You just cannot resist being a dick huh?

I'm 53. I do not know if you use mostly cash? You brought it up. Do you know if you use mostly cash or are you asking me if you do? Punctuation is not your strong suit huh? Glass houses ... Just saying.



I work retail. And I can tell you for a fact that cash use is declining very fast. The depts I work in are high ticket items and cash is rarely used. For the store as a whole, it is a little higher but still a small percentage (10% if I had to guess).

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Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

I use cash where I basically don’t trust use of my card, or am on the road in sketchy situations, or am across the pond, where small, family owned restaurants, which I seek out, can stuff the cash away from the tax man.

For my caution or largesse, I give up the 2% cashback.

I always use the card. If there is a fraudulent charge (never had one yet) I am covered. I do like the idea of using cash at smaller mom and pops but I rarely have much cash on me. Right now I have $7 in my money clip. That amount is unlikely to change for a while unless Ms Mash asks me to get a lotto ticket.

__________________
Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Ive had my corp card swiped a few times, but I use it at a lot of random places when I travel. Amex is very good about fraud protection and flagging them quickly. Knock on wood I havent had my personal card compromised.

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Not so fast. $16.52 from $21.02 is $4.50.

Skills are developed and honed as necessary, and lost when unnecessary. Nobody today knows how to use a side rule, or milk a cow, or drive a manual transmission vehicle.

Back on Bimmerfest, I have a reputation for being a militant anti-lease advocate. I've done the math. There are circumstances were leasing a BMW makes sense (the big one being high annual mileage). But, those are only applicable to a small segment of the 55% of new BMW's put on the road that are leased. BMW charges a "excess tire wear fee" for any tire on a lease turn-in that has less than 4/32" of tread in any circumferential channel. A BF-er from California said that he got an expensive two-year lease instead of the typical three-year lease to avoid the excess tire wear fee. But, those two-year leases area about $150/month more on an entry-level BMW. So, over three years, that's an extra $5400 to avoid buying a $1000 set of tires.

Something I've seen is that many of the militant pro-leasers on Bimmerfest live in California. I'm starting to suspect they don't teach math in the public schools out there, anymore. In those immortal words of Barbie... "Math class is tough."

https://youtu.be/_xjgI5oN8DM

Math class IS tough. You're either right or wrong, and it separates the smart people from the dumb ones. That disrupts a lot of agendas.

Just pulled in to Naples, FL yesterday. I always load up with a couple hundred in cash for the way down. Card for the hotel. Shell credit card for gas. Cash for lunches at fast food places. Will use the card at an Outback, or similar, otherwise, cash for food.

Back to the card for now.

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."

Why don't you go back to post#5 and see who brought up me using cash? No surprise that cash use is declining genius, that has been happening since the very first transaction on a charge plate occurred.

When we wen to Europe for 2 weeks I took $200. Came back with most of it. I just have no use for it. I like the guarantees that the card offers me on purchases and the security that I wont get screwed. Plus I do not lose anything if lost.

Different strokes ....

__________________
Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Those food dispensing places where still going in the very late 1940s or early 1950s in New York. Any member remember when they stopped?

I have been wondering if actual cash or even physical money may no longer exist at some point. Possibly not that far away. I would hope not but if it seriously suppressed the drug business and crime. Actually one in the same in my mind.. It might be worth the downside.

Currently cash is still the only way to do some legitimate deals in your favor. The sales tax is 15 percent here. Yet the aspect of it being collected so many times on the same object is discouraging. I also do not like the ideal of a constant paper trail on all my activities although none are really illegal.

I actually was not really aware of when I switched over to usually having no cash on my person. We do keep a small amount of money at home. If I expect I might need some where I am going. Plus some nominal amount in the cars. Money has also declined so much in buying power. In Canada in the last decade or so. I would always be restocking my wallet. If I returned to an all cash basis.

I assume I am very strong in math so at least I remain well aware of what I am spending. I suspect otherwise it might get a lot of todays young folk into problems. I see far too much effort out there to distract many from the concept that they are spending money. This to me is a form of conditioning. I find being thrust upon people more and more. Combine this with the all too easy credit overall that is being driven out there to support the consumer based economy. Is and has been discouraging. Reciently it has reached the point of force feeding it into society.

The possibility of the consumers reaching a credit saturation point does exist in my mind. Pretty static wages and steady substantial inflation are not good bedmates.

In the face of really noticeable inflation in the last decade in Canada. For whatever reason it does not seem to have been as pervasive in America in the same period.

I traveled and worked in Europe a whole bunch in the early two thousands and dealt with very little cash. I did most everything on American Express with no trouble. My wife and I spent three weeks in Europe in early 2017. I got there with a little cash and my American Express card. I had a heck of a time finding places where I could use it. I think because my earlier work and travel was around industrial areas where there were different types of hotels and eating places. Touring the countryside and other places when we were vacationing put us in different types of places. We are going again in the Spring and you can bet I will be prepared with euros. For me the most fun places to go are away from the cities and industrial areas and that’s where the cash is needed.

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

The last one at 42nd and 3rd closed in ‘91, believe it or not. The one on Vesey St lasted until the cleared the block to build the WTC, probably around 1967. The one in the Museum of Natural History probably closed in the 70’s.

I take some cash when I go abroad but put everything on my credit card that I can. When we went to Italy in 2001 I took a dozen or so $2 bills and used them for tipping when I thought the service was really good. I also took a dozen or so pencils that I bought at the Indy car store in Indy which had Indy cars printed on the side. I used them for the same purpose. People in Italy love anything car related. They also liked the $2 bills.

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

I was overseas for a while recently as well. Had cash as a backup but mostly just left it locked in the safe. Now its back in USD and just sitting around...maybe ill hit up the bank today. The only time I can think of using cash here is for our antiquated regional rail payment system (thankfully getting replaced) if we run over our monthly tickets.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

A pocket full of cash can get you out of a lot of jams that a cc can’t. Early life lesson I learned from a degenerate gambler family member.