been replaced with screen scraping robots that read through online discussion forums (especially CoasterBuzz), pass all our original content through an AI algorithm and spits out “articles” which are then fed back to us through other channels specifically to amplify our egos to encourage us to create more original content to keep the AI well fed.
It must be true. In a world dominated by “like, share, and subscribe!” discussion forums are the only place to find original material on the Internet!

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

BrettV said:

On more than one occasion I've been somewhere (that takes cash) when the system has gone down and they still won't take cash and simply won't make sales until the system comes back.

Yup. I have yet to experience a place that still allows a cash transaction when the system is down. But on more than one occasion I have just been given my Starbucks for free when their system was down. The other day a storm knocked out the internet where I get my haircut so haircuts were free. There is an upside to systems going down so long as those businesses have good customer service.

When I was working retail, a zillion years ago, we kept the old manual imprinting machine and NCR forms in case the Verifone system went down. Is that even an option anymore? Do any of you even know what I'm talking about?

(Fun fact: the ASL sign for credit card imitates swiping a card using one of those manual devices.)

I think one of my more recent cards didn't even have raised numbers to imprint.

Higher percentage of people in the area around where I live use cash. Very common to see people paying $200 at the grocery store with cash. And have seen multiple people at Home Depot paying $1000 for building supplies in cash. But I don't think many/any of them are unbanked. Know I have seen a few people pulling cash from the envelopes that banks sometimes give you when you withdraw large amounts of cash. But I understand they are using cash to control spending. Go into a grocery strore looking to spend $100 and if you have cash only, that is the limit of what you will spend. Go in with a credit card and you may well spend $150 or more. You can limit yourself to $100 with a credit card to but that takes more discipline. Some people don't have that and use cash instead. Others go in with credit cards and carry expensive credit card debt.

I don't think its a matter of businesses not understanding that they are adding friction by going cashless. Or sports venues going 100% electronic for tickets. They are making a business decision that the efficiencies gained are worth it. You can make accommodations for people outside the new system to help bridge gaps. But advantages of cashless/electronic tickets are worth any potential loss in business.

I use credit cards more freely than debit cards (rarely use the latter). Much easier to deal with problems with a credit card than debit card. Few times sytems are down I have seen businesses write out credit card receipts and run them through when the systems were back up. Certain level of trust there but presumably they deemed it worth the revenue. With cyber hacks, doesn't seem out of the question that payment systems could be offline from time to time.

Lord Gonchar said:

"But going cashless means a heavier reliance on private companies—banks, credit card companies, payment processors—all of which have delays and fees that hit poor people hardest."

This is another phenomenon that I don't understand. I haven't paid a bank fee in at least a decade (and I'm not sure what "delay" means). For most any checking account, the fee bar is pretty low, like one or two direct deposits or debit card usages.

I mean I haven't either but I am not living paycheck to paycheck. Overdraft fees are a real problem when you do. I remember once while in school I took a bus using a forged Pitt ID (free bus rides) to a remote location to do a few hours of work for an agency. I think I made $75 and they paid me with a check. Side note: I was eating a single packet of instant mac & cheese while they all sat in the kitchen and ate pizza, that was neat. I only had a dollar or two in my bank account. Well the bus driver wasn't having any of my fake ID and didn't let me board and stranded me. I had to buy a candy bar with my debit card and get $5 cash back which sent into overdraft hell.

It's the old catch-22. If you have enough money, they don't make you pay the fees. I get free everything from my bank. No overdraft fees, free checks (still need some for school stuff), no ATM fees, if I go to a strip club, er, I mean Chuck E Cheese and they charge me an ATM fee, my bank pays me back.

If I had $17 in my account, I wouldn't get any of that crap.

Very true. Just yesterday I got a letter from my bank with a list of updated fees. First I was shocked at just how many fees my bank had but then I realized none of them apply to me.

Sounds like you guys need ally accounts. These brick and mortar banks are like relics.

I’m certainly not giving you my money so you can help to furnish some old dudes office with a plush chair fancy wood desk and expensive artwork.

You think Ally doesn't have old dudes with fancy wood desks? What they don't have is tellers and cleaning staffs making $8 an hour.

Mine is a credit union and at the end of the day they don't make a dime off of me with fees. I can't imagine ally is going to offer anything that I don't already have.

The exact same thing is true from credit card rewards. I haven't paid a dollar to a credit card company in 15 years (and that was only because I forgot, not because I didn't have the money and I think they reversed the service fee and just stuck me with the interest) and I've been getting north of a thousand dollars back every year in rewards. If travel hacking groups have told me anything, I could probably be making 5x that much if I cared enough to be super diligent about churning cards.

That means that someone somewhere is racking up enough fees and interest to more than cover my free $1k and/or stores are increasing their prices to cover it, hurting everyone who can't/won't play the game. That money isn't coming from nowhere.

Last year I cycled about $20k through a credit card that gives straight up 1% back on purchases and 1% on payments, so essentially 2% since I never carry a balance. That's $400 in found money. Credit cards are actually great for consumer protections and not having to worry about balances and such, but only if you don't carry a balance.

GoBucks89 said:

Higher percentage of people in the area around where I live use cash. Very common to see people paying $200 at the grocery store with cash. And have seen multiple people at Home Depot paying $1000 for building supplies in cash. But I don't think many/any of them are unbanked. Know I have seen a few people pulling cash from the envelopes that banks sometimes give you when you withdraw large amounts of cash. But I understand they are using cash to control spending....

This is the thing for some of us. No matter how well I understand the difference between want and need and believe in being frugal it wasn't until we went to using cash for 90% of our in person transactions that I got things under control financially. We were never "in trouble" but after I realized my ADHD (not diagnosed until adulthood) interfered with my ability to keep track of how much I had already spent any given month on the credit card I realized I needed to make money more concrete than conceptual and simplify the process and for me the most obvious way to do that was to go to mostly cash. No more big surprises at the end of the month.

I can see that back when credit cards didn't have apps and you had to wait for your monthly statement to see how much you spent. Doing it that way would drive me nuts and I probably wouldn't have a credit card if that was the way of life. I love my American Express app that is always reminding me of what I am spending. Being able to see exactly what I buy and how often is great. Add on all the perks and it is one of the reasons I will never go back to cash or debit cards.

I was completely irresponsible with credit cards in my 20's, and to a lesser degree, in my early 30's. I bought so much crap. The only rule I really followed through on was not buying food with them (though I still used the debit card for that). Eventually I stopped buying crap, and once those habits changed, using credit cards and paying them off once a month became my normal. My wife and I try to just accommodate and plan for things that "feel" like they would materially alter cash flow.

But as someone who carried five-figure credit card debt for a decade or so, to varying degrees, through recessions and layoffs, you can turn it around and be honest with yourself about what you need and what you want.