This is not really true, or at least you’d have to be very negligent to get cleaned out like that. Debit cards DO have a $50 liability limit if you report the loss within two days. After two days but before 60 days, you have a maximum $500 liability. After 60 days, your liability is unlimited.
We’re not talking about a stolen card. We’re talking about one that has been duplicated. It’s up to the individual to prove they didn’t buy something. I’ve been through this and it was with a merchant who tried to tack on someone else’s purchase to my card.
Count me among the members of the younger generation that spend cash easier than “real” money. I do keep 100 dollars in my wallet for emergencies, but it is hidden (from me, my town is regularly listed as one of the ten safest in the nation, so I am not worried about being mugged or anything like that). The only place I have found where paying cash is worth the inconvenience is my local barbershop, which is the only real old fashioned barber shop in town, and the 3-4 dollars left after I break the twenty I got from the ATM on my way their definitely spends easier than the money in my checking account.
YOU encounter them regularly. I don’t. I do keep a few hundred bucks in my wallet, mostly in fives and ones, and nothing larger than a 20, in case I do encounter some situation which can only be resolved with cash. However, even the mom and pop restaurants that I go to are very happy to take my debit card, and let me put the tip on the card, too. And I don’t need to buy fundraiser chocolate or cookies. Really, I don’t. And for the most part, I’m more than able to decline. Almost every financial transaction that I’m liable to make in my day to day living can be handled with plastic, and, as I said, I do keep some cash in my wallet. Before I converted to a debit card, I usually kept a couple of thousand in my wallet, and I got cash from the credit union much more frequently.
I do wish my credit union would issue a debit or credit card with a reward program, but the interest rate is so great, we’re gonna stick with our CU.
It occurs to me that what you may encounter regularly is not the same as what most people will encounter regularly. Girl scouts left and right, needing a soda at a cash-only vending machine every few minutes, flea markets and garage sales every day, it sounds like.
Cash is an irritation to me. I can’t remember the last time I was in a situation where I absolutely needed cash instead of plastic. As others pointed out, if I’m going to a garage sale, I’ll probably plan ahead for it and stop at an ATM on the way. I don’t buy girl scout cookies, I don’t go to church, and I don’t think I’ve been in a restaurant that doesn’t accept cards in years. Anything that I encounter regularly, I can use my card for – with the added bonuses that if I were to lose my wallet or have it stolen from me, I wouldn’t lose any money at all; and that everytime I swipe, I’m earning some kind of rewards.
I just have to :dubious: at the notion that you regularly encounter a combination of the cash-only exceptions listed in this thread. If true, I’m honestly surprised.
Just want to mention that this thread seems surreal to me! 
I’ve got two plastic debit cards; one of them I use about once every two years, e.g. when a travel agent insists on credit card. The other I’ve only used at ATM machines, and then always to extract the maximum cash allowed. Most of the people around where I live have never seen a check. We pay our electricity and water bills in cash in person when the man comes by. (We’re now advanced to the point that many bills can be paid at Post Office or any 7-Eleven, but when we do that we hand in cash.)
We bought a new vehicle several years ago, $11,000 net with the trade-in. The Toyota dealer wanted cash. (In America “cash” here would mean a check or bank transfer for full value. But I mean several stacks of government banknotes.) I questioned the Toyota cashier – wouldn’t a bank transfer or bank draft be more convenient for everyone? No, they wanted the stacks of banknotes.
Even when I lived in U.S.A. I was a cash person. Partly as a gambler, cash being a “tool of the trade.” Partly since I’m not an impulse buyer, so the usual reason for cashlessness applies less.
Guys–this is another “shoes in the house” thread where people are overlooking the geographical distinctions. Some places in the country are much more debit card friendly than others. Weirdly enough, it seems to me that it’s the “flyover states” that have really gone cashless, but my understanding is that on the coasts, especially the East coast, small cash transactions dominate. It’s just a different way of life, determined both by custom and by structure: you can go for weeks in suburban Dallas without needing much cash. That’s less likely to happen in NYC.
You’ve given me a brilliant idea: I’m going to have a garage sale and accept PayPal (which accepts credit cards)!
Ah, I’m caught. Yes, I have to go to the ATM to get money because my old-fashioned barber shop doesn’t take credit cards, either. Even the chain places don’t (or didn’t about 15 months ago).
I actually managed to buy a book at AggieCon a few years back using Paypal. Basically, I wanted to buy a book, but had no cash. The guy couldn’t take credit card payments, and both of the ATMs on that part of campus were out of cash (as always happened at Texas A&M during AggieCon). The guy had a paypal account, and we both went to Texas A&M at the time, so he agreed to give me an autographed copy of his book (a comic book, IIRC), in return for me going home and making the payment on PayPal that night.
That’s right, he gave me the book before I made the PayPal payment. Trust is a wonderful thing sometimes.
The first time I saw someone pay for a 98 cent bottle of water with a card, I was shocked. Now I see it all the time. I do not understand the plastic only people. I guess they just have more confidence in the system. Right after hurricane Charley in Florida, no one could process credit cards and for a day or two it was a cash only world. I felt like a bank loaning out money here and there to the plastic only people. They all now keep a cash stash as well.
I also spend so much more when I use a card. When I go to the supermarket, I bring my cash and leave my cards home. I learned this when I found myself going over what I wanted to spend knowing I can simply slide that card. I do the math in my head the entire time I am shopping and my budget is better for it.
Off the top of my head, those that don’t take credit:
The $1.50 dry cleaner.
