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Yeah in Canada chip and pin is nearly universal for debit and credit, I haven't been to a retailer that let you swipe and sign with a credit card in months. It's all the banks as well. RFID payment with debit is starting to become common as well. It's been very common with CC for about two years now, I think. I still say "the future is now" every time I tap to pay, though. Especially since you can just mash a stack of cards/wallet against the reader and it works unless you have like three RFID cards in the stack. Then it's a surprise when you get the bill!
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May 18, 2014 02:33
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pancaek posted:The rest of the people who use checks are insane and have no excuse unless they were born before 1950. Most landlords don't take credit cards. My mortgage company and village utilities charge me a fee every time I pay with a credit card. The village charges 2 bucks a pop and Ocwen an eye-watering $3.95. I would be very bad with money if I eschewed the $5 for a book of 500 checks to pay $1,500 in credit card fees (assuming the price never went up in 30 years) because "using checks is insane". Checks have their place. Until EFT is 100% free by law AND the baby boomers die off, people are to continue using checks. Bad with money story: Because I was a clueless teenager finally away from Mommy dearest and flush with "cash", I bought M:tG cards with some of my student loan funds.  I'm still paying the interest on it. 
daggerdragon fucked around with this message at 02:37 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 02:35
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daggerdragon posted:Most landlords don't take credit cards. My mortgage company and village utilities charge me a fee every time I pay with a credit card. The village charges 2 bucks a pop and Ocwen an eye-watering $3.95. I would be very bad with money if I eschewed the $5 for a book of 500 checks to pay $1,500 in credit card fees (assuming the price never went up in 30 years) because "using checks is insane". There's a difference between paying by ACH and paying by check.
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May 18, 2014 03:15
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gently caress, I need to look into if I can pay my rent with a CC. I know I can pay online, but it's a $1.50 fee to do it and the rental agency's office is in the same building I live in allowing me to drop off a check on my way out the door in the morning, so I've never done it. Plus I've always just kind of assumed I would have to enter a checking account number and routing number to do it, but if I can use my CC and get cash back, it'd be worth it. Plus I'm trying to get to $1000 on my new card in a 3 month span to get free Amazon Prime for a year. edit: gently caress, I can't. Can only pay online using a checking or savings account. My bad with money story, when I was a freshman I bought an ipod back in 2004. I was able to just swipe my student ID card it and got charged to my student account, and then just paid with my student loans. I thought it was awesome back then. I actually am using it right now however. I can't believe it still works. There's some music on there that I can't get on spotify, so I bust it out every now and then. GAYS FOR DAYS fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 03:16
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My landlord charges me a 3% fee to use a credit card to pay my rent.
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May 18, 2014 03:54
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INTJ Mastermind posted:My landlord charges me a 3% fee to use a credit card to pay my rent. Depending on who they used, they were breaking even - Square charges 3.5% + $0.15 for manually entered charges, 2.75% for swiped charges. I think straight Visa/MC are around 1.5%
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May 18, 2014 04:03
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My apartment is owned by a corporation that takes credit cards, but yeah, they pass the 3% on to us if we do. ACH has no fee from either them or my credit union, though, so I still have no need to write a rent check. All of my utilities are the same way. I've written something like three checks in the last four years.
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May 18, 2014 14:13
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I've still got a pile of checks from when I opened my credit union checking account like ten years ago. I think I've used like 30 of them in that last decade, mostly for rent. The address on those checks is like SUPER out of date too, but no one has ever cared. Checks are so unsecure.
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May 18, 2014 14:56
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I only use checks for my rent and a medical bill. I could write my credit card number on the medical bill and mail it, but that seems horribly insecure. Is there a way to get free money orders? I'd rather do that and burn my checkbook.
