How do you pay for purchases

[Left Seater]

Just wondering how you guys generally pay for purchases.

[88BuckeyeGrad]

I prefer to pay with actual cash. That is getting more difficult these days. Many businesses do not like to handle cash (or the cost of shit is so high it requires carrying more cash than I prefer to carry). We have a points card that we use for everything that is not on auto-pay (which is on another points card). If the card we use at restaurants and gas stations (etc.) gets skimmed, and it has on several occasions, we just get a replacement and do not have to set up new auto-pays. I only use my debit card to withdraw cash from ATM's.

[Roach]

Cash
Debit card
Credit card with 3% cash back. Pay it off monthly.

I barter my lawn mowing, some yard work, and snow removal for guitar lessons.

[Sudden Sam]

I barter my lawn mowing, some yard work, and snow removal for guitar lessons.

Roach, did you send me a CD of your band many years ago?

[StrawMan]

Cash / Debit Card - If I don't have the cash, I don't buy it. It's liberating!

I have one credit card that I use for fuel and pay it off every month.

That's strictly for maintaining an excellent credit rating.

[FiatLux]

Credit cards. I'm not using my money. I pay it off at the end of the month.

Major purchases. The companies/manufacturers I buy from are all registered with dun & bradstreet. I have unlimited credit with the manufacturers and the terms are 30 days to 90 days. Write a check.

If I'm going out for pizza or something small. I'll sometimes use cash. Always leave a cash tip on top of tip with card for servers.


Didn't vote. I use all the options. Said just pick one.

[Mikey]

It’s a combination, though mostly cash back because we don’t do that much traveling these days, at least not long distance.

Mostly I use “branded” cards that give bigger rewards depending on where you shop.

Amazon Prime Visa. We (Mrs. Mikey) use Amazon a lot. Among other Prime benefits, the Prime Visa gives you 5% back on all Amazon purchases, 10% on a rotating list of stuff, which we never look at. It’s a Chase card that you can use for cash back or points. You also get 5% on any travel booked through Chase. It’s become our go to card for miscellaneous use.

Costco Citi Visa gives you 2% at Costco on top of the 2% you get with an executive membership. Plus 4% at gas stations and EV charging.

Discover has a rotating 5% cash back that changes every three months. For example restaurants or grocery stores or warehouse stores or whatever. You have to keep track though.

I have an Amex through Hilton Honors that I do use for travel points.

The only place I normally use cash is at the farmers market every Saturday. Most of the vendors now take plastic but I prefer to save them the fees. There’s an ATM on the way that will spit out $10 bills, and I stock up on those so the vendors don’t have to keep changing $20s for $5 purchases. I probably spend $80 a week there average including baked goods.

I never carry a balance.

[FiatLux]

The only place I normally use cash is at the farmers market every Saturday. Most of the vendors now take plastic but I prefer to save them the fees.

Good for you. Depending on the card I'm excepting it runs 2% to 3.5%. Good old merchant fees. Shit adds up.

I never carry a balance.

That's how you make money.

[d-townmike]

We use a rewards-earning credit card and make sure it is fully paid off each month.

Honestly, we prefer to pay with cash and try to as much as we can. But unfortunately there are a lot of places that are going cashless (sports arenas, stadiums, amusement parks, concert venues) and all they do is increase prices to cover the merchant fees.

Also, more small businesses are adding on a certain percentage of the transaction to cover their merchant fees.

tip: When eating at a sit-down restaurant, bring CASH TIP. Pay for the meal with the card (or cash) but make sure you hand the appropriate amount of cash directly to your server as their gratuity. This way they do not have to have any taxes taken out unlike adding the tip onto the card transaction. Make sure you write "cash" into the tip blank on the receipt otherwise they may get charged the equivalent in taxes of an 18% gratuity, which is just flat out wrong but I have heard it happening.

[Ken]

I don't capitalize upon reward-earning credit cards like I should. I only use credit when booking flights, hotels, trips. Yes, I'm missing out and I know that. While I do carry cash on me, about 95% of the time I use my debit card. Also, do my best to tip in cash.

