@BeeMan said:
I pay with cash whenever possible. It discourages the person at the register from asking for your phone number so they can market to you.
I've never been marketed after giving a phone number. I expect most people can't/don't think fast enough on their feet to give a false number.
I still have a landline and give that number out for all the advertiser/marketers. Similarly, my junk email address does the same.
I’ll get a certain deal on a transaction and then do not have to worry about junk phone/emails.
Since I rarely write checks at a store these days I rarely if ever get asked for a phone number anymore.
@jesbroken said:
Most users of CC's are people without the funds to pay cash. Why would someone use a credit card which charges you interest at a store(which more and more) charge you an additional fee to use credit. It's a no win system to use credit. I realize there are very few who use their card then immediately pay it off, thus no charges. Cash is the only way to go.
How often do you ask for [and get] a discount for paying with cash? FWIW I have neither a debit nor an ATM card.
There is one hobby shop( Yes, there are some still in business.) I deal with that does give a discount for cash. With credit card transaction fees on the rise it may make sense for buyers to start asking for such a discount. Small retailers may be agreeable though probably not big ones.
In my real job, I have been a payments system consultant for over 30 years. Just a reminder, the consensus was that checks would be gone by 1984. Let's see if one of the London "bet on anything" bookies will lay odds on when the last US currency notes are printed.
Thinking of the coin end of things . . . . nothing speaks at a coin show for a fast and smooth transaction better than a nice wad of Franklins. For the average coin show attendee (not the higher end) . . . a couple grand in Frankies gets the deal done with anyone . . . But . .that is for collector coins . . not the guy picking up the 16-D Merc in 64.
Many people have good reasons for using cash over credit. Where I work, I get to observe many people in the checkout line at the cafeteria at lunch every day. 90% of those transactions are credit or debit cards. A small number are phone or watch. The remainder are cash.
However this isn't a good sample of the population of folks with low income or poor credit, retired people, stay-at-home parents, or day-laborer types.
Switzerland seems to like cash. According to 'Coin World', they just unveiled a 1000 franc note for circulation. Basically, that's a 'G' note. I wish we had those circulating. I've always enjoyed money in my pocket. That is, when I've had money.
Of course, once in a while you may need to rent a car or something.....
@FSF said:
I use to write a dozen checks per month. Now I average one.
My bank doesn't offer paper checks anymore. Pay with card for just about everything, payoff biweekly, never charged interest and collect the free cashback.
I do live in an area with a lot of Amish owned business and most are cash only however more and more have started accepting credit cards. To keep the thread on topic I should mention the local pot dealer is cash only. lol
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Retiring at 55, what day is today?
There are between 8 and 12 million households that do not have access to banking services. Also cash is still anonymous and it is basically against Fed policy to ever allow another anonymous payment system to take hold so...
Interesting! They demonetized the previous 1000 Franc notes due to counterfeiting. I have heard of a couple of people that have been arrested for trying to spend those notes!
@thebeav said:
Switzerland seems to like cash. According to 'Coin World', they just unveiled a 1000 franc note for circulation. Basically, that's a 'G' note. I wish we had those circulating. I've always enjoyed money in my pocket. That is, when I've had money.
Of course, once in a while you may need to rent a car or something.....
Depending on which side of town you are on in OKC; Southwest corner, cash is king...Northwest corner, cash is practically nonexistent. I have written four or five checks out in the past year...to CAC, they do not accept plastic of any form...unless it is a PCGS or NGC slab.
oih82w8 = Oh I Hate To Wait _defectus patientia_aka...Dr. Defecto - Curator of RMO's
Took a card for payment on a gold proof recently. Added costs go to the consumer. Such is businsss. Checks are cheaper but cash is still legal tender for all debts public and private. Why else would so many keep a cash position ? And why would so many want convenience ? It's costly , either way. There's my plug for gold. Get some today.
Practice makes perfect & nobody is perfect. So, practice being nobody.
@shorecoll said:
In my real job, I have been a payments system consultant for over 30 years. Just a reminder, the consensus was that checks would be gone by 1984. Let's see if one of the London "bet on anything" bookies will lay odds on when the last US currency notes are printed.
You can still buy saddles for horses. I suppose that means that cars have not replaced horses as preferred mode of transportation.
I know that I used to write 10 or more checks per month. I now only write 3 or 4 per month and those are business checks to a B&M coin store that would prefer I not use credit.
But transportation by horse still exists, meaning it was never fully eliminated.
