I had two reasons, the first is because i found it way too easy to spend on my card without thinking, and the second because I wanted to regain a bit of privacy alongside everything else I’m doing. Ive set it up in my bank that on payday, an amount of my salary automatically goes to the bills account, some goes to long term savings, some to short term savings, then the rest I take out in cash.
It really does change my perception of spending I think: Ive found myself not buying things because I didnt want to break a note and carry change. I can physically see how much I have left. I can take £20 to the pub and leave when its finished. Plus it feels really good knowing every single transaction isnt stored forever. I have a small amount of money on a contactless ring for emergencies like a bus fare or somewhere that unexpectedly only takes card.
Is anyone else still predominantly using cash day to day?
With the exception of my early college career (pre-dodd-frank) I never really stopped using cash. It’s much harder to budget using a card even though these days you can check your bank balance from your phone.
Now they have your fingerprints. Good job.
Just never go outside without leather gloves and a ski mask
Follow me for more excellent tips that definitely won’t make you look like a serial killer to everyone
Ski mask isn’t enough. You need to remove your face.
I use Monero primarily
I’m interested in this, I did buy a small amount but struggling to spend it anywhere? Even when I bought a Trezor hardware wallet I had to use LTC… I know I can pay for Mullvad with it when my subscription expires in two years lol
I also can’t find any no-KYC place to buy it now LocalMonero is closed.
Use haveno
Xmrbazaar.com is a place to request a product/service or sell a product/service for monero. Here is my store for example. https://xmrbazaar.com/user/shortwavesurfer2009/ and https://haveno-reto.com is where to buy/sell since LM is gone. Please note you need at least 0.11xmr to use it though as a security deposit you get back after a successful trade
The main question is - where would you get that deposit first…
https://xmrbazaar.com and offer to drop ship something. Here is my store for example and how I earn Monero. https://xmrbazaar.com/user/shortwavesurfer2009
That sounds like “getting money out of thin air”, have my doubts that money is guaranteed… Also wouldn’t dropshipping require some setup?
Actually, I don’t think drop shipping is the term I am looking for. What I do is simply take an order from somebody and then immediately go to eBay and ship the item to them. The main difference is that I’m doing it in another currency and I want to get rid of the dollars and get that other currency and not come back.
Ah. Especially if the exact item can be requested by the buyer - then ye, fair plan)
The problem is, that none of the grocery stores or street markets or supermarkets in my area accept Monero 🤷
While it is most definitely true that they do not accept it directly, they very likely do accept it with gift cards, which you can purchase with Monero. That is how I have been buying my groceries for the past year and a half.
When I lived in Europe and North America, this is also how I bought most my groceries.
Except I used bitcoin because the monero gift card vendors are terribly insecure.
Please elaborate on your claim of them being terribly insecure. It’s not something I’ve noticed, but I could be missing something.
They send the card details over email. If you know of one that doesn’t, please let me know
What do other merchants do? Because when I was still using Bitcoin back in like 2015, that’s what Bitcoin gift card merchants did as well. So what’s different these days?
They show it to you on their website.
Even if they were, that would likely require you to carry a smartphone everywhere, which is not very privacy-friendly either.
I rarely use cash. Nearly everything I spend is on supermarket and they know exactly what I buy because we’re forced to use their “loyalty” programs anyway.
Then traveling: dealing with other currencies, coming home with unspendable money. And there’s no interest on cash lying around.
But I hate the tendency for places to not accept cash at all, there should still be a choice.
One bonus is that I keep finding money on the streets in countries that love cash.
Co worker went into a grocery store and asked for a loyalty card. They wanted him to fill out the form of information. He’s like can I just not? The person behind the counter couldn’t care less…they just handed him the plastic sheet of like ~5 cards (full size and several keychain sized). So my loyalty card is spilt with that many people and is tied to no one. So the data on that account is wild I’m sure. I don’t get the like 3 cents off gas but I wasn’t gonna use it for that anyway. I hate ‘loyalty card’ prices on everything…
I’m using fake names on all those things, but prices without loyalty are often insane. It’s basically an extra tourist tax.
They also usually tie loyalty cards to phone numbers. So tell them 555-555-5555. Chances are high that someone already registered a card to some bullshit phone number, and many people are using it simultaneously
In what country are you forced to use loyalty cards?