The pancake diner next to the church.
The farmers market and many booths and the flea market.
Garage Sales
My coworkers when they are heading out to pick up lunch and want to know if they can get me something.
Additionally, I ALWAYS tip in cash so it is up to the server whether or not they want to claim it.
Actually, I think you two are saying opposite things.
HowieReynolds is saying “there are studies showing that people are less likely to spend money if it’s cash than if it’s ‘just ring it up’.” You’re saying, “since many of my impulse purchases would involve cash, by not carrying cash I avoid impulse purchases; therefore, by not carrying cash I am actually saving money.”
I’ve met both kinds of people. I think it’s important to know which spending style you have, same as it is important to figure out whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, or a people person or not; it’s good for your mental and physical health.
In Spain most stores do not accept CCs below a certain amount, so I’m used to always having some cash. Part of my budgeting process is something I do every Saturday, of checking how much money is there in my wallet, how much I expect to spend in cash during the next week, and therefore whether I need to swing by the ATM or not. I prefer to avoid using CCs for amounts below 100€ (which in my case usually means amounts below 40€).
Agreed, it’s the kind of discussion where geographical details are pretty much required in order for the anecdata to make sense.
As soon as parking meters can be paid for with a mobile phone or proximity card I won’t have any reason at all to carry cash day-to-day. Even then I just keep a bunch of loose change in the car rather than in my pocket.
I still pay for some items with cash - e.g. floodlight tokens at our tennis club - but these are all expected events so I plan to take cash with me; similar to other posters it’s very rare that I’ll need to pay cash for anything without there being an ATM within 10 mins walk.
And I’m another person who find cash vanishes through my fingers whereas I have control over a debit/credit card with online account acccess.
Our local convenience store has a £5 limit for card transactions, but they also have a free ATM (and/or they offer cashback) - usually never a problem but last night the ATM wasn’t working; meant I had to buy an extra £1.50 of goods to get over the threshold but it was stuff I needed anyway.
Ah, this was the other thing I was going to mention: after a series of articles in the Plain Dealer about businesses who did NOT turn over charge-card tips to the servers, but kept a cut for themselves, we were all advised to pay the bill on the card, but leave the tip in cash so that the server gets their income. It all started, I believe, with questions asked about a tip jar at a coat check, where the management kept the money for a “Christmas Party for the Employees” that never ever happened. That led to a full-out investigation by the reporter that revealed that the tips left on a credit card were even less likely to make it to the server’s pockets in some instances.
So the Girl Scouts don’t set up tables outside Wal-Mart and grocery stores where you all live? Here you can order directly from a Scout, but they also sell at tables to move more product. During cookie season I must pass at least eight tables in various places.
Agreed:
Although, my husband has lived here all of his life and he is a cash devotee. He doesn’t have an ATM card, won’t even use one.
No, ma’am. But if they did, it would be very easy for me to smile regretfully and say “sorry, I haven’t any cash on me”. 
I think that is the reason I stopped carrying cash in the first place - when my kids were small, it made it so easy to say “Nope, we can’t buy that 'cause I don’t have any cash on me”.
There’s a lot of emphasis on the Girl Scout cookies in this thread. Do they have heroin as a secret ingredient now, or what?
Who’s “we?” The post I was replying to clearly was talking about a stolen card.
But regardless, what’s the difference between a stolen and duplicated card for fraud purposes? You report it once someone charges to it and you’re fine. I also had a merchant charge someone else’s purchase to my card and it took five minutes to get it reversed.
Right. People organize their lives differently, they live in different environments, they have different daily needs. That’s the point of this thread, I think. To explain WHY we do things differently.
I’m certainly not judging you for arranging things differently, or having different needs than I do.
I have a few routine, nontrivial, unavoidably cash transactions.
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The Firebug’s babysitters. We give ourselves a break from parenting for a few hours almost every weekend, and teenage girls are rarely set up to take plastic.
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Farmers’ markets and fruit stands: around here, roadside fruit stands tend to be wagons that the farmers in question roll out to the roadside. They aren’t electronically hooked up to anything, and take cash only. Stands at farmers’ markets are similarly impermanent - there may be a shelter that the different vendors can set up under, but the individual vendors are only set up for a few hours; the next day the space will be used for some other purpose. So again, no electronic hookups; cash only.
And since fresh tomatoes and peaches, unpasteurized apple cider, and the like, beat the crap out of their grocery-store not-so-equivalents, I carry cash for my purchases at farmers’ markets and roadside fruit/veggie stands.
Between the farmers’ markets/stands and the babysitting, that puts my weekly cash usage in the high two figures right there.
But this thread has piqued my curiosity as to how often, other than these two situations (one of which is seasonal), how often, other than these mostly predictable situations, do I use cash at places that don’t take plastic? Some places take checks, but how often do you need to write a check anymore when you’re away from home? I still carry cash, but I stopped carrying a checkbook years ago.
Except for the guy who thinks I’m foregoing “a huge range of conveniences and social niceties” by not carrying cash around.
I prefer cash in a big way. I’m 25 and I feel the expenditure far more keenly if I pay in cash.
However, I use my Cabelas card 80% of the time because I get points. It’s a measly 1% return but I’m looking forward to the day I can walk out of Cabelas with a free rifle or smoker under my arm.
I’m in northern Idaho and damned near everyone accepts credit. None of my business but it irritates me when people don’t carry ANY cash. Shit happens, be prepared and have some cash.