I see people use credit or debit cards exclusively. I don’t see how when they charge 3 or 4 items a day that they can ever keep their checkbook balanced.
When did it become ok for there to be a 3% middleman involved in the majority of day-to-day transactions ?
The finances of the average American are extremely anemic.
And that has a lot to do with all the "leeches" sucking their take out of the economy. There is of course taxes, the Federal Reserve (which due to their monopoly on currency issuance gets to "skim" 6% off the top of the economy), and 3% (or higher) credit card processing fees.
Transaction processing fees, over the long run, have the effect of concentrating wealth at the top at the expense of everyone else. The elites that control these payment processing mechanisms do quite well, while everyone else is at a disadvantage.
The government has shirked on it's responsibility to provide an efficient cost-free medium of exchange. This is, however, by design so as to benefit certain entities.
As such, I use cash whenever possible. Actually, I use coin first if I can, then cash if possible. If either of those is not viable, then card.
My brother and I had to bail our friend out of jail in Reno, NV a few years back (long story). He called us from the Reno jail at 2am...middle of winter. Freezing cold. We went down there and tried to use a credit card. Nope, cash only. We left, hit a cash machine, and returned with $320 cash (bail was $307). Nope, had to be exact change. We left, bought something at a booz store and returned with exact change. That finally worked...man, what a pain. Long night.
Moral of story: When a pit boss asks you to leave his casino.....LEAVE....IMMEDIATELY!
Dave
Always looking for original, better date VF20-VF35 Barber quarters and halves, and a quality beer.
@topstuf said:
Lose cash? Big deal.
Lose card? Huge deal.
Cash is for people; cards are for banks.
This is NONSENSE.
I lose $200 cash, I'm out $200.
I lose a credit card, i'm out NOTHING. I have fraud protection and a simple phone call freezes the card.
True-as long as one soon, and I mean soon realizes the loss or theft of the card. My wife managed a jewelry store for years in Chicago, and it was a rare day when some sort of card scam wasn't pulled. mostly within an hour of the card being 'found' or picked.
FWIW, the checker at the cafeteria I frequent defaulted me to a card and I asked her to switch to a cash transaction. Got a 1943 D War nickel out of the deal.
Whatever you are, be a good one. ---- Abraham Lincoln
@jmlanzaf said:
There is no doubt that there is less cash use than there used to be.
People who are cash based represent a certain socioeconomic subgroup which largely remains stable. But everyone else, including millennials who are highly digital have migrated to digital payments. Cash and checks are decreasing in use because they are clumsy relative to CCs or digital.
And, frankly, if you are not using a cashback CC for everything possible, you are nuts.
Here are the facts:
The U.S. used over $2.3 trillion in cash in 2015.
Cash share in the U.S. in 2016 accounted for 12.6 percent of the nation’s GDP.
PYMNTS forecasts that U.S. cash share will represent 11.2 percent of the country’s GDP by 2021.
It's only a matter of time before cash is eliminated. Go to jmlanzaf's link and see the demographic trend (lots of other persuasive stats there!). Think about the growth in on-line retail and the closure of big box stores. The trend is not your friend with the argument that a cashless society isn't eventually probable.
Seated Half Society member #38
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running like a water color in the rain...."
@Catbert said:
It's only a matter of time before cash is eliminated. Go to jmlanzaf's link and see the demographic trend (lots of other persuasive stats there!). Think about the growth in on-line retail and the closure of big box stores. The trend is not your friend with the argument that a cashless society isn't eventually probable.
Jmlanzaf's link info is based upon a SURVEY by MasterCard not government statistics...maybe MasterCard has a bit of a vested interest in the conversation?
FWIW my ATM company had a record month in March 2019, up +6% versus March 2018 and our all-time single highest month on record for total cash withdrawals.
There is a large group of Americans who cannot afford to join Amazon Prime, can't afford to spend $100 let alone $10K on a old coin...I'd estimate this group as at least 1/3 of the U.S. which is not exactly a small number....as long as the poor keep getting poorer in this country I'm not worried about the demise of cash...
Also FWIW online retail is only 10% of Total Retail Sales...that's why Amazon latest acquisitions have been bricks and mortar...they already own 50% of online sales...
Won't argue with you point that there are many who use cash now. However, I still believe the younger demographic, regardless of income, are not or will not use cash as the years go by. They have trouble making change from cash transactions. Sort of similar to telling time with a traditional clock face - a look of bewilderment.
