I used to pay for lunch in cash if the tab was under $10 and at a mom & pop restaurant. But, the days of a $9.95 lunch other than fast food are gone. I still tip in cash, though. I run the office lottery pool, and merchants don't take credit cards for lottery tickets. So, my monthly cash withdrawal is only for tips and lottery tickets. I get a few $20's for lottery tickets, $10's, $5's, and $1's for tips.

My lunch posse has two terms: "snarking" and "baiting." "Snarking" means putting a $5 in the tip pile and taking back change in $1's. "Baiting," short for "snark baiting," means to put down $1's. Using the snark and bait method, we recycle about half of our $1's between each other. There's also the rare "double snark," where there's enough tip money on the table to put down a $10 and take back change.

I pick which credit card I use for a particular purchase to optimize my rebates. In 2019, I earned $1473 in rebates, and another $500 toward my next beater car, a GM POS bought new. By the time I max' out my GM rebates, I end up with $4k back on a GM purchase or lease, but that's because I'm grandfathered in on the old rules from the 1990's. I getting ready to buy my third GM vehicle that way. I got back $1700 on Frau Putzer's BMW from BMW FS's credit card.

I have about $250 in GM rebates expiring March 21st. So, I need to time it so my factory-ordered Chevy Equinox arrives before then. That means I need to cram up to $10k spending into the first three weeks of January. I've put off some big purchases to do that. Also, our house AC system is worn out and can't keep up in the summer. So, this will be easy.

The BMW credit card rebates are between the customer and BMW FS. The dealer never sees them. But, that's different for GM. They tell customers not to mention their GM MasterCard rebates until the paperwork is being done. Then, you give you GM MasterCard to the dealership guy/gal, they call the 1-800 and get the total of the rebates to take off the bottom line. The new GM cards limit the rebates to $1000 or $1500 per vehicle. But, I get up to $4k on a single vehicle. The last time I did that, the salesman was PISSED! He wanted "his share." **** him. I'm buying the Equinox from another dealership.

There's some fine print in the BMW FS Visa rewards description. The big print says "4% on purchases at BMW centers." But, there's a footnote and it says it's 4% at any car or truck dealership. That's because the Visa database can't keep track of the car lines the dealerships sell. So, I'm going to max out my BMW FS Visa card when I pay for the Equinox. Florida car dealerships are notorious for charging high "processing fees." I'm going to had them my BMW FS card and say "process this."