[dan's college room mate]

For any of you that were paying in pennies, you might want to make other arrangements.

Orange Hitler has ordered the treasury to so something it should have done a very long time ago. They’re going to stop minting pennies.

Pennies have been the smallest denomination of US currency since they stopped making the half penny in 1857.

Not sure what the inflation since 1857 is, but safe to say a penny in 1858 bought more than a quarter today. So, it would make sense to shit can nickels and dimes as well.

It costs more to make them than they’re worth.


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[Left Seater]

Honestly, we prefer to pay with cash and try to as much as we can. But unfortunately there are a lot of places that are going cashless (sports arenas, stadiums, amusement parks, concert venues) and all they do is increase prices to cover the merchant fees.

Also, more small businesses are adding on a certain percentage of the transaction to cover their merchant fees.

Those fees aren't only to cover credit card swipes, it is to help cover the cost of accepting cash. For many businesses, accepting cash is more expensive than the 2 to 3 precent credit card swipe fees. Businesses who do accept cash spend far more time reconciling cash then they do credit cards. Further, there isn't daily or multiple times weekly trips to deposit cash and creating the deposit information. Further, there isn't the "loss" with cards like there is with cash. Loss, being actually losing track of some of the cash, giving incorrect change, employee theft, etc.

So the reason many places have stopped taking cash is due to the higher costs associated with cash.

[dan's college room mate]

The ones who annoy me are the ones who are cash only.

I fully understand why they do it. Trying to keep the governor out of their pockets.


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[Mikey]

Honestly, we prefer to pay with cash and try to as much as we can. But unfortunately there are a lot of places that are going cashless (sports arenas, stadiums, amusement parks, concert venues) and all they do is increase prices to cover the merchant fees.

Also, more small businesses are adding on a certain percentage of the transaction to cover their merchant fees.

Those fees aren't only to cover credit card swipes, it is to help cover the cost of accepting cash. For many businesses, accepting cash is more expensive than the 2 to 3 precent credit card swipe fees. Businesses who do accept cash spend far more time reconciling cash then they do credit cards. Further, there isn't daily or multiple times weekly trips to deposit cash and creating the deposit information. Further, there isn't the "loss" with cards like there is with cash. Loss, being actually losing track of some of the cash, giving incorrect change, employee theft, etc.

So the reason many places have stopped taking cash is due to the higher costs associated with cash.

I can see some logic to this. But it makes me wonder why there are some restaurants and other businesses that offer a cash discount, or add a fee for credit card transactions, often if it’s less than a certain amount. There’s a local Japanese restaurant here that gives you a discount for cash. Maybe because the BofA is across the parking lot?

[Mikey]

For any of you that were paying in pennies, you might want to make other arrangements.

Orange Hitler has ordered the treasury to so something it should have done a very long time ago. They’re going to stop minting pennies.

Pennies have been the smallest denomination of US currency since they stopped making the half penny in 1857.

Not sure what the inflation since 1857 is, but safe to say a penny in 1858 bought more than a quarter today. So, it would make sense to shit can nickels and dimes as well.

It costs more to make them than they’re worth.


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Is this going to make my old penny collection more valuable, or less?

[Left Seater]

Way more I would think.

[Roux]

The ones who annoy me are the ones who are cash only.

I fully understand why they do it. Trying to keep the governor out of their pockets. commit tax fraud.

[dan's college room mate]

The ones who annoy me are the ones who are cash only.

I fully understand why they do it. Trying to keep the governor out of their pockets. commit tax fraud.

Yes, it is tax fraud.

If we lived in a world where the government was frugal with tax dollars and charged very low taxes, I’d have an issue with such fraud.

But t we do t live in that world. We live in a much different world where the government pisses away tax money and many people in on the racket, do quite well.

So to the poor shlub who’s just squeaking by who commits this offense, I say good for him.