Seated Half Society member #38
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running like a water color in the rain...."
The big banks want a cashless society. That alone should appear as a big red flag.
Their goal is to be able to charge negative interest rates. As long as there is cash, the general population would not stand for negative interest rates because they would demand to "cash out" their savings accounts instead of paying the bank to house their money. Without cash, everyone is captive to the banks.
There are definitely certain groups of people and certain types of business that operate on a cash basis. That said, the trend has to be heavily toward less cash transactions.
@dcarr said:
The big banks want a cashless society. That alone should appear as a big red flag.
Their goal is to be able to charge negative interest rates. As long as there is cash, the general population would not stand for negative interest rates because they would demand to "cash out" their savings accounts instead of paying the bank to house their money. Without cash, everyone is captive to the banks.
dcarr: Not to mention the creepy uncle in Washington that no one likes.
Okay. Normal people like cash. So when are we gonna rise up and tell the government that it’s time to start printing $500 and $1000 bills again?
I’m told that we’ll never see bills larger than $100 because of crime. Please. We’re not all criminals. And even if we are trying to avoid jumping through a hoop or two, it’s none of the govt’s business anyway. Right?
Again - if we can't even get rid of the cent or the paper dollar, cash is going nowhere. If you think the crying and screaming of that is bad, wait until you try to get rid of all denominations.
If there are more ways for you to get paid in a secure and easily auditable manner that appeals to large segments of a population, why would you waste that opportunity? 80% of my retail transactions are done by tapping my phone on a card processing terminal. Is NFC / tap terminals not a thing in US yet? In Canada PayPass/Flash/etc... (both for credit and debit cards) is quickly replacing cash transactions under $100. And this is based on analyzing financial transaction behaviour of our roughly 20MM customers.
@dcarr said:
The big banks want a cashless society. That alone should appear as a big red flag.
Their goal is to be able to charge negative interest rates. As long as there is cash, the general population would not stand for negative interest rates because they would demand to "cash out" their savings accounts instead of paying the bank to house their money. Without cash, everyone is captive to the banks.
And yet German and Japanese bonds pay negative interest rates...
And this is really paranoia. Banks really don't care what the interest rate is. They care what the spread in rates is between borrowed money and loaned money. 10% paid interest with 14% loans is better than -1% interest paid on 2% loans.
Large institutional entities are sometimes required to hold a quantity of "Tier 1" assets (typically government bonds). They really don't have a choice. But given a choice, does anyone on this forum know any individual who would leave their money in a bank account if that bank was taking a percentage of their money every month ?
Banks do care about something other than the interest rate spread. They care about the amount of risk associated with the investments that they purchase (or loans that they make) using depositors' money. Of course, their goal is to make a profit by earning more on the money than they have to pay depositors. With negative interest rates, a bank can make a profit with ZERO risk because they don't have to invest the depositors' money - they can just sit on it.
I'll just give a fake phone #, or the old one I used at work, so they can harass whoever's left at and took over my old spot when the company RIF'd me....................
Has anyone here ever used a credit card at a small local coin show. or at a flea market?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
@jesbroken said:
Most users of CC's are people without the funds to pay cash. Why would someone use a credit card which charges you interest at a store(which more and more) charge you an additional fee to use credit. It's a no win system to use credit. I realize there are very few who use their card then immediately pay it off, thus no charges. Cash is the only way to go.
Points baby....points! My wife and I rarely pay for hotels by leveraging our travel credit card and you get additional protections. We pay off every bill so never any interest.
Comments
Since I rarely write checks at a store these days I rarely if ever get asked for a phone number anymore.
There is one hobby shop( Yes, there are some still in business.) I deal with that does give a discount for cash. With credit card transaction fees on the rise it may make sense for buyers to start asking for such a discount. Small retailers may be agreeable though probably not big ones.
I remember back about 1964 or so , a guy gave a speech at our High School assembly. He said that cash would soon be obsolete. I am still waiting!
In my real job, I have been a payments system consultant for over 30 years. Just a reminder, the consensus was that checks would be gone by 1984. Let's see if one of the London "bet on anything" bookies will lay odds on when the last US currency notes are printed.
Thinking of the coin end of things . . . . nothing speaks at a coin show for a fast and smooth transaction better than a nice wad of Franklins. For the average coin show attendee (not the higher end) . . . a couple grand in Frankies gets the deal done with anyone . . . But . .that is for collector coins . . not the guy picking up the 16-D Merc in 64.