I’ve never had a cashier tell me I couldn’t pay without a loyalty cars. Usually I ask them to swipe their card, which 80% of the time they do because they get free gas or whatever
Czechia. In many supermarkets “discounts” only apply when you have a card/app. Essentially the “discount” is normal price, otherwise you’ll pay nearly double.
And the cashier doesn’t swipe their own card if you ask them politely to do so?
I really doubt that.
If you fully stop using cashless at the grocery store you might get put on a list. Governments love tracking irregularities.
Appearing “normal” and occasionally using cash at your regular grocery store makes it far less suspicious. Then for every irregular store you can use cash.
Why the downvotes? I fear that this is not entirely paranoid if I look at the current trend.
Then more of us should get ourselves on those lists. We should make the lists useless by way of flooding them
I fantasize about getting it together enough to pull off what you are doing. Good for you — keep inspiring us.
I also want to pay more in cash to reward businesses for still allowing you to pay in cash as I’m noticing more are going cashless. I’m occasionally reliant on cash so I don’t want to end up stranded on those occasions where I can only pay cash, so definitely want to ensure the option remains open. The privacy is a benefit too of course.
I think at the moment I mostly buy “important” stuff in cash and everyday stuff with card. Important like a new computer or something, because I’d plan to have that computer for a while and don’t want it easily traced to me. Everyday stuff like food because, while I completely understand not wanting the state/banks/etc to know anything about you, I personally don’t care too much if the state knows what I eat. Would be nice to eventually become one of those people with no footprint at all though.
Anyone in a 14 eyes country is essentially impossible to achieve zero footprint, but assuming they’re not actively looking into your network packets or searching for you on CCTV its feasible to have a relatively low footprint. I’m essentially trying to eliminate as far as practical, any data points I’m just giving away for free for no reason, especially to corporations and advertisers.
Afraid they almost definitely are actively monitoring all my above-ground activities lol, I’m in a country getting quite a bit of international flak for cracking down on political dissidents. Won’t say any more than that, tbh that doesn’t narrow down my location much with the current state of things anyway. But yeah I agree, I want to minimise the amount of data accessible about me.
A computer is something you’d want to buy with a credit card, as they often come with additional free warranties for various mishaps
Thats fine if you value the warranty over your privacy (not trying to be sarcastic, everyone has a different threat model and I mean it when I say that’s fine for some people), but personally I would prefer the computer were not traceable to me, including at the cost of having to buy replacements when they otherwise come with warranty. I have turned down various things that electronics come with that require leaving your details. I understand why people leave their details to get the extra stuff but i am willing to spend more to be anonymous.
My bank recently got rid of their own contactless payment app and now I am forced to use Google pay. You have to accept Google’s privacy terms and they’ll have access to all your transactions. No thanks.
Beyond that I quite like using tech. Still waiting for bitcoin to take off after more than a decade. For budgeting you can use programs and it’ll notify you real time on your expenditures.
This decision was helped by moving to GrapheneOS and losing Google Pay, definitely. (And Degoogling for other reasons at the same time). If I have to carry a card I may as well carry cash, a few folded notes are the same footprint as a card and as I mentioned, I try not to break notes if I don’t have to, so I’m not carrying change often.
I’ve lived in Germany and cards are just not really a thing there. The only real thing I hated about it was that everyone was somehow incapable of just prepping their cash, so I’ve wasted countless hours waiting in line at banks.
The other thing I hated was during corona. I worked in a store and we had to handle all that cash 🤢
Other than that, the coins are quite annoying. They’re bulky and heavy. My trick was to just empty them out every time I came home into a bowl. Then once a year or so I’d get it turned into paper money.
I have a leather coin bag full of change that I swear I could bludgeon a person to death with because it just so rarely gets used.
It pulls down my pants if I bring it with me anywhere.I recently had it with me out recently and ended up paying the restaurant bill in exact change because of it and we were all amazed. They say it doesn’t happen really anymore.
I just can’t justify the like 8 bucks of paper money it would make me either.
I only use cash at places that have a purchase portal as complicated as giving change. You want to hand me a tip machine on a stick without tap pay and select a tip amount on a tiny shitty touch screen? You can count my change, thanks. Hopefully we see some traction in public opinion regarding privacy soon. Until then banks are selling your data, but the infra is required to live a modern life.
Some credit cards offer 2% cash back… (Not points) So it’s hard to give that up when you get 2% off for just about every dollar you spend. Why wouldn’t you put every dollar on card you would normally spend.