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[dan's college room mate]

Honestly, we prefer to pay with cash and try to as much as we can. But unfortunately there are a lot of places that are going cashless (sports arenas, stadiums, amusement parks, concert venues) and all they do is increase prices to cover the merchant fees.

Also, more small businesses are adding on a certain percentage of the transaction to cover their merchant fees.

Those fees aren't only to cover credit card swipes, it is to help cover the cost of accepting cash. For many businesses, accepting cash is more expensive than the 2 to 3 precent credit card swipe fees. Businesses who do accept cash spend far more time reconciling cash then they do credit cards. Further, there isn't daily or multiple times weekly trips to deposit cash and creating the deposit information. Further, there isn't the "loss" with cards like there is with cash. Loss, being actually losing track of some of the cash, giving incorrect change, employee theft, etc.

So the reason many places have stopped taking cash is due to the higher costs associated with cash.

I can see some logic to this. But it makes me wonder why there are some restaurants and other businesses that offer a cash discount, or add a fee for credit card transactions, often if it’s less than a certain amount. There’s a local Japanese restaurant here that gives you a discount for cash. Maybe because the BofA is across the parking lot?

If the business does accept cash and has to go through the hassles that come with it, then you might as well encourage cash as it doesn’t add to the work involved. But it does save the cc fee.

It also allows the merchant to forget to put some of it on the books.


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[Softball Bat]

The ones who annoy me are the ones who are cash only.

I fully understand why they do it. Trying to keep the governor out of their pockets. commit tax fraud.

RACK your new avatard!

[Left Seater]

But it does save the cc fee.

It also allows the merchant to forget to put some of it on the books.

I guess you missed the part where it costs as much or more than the swipe fee to accept cash.

But let’s assume that the restaurant pays out dishwashers and busboys in cash each night instead of depositing it. They still have the cost associated with tracking such payments. At most the savings are minimal and don’t support the added risk.

[Mikey]

But it does save the cc fee.

It also allows the merchant to forget to put some of it on the books.

I guess you missed the part where it costs as much or more than the swipe fee to accept cash.

But let’s assume that the restaurant pays out dishwashers and busboys in cash each night instead of depositing it. They still have the cost associated with tracking such payments. At most the savings are minimal and don’t support the added risk.

Where are you getting this information? Have you ever run a restaurant?

Your logic here seems a little off, to me. If the business accepts both cash and credit cards, which would include probably 99% of restaurants, isn’t the cost of dealing with cash a fairly fixed amount? In other words it doesn’t cost them significantly more to process $1,000 in cash receipts than it does to process $100, does it? You still have to count up the money, put it in a cigar box and run it over to the bank. With credit cards the cost is a percentage of the charges. $1,000 in credit card receipts costs them ten times as much as $100. By that logic it seems that they would save significantly more from customers paying in cash.

[Diego in Seattle]

But it does save the cc fee.

It also allows the merchant to forget to put some of it on the books.

I guess you missed the part where it costs as much or more than the swipe fee to accept cash.

But let’s assume that the restaurant pays out dishwashers and busboys in cash each night instead of depositing it. They still have the cost associated with tracking such payments. At most the savings are minimal and don’t support the added risk.

Where are you getting this information? Have you ever run a restaurant?

Your logic here seems a little off, to me. If the business accepts both cash and credit cards, which would include probably 99% of restaurants, isn’t the cost of dealing with cash a fairly fixed amount? In other words it doesn’t cost them significantly more to process $1,000 in cash receipts than it does to process $100, does it? You still have to count up the money, put it in a cigar box and run it over to the bank. With credit cards the cost is a percentage of the charges. $1,000 in credit card receipts costs them ten times as much as $100. By that logic it seems that they would save significantly more from customers paying in cash.

When you get into cash receipts of thousands of dollars there's the additional cost of getting the cash to the bank. A cigar box isn't going to cut it, and I wouldn't want to walk out of the business on a daily basis carrying that type of cash. So you're going to want to hire someone like Brinks to come pick it up.

[Mikey]

Funny, I’ve never seen a Brinks truck drive up to a restaurant.