Drunner
Many people have good reasons for using cash over credit. Where I work, I get to observe many people in the checkout line at the cafeteria at lunch every day. 90% of those transactions are credit or debit cards. A small number are phone or watch. The remainder are cash.
However this isn't a good sample of the population of folks with low income or poor credit, retired people, stay-at-home parents, or day-laborer types.
LIBERTY SEATED DIMES WITH MAJOR VARIETIES CIRCULATION STRIKES (1837-1891) digital album
Switzerland seems to like cash. According to 'Coin World', they just unveiled a 1000 franc note for circulation. Basically, that's a 'G' note. I wish we had those circulating. I've always enjoyed money in my pocket. That is, when I've had money.
Of course, once in a while you may need to rent a car or something.....
My bank doesn't offer paper checks anymore. Pay with card for just about everything, payoff biweekly, never charged interest and collect the free cashback.
I do live in an area with a lot of Amish owned business and most are cash only however more and more have started accepting credit cards. To keep the thread on topic I should mention the local pot dealer is cash only. lol
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Retiring at 55, what day is today?
There are between 8 and 12 million households that do not have access to banking services. Also cash is still anonymous and it is basically against Fed policy to ever allow another anonymous payment system to take hold so...
Interesting! They demonetized the previous 1000 Franc notes due to counterfeiting. I have heard of a couple of people that have been arrested for trying to spend those notes!
Depending on which side of town you are on in OKC; Southwest corner, cash is king...Northwest corner, cash is practically nonexistent. I have written four or five checks out in the past year...to CAC, they do not accept plastic of any form...unless it is a PCGS or NGC slab.
BST transactions: dbldie55, jayPem, 78saen, UltraHighRelief, nibanny, liefgold, FallGuy, lkeigwin, mbogoman, Sandman70gt, keets, joeykoins, ianrussell (@GC), EagleEye, ThePennyLady, GRANDAM, Ilikecolor, Gluggo, okiedude, Voyageur, LJenkins11, fastfreddie, ms70, pursuitofliberty, ZoidMeister,Coin Finder, GotTheBug, edwardjulio, Coinnmore, Nickpatton, Namvet69,...
Took a card for payment on a gold proof recently. Added costs go to the consumer. Such is businsss. Checks are cheaper but cash is still legal tender for all debts public and private. Why else would so many keep a cash position ? And why would so many want convenience ? It's costly , either way. There's my plug for gold.
Get some today.
Practice makes perfect & nobody is perfect. So, practice being nobody.
But transportation by horse still exists, meaning it was never fully eliminated.
I see people use credit or debit cards exclusively. I don’t see how when they charge 3 or 4 items a day that they can ever keep their checkbook balanced.
Last week I went to a French pastry & breakfast shop in Fort Collins.
They only take cash and checks - NO PLASTIC.
I like cash.
When did it become ok for there to be a 3% middleman involved in the majority of day-to-day transactions ?
The finances of the average American are extremely anemic.
And that has a lot to do with all the "leeches" sucking their take out of the economy. There is of course taxes, the Federal Reserve (which due to their monopoly on currency issuance gets to "skim" 6% off the top of the economy), and 3% (or higher) credit card processing fees.
Transaction processing fees, over the long run, have the effect of concentrating wealth at the top at the expense of everyone else. The elites that control these payment processing mechanisms do quite well, while everyone else is at a disadvantage.
The government has shirked on it's responsibility to provide an efficient cost-free medium of exchange. This is, however, by design so as to benefit certain entities.
As such, I use cash whenever possible. Actually, I use coin first if I can, then cash if possible. If either of those is not viable, then card.
When America began "ASSUMING" they'd never "make ends meet" again.
Hooray for outsourcing and Wall Street.
Gas stations around here always ask, "CASH OR CREDIT?" If you use credit, they charge you more.
My brother and I had to bail our friend out of jail in Reno, NV a few years back (long story). He called us from the Reno jail at 2am...middle of winter. Freezing cold. We went down there and tried to use a credit card. Nope, cash only. We left, hit a cash machine, and returned with $320 cash (bail was $307). Nope, had to be exact change. We left, bought something at a booz store and returned with exact change. That finally worked...man, what a pain. Long night.
Moral of story: When a pit boss asks you to leave his casino.....LEAVE....IMMEDIATELY!