This doesn’t work well if you are paying interest…
If you’re fiscally savvy and don’t overspend and can pay your balance in full every month and are not paying interest, this is a strong vote for choosing over cash.
However, without that…I see no benefit and would use more cash for all reasons in this thread.
Well that’s the way it should be. If they’re selling your data, they should compensate you for that in some way. Then it becomes a personal decision as to how much it matters to you.
As an aside, this is why I recently degoogled, having been all in on Google products for 10 years. 10 years ago you got amazing value for your data from Google but now every single useful product has been enshittified or shut down and they collect more data than ever. The sums just don’t add up any more.
This is sort of a scam though. Credit cards give rewards, but then charge the business for the processing fees. So the business needs to raise prices to cover the fees. So really no one is getting that 2% except for the card network. And if you don’t lose a card you lose 2%.
It is basically a protection racket. “It would be a shame if you didn’t use our credit card and had to pay 2% more everywhere”
Yes, I know it is complicated. Handling cash also costs non-trivial amounts. I know that the EU has limits on fees (and that is why basically no credit cards have rewards there). I also know that some businesses see the fee as more of a marketing costs because higher spenders tend to use cards and people tend to spend more on cards.
Indeed. Its very uncommon to get flat cashback options in the UK for this reason. I think I had AmEx that gave me 1% for a year and nothing after that.
You’re also paying in the data they sell on you
Out in NYC, the bodegas all have a little plaquard saying that either 1: listed prices include a 2% credit card fee and you can save by using cash, or 2: listed prices may not match your final charge because they add a 2% fee on top for credit cards.
Which is the same thing effectively but it can be sometimes confusing if you’re trying to watch for the fee.
Anecdotally, I have sometimes noticed the cashier will say a price, and then say a slightly different price when I pull out the card. So it’s not like they always apply the fee regardless. At least some of the time anyway.
Not universal of course. I don’t remember if that’s also true for grocery stores, and it’s probably not the case for big chains but honestly I don’t know.
Apparently there has been an uptick in people using cash in the UK because it helps with budgeting. Which has become more necessary since 60% of inflation started coming from corporate profiteering and four people became able to outcompete twenty million others in the market.
In the US, I’ve noticed several places, mostly restaurants that now charge a convenience fee for credit card transactions. Double bonus for cash. I’ve even started using checks again as they don’t have a fee.
That’s actually illegal in the UK, to charge a fee for card use. Just means everyone pays more in increased prices, although most people in the UK use card for everything so for the population as a whole its probably a money saver, if not a privacy saving policy.
I would consider paying with cash again IF $100 bills weren’t so much trouble.
It’s hard to get a $100 bill. ATMs just don’t spit them out. Many places refuse to take them. It’s just hard to carry over $100 in cash without quickly having your wallet explode in size.
Back in the day $100 was like caring $1,000 now. You could get a lot done with $20 bills… You can burn through the major of $100 just going to dinner and I also have no desire to manage all that cash at my house or hit up an ATM every other day.
Interesting, we have £50 notes in the UK but they essentially don’t exist for most people. No cash machines will give you one, and shopkeepers mistrust them, although generally accept. 20s are the highest people deal with here usually.
50€ notes are really common in Germany (and probably the rest of the euro zone), mistrust only starts at 100€ and above, most shops don’t accept 500€ anymore and 200€ also became quite rare
We also have 50s, they have the same problem as 100s.
There are definitely places that will take the 50s and 100s but the number of times you can get burned by it is too high for my liking. I once was on vacation and a state park (I think it was) wouldn’t take anything bigger than 20s for their admission fee.
I think I only had 50s so I think I ended up having a stranger help me out.
Yeah I do agree that American cash doesn’t stretch as far. I’m definitely having to hit the ATM or cash back option way more than before for how much things cost. 50s are good for restaurants and the like but 100s are so weirdly distrusted and a pain. But I rarely get back 5s and 10s cause seriously inflation is just so good damn high.
I keep thinking I’m gonna pull out a bunch of cash to have but then… Yeah I am not one to stuff it under my mattress and it being available electronically is so useful… Sigh…
Trying. It’s all we can do until things change for real.
I encourage cash spending at a small business I operate. Average sale is around $150, 10% discount for using cash. About 25% of people pay cash.
It’s very thinly veiled tax avoidance, but zero people have complained or called us out in it.
well nobody complains about having to pay less, and calling it out means they might lose the discount in the future and who would want that?
All day, everyday! Freedom over convenience!