[Diego in Seattle]

The mini-mart/gas station that I worked at during college on Via Del La Valle had their cash picked up by armored cars.

[Mikey]

Still a fixed cost though. If you have a pickup every day it probably costs the same however much the receipts are. So that makes just as strong an argument for cash sales over CC. The more cash you’re processing, the less it costs per $ of receipts. The only way this would not apply is if you stop accepting cash altogether and go 100% plastic. But then, in many cases, you’re excluding a large part of your customer base.

[Left Seater]

Where are you getting this information? Have you ever run a restaurant?

Your logic here seems a little off, to me. If the business accepts both cash and credit cards, which would include probably 99% of restaurants, isn’t the cost of dealing with cash a fairly fixed amount? In other words it doesn’t cost them significantly more to process $1,000 in cash receipts than it does to process $100, does it? You still have to count up the money, put it in a cigar box and run it over to the bank. With credit cards the cost is a percentage of the charges. $1,000 in credit card receipts costs them ten times as much as $100. By that logic it seems that they would save significantly more from customers paying in cash.

I haven’t run a restaurant, but some of our very best friends own multiple restaurants. They own a Cajun fast casual place with 6 locations in Houston where you order at a counter and then the food and drinks are brought to your table. They claim cash costs just as much as plastic if not more. For each location they have to pay someone with some accounting skills to count all the cash, then compare the total cash to what the POS says they took in. After that is done, they then have to prepare each POS till for the next mornings opening shift. If they are short on certain types of bills, usually $1 and $5s and coins, then that has to be ordered from the bank. Then the deposit is created and entered into the accounting system. Then the next morning another person has to be there to meet the bank truck for the deposit pickup and delivery of any needed coins or bill types. Then these needed bills/coins have to be counted and added to the correct tills.

All of this can take multiple hours per store and the more cash they take, the longer it takes them. Meanwhile, the plastic charges are auto rectified to the sales in the POS and the POS sends it directly to their accounting software. This is minutes vs hours for cash.

They would love to move to a credit only business, but they would eliminate much of their customers.

[HighPlainsGrifter]

I give a discount for cash. Tracking cash payments is far less expensive than credit card processing. Orders of magnitude less expensive. I have no idea why a pilot thinks he knows jack shit about it.

[Left Seater]

So reading comprehension isnt your strength. So noted.

My fireside are probably taking in far more cash transactions in a day than you do.

[dan's college room mate]

Lefty, I think you’re the one with the reading comprehension issue.

Miguel said it pretty clearly.

If you accept cash at all, the processing cost is more or less fixed, irregardless (one of my favorite non-words) of the amount. It’s basically an economy of scale thing.

And a tax cheat thing too, of course.

DiS does bring up the security aspect and that’s where minimizing cash might pay off, if it results in a cash amount where merchant assumes the risk of carrying it to the bank/strip club.


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[Left Seater]

Lefty, I think you’re the one with the reading comprehension issue.

Miguel said it pretty clearly.

If you accept cash at all, the processing cost is more or less fixed, irregardless (one of my favorite non-words) of the amount. It’s basically an economy of scale thing.

And a tax cheat thing too, of course.

DiS does bring up the security aspect and that’s where minimizing cash might pay off, if it results in a cash amount where merchant assumes the risk of carrying it to the bank/strip club.


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I don’t disagree that the cash cost are mostly fixed. My point is and has been that taking in cash doesn’t save money vs credit card swipe fees. Let’s take my friends fast casual restaurant. Unit sales are often around 5K per day. More is cash than card, so let’s assume 1/3 card and 2/3 cash. Taking an average swipe fee of 3%, the restaurant spends about $50 per day on swipe fees. For the cash side a couple hours salary and the Brinks truck pick up is going to eat thru that $100 or 3% of the cash take very quickly. This also assumes zero loss of cash which we all know isn’t reality.

Of course if the owner is skimming off some of the cash, then this all goes out the window. Tax cheats are cheats.

[Mikey]

Lefty, I think you’re the one with the reading comprehension issue.