Dave
True-as long as one soon, and I mean soon realizes the loss or theft of the card. My wife managed a jewelry store for years in Chicago, and it was a rare day when some sort of card scam wasn't pulled. mostly within an hour of the card being 'found' or picked.
FWIW, the checker at the cafeteria I frequent defaulted me to a card and I asked her to switch to a cash transaction. Got a 1943 D War nickel out of the deal.
Whatever you are, be a good one. ---- Abraham Lincoln
It's only a matter of time before cash is eliminated. Go to jmlanzaf's link and see the demographic trend (lots of other persuasive stats there!). Think about the growth in on-line retail and the closure of big box stores. The trend is not your friend with the argument that a cashless society isn't eventually probable.
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
Jmlanzaf's link info is based upon a SURVEY by MasterCard not government statistics...maybe MasterCard has a bit of a vested interest in the conversation?
FWIW my ATM company had a record month in March 2019, up +6% versus March 2018 and our all-time single highest month on record for total cash withdrawals.
There is a large group of Americans who cannot afford to join Amazon Prime, can't afford to spend $100 let alone $10K on a old coin...I'd estimate this group as at least 1/3 of the U.S. which is not exactly a small number....as long as the poor keep getting poorer in this country I'm not worried about the demise of cash...
Also FWIW online retail is only 10% of Total Retail Sales...that's why Amazon latest acquisitions have been bricks and mortar...they already own 50% of online sales...
Won't argue with you point that there are many who use cash now. However, I still believe the younger demographic, regardless of income, are not or will not use cash as the years go by. They have trouble making change from cash transactions. Sort of similar to telling time with a traditional clock face - a look of bewilderment.
"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress,
running like a water color in the rain...."
Cash is king at money shows and when I visit Ritz Houston.
Use cash and my change at drivethrus. At restaurants I frequent like Texas Roadhouse the restaurants waitresses love cash tips.
Frankly I don’t trust the anti cash crowd. Somewhere they want charge me more, violate my privacy, or rip me on usury interest rates.
The big banks want a cashless society. That alone should appear as a big red flag.
Their goal is to be able to charge negative interest rates. As long as there is cash, the general population would not stand for negative interest rates because they would demand to "cash out" their savings accounts instead of paying the bank to house their money. Without cash, everyone is captive to the banks.
There are definitely certain groups of people and certain types of business that operate on a cash basis. That said, the trend has to be heavily toward less cash transactions.
dcarr: Not to mention the creepy uncle in Washington that no one likes.
Fixed the link... and very interesting.
https://newsroom.mastercard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MasterCardAdvisors-CashlessSociety-July-20146.pdf
Okay. Normal people like cash. So when are we gonna rise up and tell the government that it’s time to start printing $500 and $1000 bills again?
I’m told that we’ll never see bills larger than $100 because of crime. Please. We’re not all criminals. And even if we are trying to avoid jumping through a hoop or two, it’s none of the govt’s business anyway. Right?
Again - if we can't even get rid of the cent or the paper dollar, cash is going nowhere. If you think the crying and screaming of that is bad, wait until you try to get rid of all denominations.
If there are more ways for you to get paid in a secure and easily auditable manner that appeals to large segments of a population, why would you waste that opportunity? 80% of my retail transactions are done by tapping my phone on a card processing terminal. Is NFC / tap terminals not a thing in US yet? In Canada PayPass/Flash/etc... (both for credit and debit cards) is quickly replacing cash transactions under $100. And this is based on analyzing financial transaction behaviour of our roughly 20MM customers.
Large institutional entities are sometimes required to hold a quantity of "Tier 1" assets (typically government bonds). They really don't have a choice. But given a choice, does anyone on this forum know any individual who would leave their money in a bank account if that bank was taking a percentage of their money every month ?
Banks do care about something other than the interest rate spread. They care about the amount of risk associated with the investments that they purchase (or loans that they make) using depositors' money. Of course, their goal is to make a profit by earning more on the money than they have to pay depositors. With negative interest rates, a bank can make a profit with ZERO risk because they don't have to invest the depositors' money - they can just sit on it.
Should have worn my tin foil hat for this thread...
I'll just give a fake phone #, or the old one I used at work, so they can harass whoever's left at and took over my old spot when the company RIF'd me....................
Has anyone here ever used a credit card at a small local coin show. or at a flea market?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Points baby....points! My wife and I rarely pay for hotels by leveraging our travel credit card and you get additional protections. We pay off every bill so never any interest.
Yes to both. No problem in any case.