There are also breakouts on use of various forms of money by race, geography, and so on.
My favorite line from the piece: “ In particular, we still reach for the old checkbook when dealing with contractors, charities, taxes and landlords. But you may encounter some furrowed brows if you hold up the line in Safeway or Taco Bell to painstakingly spell out “sixteen dollars and forty-four cents”
Remember when you could order checks 300-500 at a time? That was nice. Order once, and I’m done with ordering for a couple years. Now, the check ordering web site only offers a choice of 40 or 80. A couple years ago, the only option was for 40. I had to reorder at about the time I received an order.
I burn through cash at an amazing rate these days. Used to be $60 would last me a month. Now, I hit the ATM for $100 about every week. Only major difference over the years is I eat out several times a week now, vs eating out never, before, because I was working all the time.
The thing about cash and paper checks is they keep the credit card companies relatively honest. Without cash and checks, CC companies could raise their skim rate to the full extent of their desire for profits. I assume their desire for profits is infinite. How much of a skim are people willing to pay for? 10%? 25%?
I live in Mexico where 70% or so of the population never uses anything but cash. I pay all employees and contractors in cash, and about 50% of my store purchases. And since the largest readily attainable cash bill is for only 500 pesos (about $23), I need a thick wad to make it through the week.
It is a friggin PITA. Once a week I put on my “useless stoned old man USAian hippy” clothes to go to my bank to pick up my huge wad, which I stick under a package of cheap tortillas in my small backpack.
david fb
(and yes, I would really hate to have to have dealt with Venezuelan and Zimbabwean toilet paper money)
These days, seems people give you the stink-eye if you try to hand them a $100 bill. But 50 years ago, a sawbuck had the buying power that Benjamin does now, and people didn’t treat you like an axe murderer if you handed them one.
50 years ago there wasn’t a laser printer or inkjet printer in every basement, nor the internet dark corners with people offering to sell counterfeits to all comers. Different time.
Counterfeiters have been around forever. There have been high budget operations, that, one would think, could have recruited the best engravers in the world to make the plates, then there were the low end jobs.
Now, with rampant ID theft, seems a credit card should be just as suspect as a Benjamin, because the retailer is stuck whether he is charged back for honoring a bogus card, or the Treasury thanks him for the counterfeit currency he handed them, and then walks away.