Miguel said it pretty clearly.

If you accept cash at all, the processing cost is more or less fixed, irregardless (one of my favorite non-words) of the amount. It’s basically an economy of scale thing.

And a tax cheat thing too, of course.

DiS does bring up the security aspect and that’s where minimizing cash might pay off, if it results in a cash amount where merchant assumes the risk of carrying it to the bank/strip club.


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I don’t disagree that the cash cost are mostly fixed. My point is and has been that taking in cash doesn’t save money vs credit card swipe fees. Let’s take my friends fast casual restaurant. Unit sales are often around 5K per day. More is cash than card, so let’s assume 1/3 card and 2/3 cash. Taking an average swipe fee of 3%, the restaurant spends about $50 per day on swipe fees. For the cash side a couple hours salary and the Brinks truck pick up is going to eat thru that $100 or 3% of the cash take very quickly. This also assumes zero loss of cash which we all know isn’t reality.

Of course if the owner is skimming off some of the cash, then this all goes out the window. Tax cheats are cheats.

What you fail to consider is that if your friend stopped taking cash he would probably lose half of his customers or even go out of business altogether. So that’s not really a choice, is it? And your “point” is moot. If all of his customers paid in cash he’d be making more money than he does now. He loses money on every credit card transaction.

[dan's college room mate]

Jeeeze I hate it when I gotta be on the fat old hippy side.

Lefty, what you say is right, IF cash is done away with completely or at least becomes such a small amount of the business that specialized secure transport isn’t a thing.

But you said cash was a majority of the business. So every CC transaction becomes a 3% loss. The brinks charge is likely a set fee. They don’t charge by the dollar amount, within reason, anyhoo. All the other costs associated with running a cash business are also pretty much fixed.


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[Left Seater]

What you fail to consider is that if your friend stopped taking cash he would probably lose half of his customers or even go out of business altogether.

Reading comp isn't your friend is it?

They would love to move to a credit only business, but they would eliminate much of their customers.

I didn't fail to consider it, you failed to read the entire posts you are arguing against, or didn't comprehend what you read.

If all of his customers paid in cash he’d be making more money than he does now. He loses money on every credit card transaction.

Wrong. If all of his customers paid by card, he doesn't have the fixed costs of accepting the cash.

What do you guys think someone who closes the store, recitfies the cash sales, refills tills, counts cash, prepares the deposit and makes the entries into the accounting software system makes per hour? I am sure it is $30/hr at least. So a couple of hours a day is $60 plus a day in cost accept cash. Then add to that the cost of the cash pick ups. Add to that the loss associated with cash and we are easily at 3% of the total cash that comes in. The more cash transactions, the longer the rectification and counting of the cash takes, therefore the cost increases.

Berkshire Hathaway puts the cost of accepting cash at between 4.7% and 15.3% in the retail sector. But what do they know, eh?

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... il-Segment

See also the small business council.

https://sbecouncil.org/2024/07/01/the-cost-of-cash/

[Left Seater]

But you said cash was a majority of the business. So every CC transaction becomes a 3% loss. The brinks charge is likely a set fee. They don’t charge by the dollar amount, within reason, anyhoo. All the other costs associated with running a cash business are also pretty much fixed.

A 3% transaction fee sounds far better than a double digit transaction fee.

[Mikey]

If all of his customers paid in cash he’d be making more money than he does now. He loses money on every credit card transaction.

Wrong. If all of his customers paid by card, he doesn't have the fixed costs of accepting the cash.

Wow. Talk about reading comp. Beyond making some completely illogical fantasyland excursions, you’re not even reacting to what you quoted here.

Congratulations, you have now officially replaced Goobs as the undisputed T1B Last Word Whore.

[Left Seater]

Keep spinning. You clearly didn't read my post and then tried to call out what I already posted.

Further, you clearly skipped over the couple of links I posted. Keep kicking your own ass.

[Mikey]

QED

[Left Seater]

QED

Glad you agree. But you are welcome to try again anytime.