For these cases I keep a tiny bag filled with colourful pieces of paper and metal discs in various sizes. Strangely the cashier seems to accept them as means of payment.
I tried this once. security kicked my ass and told me to not come back with monopoly money again.
Funnily enough, my country's bills do look like Monopoly money. So much so that I tried to get smart with my friend by offering him some bills for his Boardwalk, but he slapped down my shit and told me to get some get real Monopoly money. :(
you have never been poor, have you?
Obglatory not OP, but... When I was younger and pretty broke I preferred paying cash. It was very easy to keep track of my spending rate and there was no risk of getting declined.
Interestingly I read somewhere (from a Behavioral Economics book, I think) that people who pay in cash in average spend less than people who pay by card.
Paying cash involves literally giving out something physical which you own, whilst paying by card is just a number in a screen that you say yes to, and it's theorized that the actually parting with something physical like cash makes people more wary of spending because of the higher unpleasent feeling of losing something.
Certainly looking at myself, actually counting and giving away β¬100 in notes does feel more unpleasant that merelly saying yes to a screen showing the number 100.
All this to say that for poor people it actually makes even more sense to pay in cash.
That's exactly why I preferred cash when I was in my 20s, but there's a catch. Completely avoiding the credit system isn't good for longer term finance either. In the US at least, no credit can be worse than bad credit. This makes it hard to escape the poverty trap even if you get finances are in order.
There's another catch if your not using a card with rewards. (As I understand it this is mostly a U.S. thing, other countries don't give this.)
Every year when I take my big vacation my wife and I get 1-1.5 of our international business class tickets paid for by rewards on one card and about half of our hotel suites (about 10-11 nights) paid for by rewards on another card. If you're paying cash or using a card without rewards, you're paying for my vacation.
Places with different prices for cash and cards are vanishingly rare. Mostly because card processing companies try to penalize places that do this. So everyone pays higher prices to pay for the higher processing fees for reward cards. If you aren't getting something back you're just paying for people that are.
I have to wonder what kind of child hears someone say that they pay in cash rather than use a card and assume that they're rich.
I have to imagine you are so fiscally deficient that the 2% or so card transaction fee doesn't even register to you. Did you know that especially some Mom and Pop shops will charge less when using cash for that very reason? Gas stations even advertise cash rates for gas.
Ignorance and arrogance are a horrible combo.
I've never seen a shop have different prices for different payment methods in my life.
Is that an America thing?
No, I live in New Zealand, and a 2% surcharge for credit cards is pretty common.
EFTPOS transactions are always free.
Not in my experience. There is a credit card fee, but the stores pay it. I've heard of places offering a cash discount for that reason, but haven't seen it in years. If you paid cash now, you'd just be paying the credit card price.
I only see this at gas stations and rural restaurants now in the US southwest.
Yeah I definitely have seen it as gas stations in the past, I can't recall seeing it lately.
If you remember computer shows, the vendors there would often show a cash price and then charge more for cards.
I thought doing that sort of thing was against their merchant agreement though. But maybe not.
Have been. Still not rich.
Money is very physical. When you give it away you can see that there is less remaining. Helps to keep track of your expenses.
jokes only people who've been broke and struggling will understand.
Not strictly true.
If you have a card long enough (several years between issue and expiry, say) and you use it often enough, the magnetic strip can start to fade and transactions can fail. More and more often. Edit: It might have been a chip problem rather than a magnetic strip problem. I can't remember now, but it makes no real difference to the story.
And sometimes there might be weeks with no trouble and then you'll get that one card reader that's particularly finicky and there's a cold sweat moment as you realise you don't have enough cash. "Try it again. It's done this before." Please work. Pleeease.
This usually happened to me in the supermarket, so that scene from InnerSpace was playing on loop in my head.
After the third or fourth time, I called the bank and they sent me a new one ASAP.
You get a different error message when that happens though.
Magnetic strip? Is that still a thing? All terminals I've seen in the last decade or two use the smart card or the NFC. Magnetic strip is insecure.
Magnetic Stripe is still used in the US as a backup because some places still don't have the chip nor rfid thing in their transation terminals.
The little chip contact on my debit card started getting flaky with certain machines. Finally, it wouldn't work at all, and I had to use my credit card to pay for groceries. I never use my credit card, I wasn't even sure it still worked. Then I had to remember to pay my credit card before the end of the month.
The only other time I replaced a debit card is when I lost one. When I chose the "lost or stolen" option from the dropdown, my card was immediately canceled, and I got the message I'd get a new one in the mail in a few days. I had to use my coin stash to put gas in my car, and I ate from the back of the pantry till the card showed up. Cut it close there, I didn't know that was going to happen, and didn't plan ahead.
Two comments for you:
Using your credit card for all that incidental stuff and paying it off in full each month is a good way to build a good credit history/score.
If you lose you card again, remember that you can withdraw cash without it by going into the bank.
Also gets you credit card rewards. I'd rather not have those transaction fees baked into prices but it they already are you may as well benefit and take back some of the fees they charge.
Yeah, that's an excellent point.
Lemmy is number 1 for intentionally missing the point. I thought it was reddit but nope.
No, actually you still don't get it.
your mild inconvenience of your card not working, does not compare to the dread of not knowing if you will eat today, and by the way, the cashier KNOWS if your card is not working or the payment is rejected.
so, you can add that shame to the experience.
Lesson here: you're not actually smarter than the person you replied to, just more ignorant of other peoples lives.
No. You're right. I'll never completely understand until my bank account goes negative. Or I have no bank account. And I have to go a day or more without eating.
But I do have anxiety. And a very limited income. My grocery shop spend for two weeks now is about the same price as I paid for one week, fifteen years ago. I have to budget every little thing.
So while I can't fully understand, I have more understanding than you think I do, and it's not just me that needs to be careful about ignorance.
I always check my account before going to pay just to avoid this. I don't even leave my house to buy something before I've made sure I have enough money.
It can happen even then. A few years ago, my wife and I had lunch at a burrito place, then walked across the shopping center and did our grocery shopping. Same card was declined the second time, no issue on our end, plenty of credit limit available, just some fraud trigger went off at the bank (I don't remember details).
I gotta say, moments like these made me consider communism
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