personal finances

TRX
July 20, 2013
70:
I use cash for all local purchases, and buy money orders for paying bills by mail.

I maintain one VISA card for making online purchases. I regularly have to type its number into various web pages, which make nasty comments because I didn't include the dashes, or nasty comments because I put dashes in. And I keep wondering why so many commercial sites with an expiration date drop-down box only have ten entries, stopping at October, and I have to scroll down to select November...

The latest replacement card has microscopic stamped numbers, only visible by taking my glasses off and holding the card up at an angle to catch the light. I wound up putting a piece of masking tape across the long edge and writing the number in felt tip.

The card normally stays in my desk drawer, so I didn't feel the need to zap the "security chip" and magstripe with my Magnaflux machine.

The US economy isn't nearly as plastic-based as some, but since I've gone to cash-only for face-to-face, I've run into a number of businesses that either don't accept cash, or act like it's more hassle than it's worth for them to take my money. The latest being a very large business which had to send someone to the bank to be able to make $23-odd in change...

TRX
July 21, 2013
88:
@82:
"Refuse cash" ???
I would have thought that was not legal.
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In theory yes, in practice no.

Note the US Internal Revenue Service does not accept cash for payment of taxes.

TRX
July 22, 2013
132:
@116:
in the twenty-first century with all the fabulous tech and so forth it's still useful to have a knife,
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As a child in the 1960s, I wondered at all the nasties the crew of the Enterprise kept running into, that phasers didn't affect. McCoy even made a comment about it in one episode.

I kept thinking, even an 1800s-tech revolver might do the job where Federation tech fell short...

"Eat hot lead, alien scum!"

TRX
July 22, 2013
133:
@121:
Human beings don't generally multi-task; we task switch, i.e. we swap from focus of attention to focus of attention.

However, over-learned non-conscious behaviours (from walking or chewing gum to driving a car) can happen simultaneously
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That's what we call "lizard-brain processing." For racing drivers or riders, the lizard does the work of shifting, braking, and following the racing line. The driver's conscious attention should be on traffic.

That's why we used to make a distinction between "racing drivers" and "drivers of racing cars." Racing drivers don't drive cars; the lizard does that.