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May 18, 2014 15:23
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Not unless you ask for a cashier's check from your bank maybe, and it'd be a lot more work than just writing a check so
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May 18, 2014 17:15
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tuyop posted:This debit card chat makes other places (America?) sound very different from the places I've lived in Canada. I've never met an adult who hasn't had a bank account with a debit card that they use regularly pretty much their whole employed life. The only difference is that some people remember a time when debit cards didn't exist and some people don't because they weren't alive. Eh, it's not that debit cards aren't offered and widely used here, it's more that we have a lot of people who are incredibly paranoid. From lots of angles - some people don't trust themselves with anything but cash. Some people don't trust anything digital - my dad's new wife refuses to do ANY digital banking and instead stops by the bank every Saturday to deposit paychecks and take out her cash for the week. For her it's a fear of theft combined with fear of technology - she's a total Luddite. And then some people are just conspiracy nuts who are terrified of Big Brother/The Beast/The Grid, and who view digital banking as a way for the government (or big corporations depending on what their flavor of paranoia is) to monitor you and your spending. Everyone says that thing about how debit cards are less secure, but as someone who has had my debit card hijacked before, it was not really an inconvenience at all. My bank's policy is that they refund the money into your account immediately (so you have access to it) and then they launch an investigation. If they find any funny stuff while investigating that's when they freeze the assets of the transaction. I just had to sign a form verifying the exact transactions that were fraudulent and I was done. So for me it was easy as pie - I just called the bank and they immeditely reversed the transaction & cancelled my card, emailed me the form to fill out; then I stopped into the local bank branch and picked up a temp ATM card to use while waiting for the new debit card to arrive in the mail. Since the bank is on my way into work in the morning I literally did not even have to go out of my way. I'd say the whole affair took about 20mins of my time tops. Conversely, about ten years ago my brother had his debit card number stolen and his entire account cleaned out, and it took about a week to get straightened out (meanwhile he had no access to money and two kids to feed). So I can absolutely see why people would be paranoid about debit cards, but I tend to think it's a holdover from when this stuff used to actually take a while to refund. Debit card theft has become so common that most places have had to revise their policies to be more accommodating to the customer and not leave them stranded and fighting for their own money. EDIT: Still, I can understand why a card hooked directly to your bank account is discomforting. The thing I tend to get more blown away by is people who refuse to get credit cards. I understand not wanting the temptation, but I feel like everyone should have at least one squirreled away in a drawer for emergencies. I had a friend (a freelancer who was waiting for some paychecks) recently reveal to me that she only had $40 cash to get through the next week and that's it (and that was banking on if the check came when the client promised it would). I kinda  ed because to me, there's no way to be a freelancer and survive the long lag time between invoicing and receiving a check without a CC. But CC's terrify her, she's really bad with numbers and worried that she would get herself into trouble so she just refuses to even be in the presence of one - she'd rather try to scrape by with $40 until payday. To each their own I suppose. (To answer the unspoken question: She didn't make it and had to borrow money from her fiance. So I guess in that way she does have her own form of credit  )
StrangersInTheNight fucked around with this message at 17:40 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 17:18
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It's really weird that you have to pay your rent with checks in the US, here in Sweden you just get a bill that you pay online.
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May 18, 2014 19:21
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Lord Tywin posted:It's really weird that you have to pay your rent with checks in the US, here in Sweden you just get a bill that you pay online. You don't have to pay rent with a check, there are plenty of places that do online payments or ACH transfers. Many banks and credit unions offer free electronic bill pay and person-to-person payments as well. I pay my rent online through free ACH transfer and have for a while. My friends and I also pay each other back (when we spot each other for food, gas, whatever) with free p2p ACH transfers through our banks/CUs. Some people are just stuck in the 20th century for whatever reason. I can't even remember the last time I wrote a check, it's been years.
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May 18, 2014 19:25
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tuyop posted:Yeah in Canada chip and pin is nearly universal for debit and credit, I haven't been to a retailer that let you swipe and sign with a credit card in months. It's all the banks as well. StrangersInTheNight posted:My bank's policy is that they refund the money into your account immediately (so you have access to it) and then they launch an investigation. If they find any funny stuff while investigating that's when they freeze the assets of the transaction. I just had to sign a form verifying the exact transactions that were fraudulent and I was done. 100 HOGS AGREE posted:Checks are so unsecure.
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May 18, 2014 20:07
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Col.Kiwi posted:The way the whole automated cheque clearing system works is pretty unsettling to me. I don't even want to give examples of all the poo poo that can go wrong, I'm sure it's easy to google some horror stories though. My wife has a friend who probably qualifies for this thread but I don't know enough about her to post much content. She lived in Alberta her whole life, then decided that she would give Halifax a try, so she cashed a check to herself for like $3000 or whatever her limit was and withdrew the cash and used it to pay for her trip and living expenses until she found work. She just changed her number and never looked back. Of course, a life event called her back to Alberta. Within days, she was pulled over for speeding and found out that she had a warrant. Then she went to jail* for awhile and became a stripper. *don't know if she was actually in full-on jail or just held for awhile and later went to court and did community service or paid a fine or something. I really don't know this person well at all.
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May 18, 2014 20:34
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Guinness posted:Some people are just stuck in the 20th century for whatever reason. I can't even remember the last time I wrote a check, it's been years. My apartment manager and my auto insurance company only take checks. I guess both are fond of paper trails. I suppose I could get the bank to print a check every month and send it to me so I could put it in the drop box, but that seems like a hassle I don't need, especially because my mail person likes to just dump the mail in the common area and move on. I'm looking to move, and finding a place that will accept electronic payment would be ideal, but a lot of places here in LA just don't do it. At least that is true in the price range I am looking at, maybe the places charging $4k+ for a 1 bedroom will accept electronic payments.
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May 18, 2014 20:52
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I pay my auto insurance in a one-time annual payment, and using that method I can use credit card. Paying in a lump sum also saves me 3% or something when compared to a monthly payment plan. So I get the CC rewards and I save a few bucks. For monthly budgeting purposes I just amortize the payment in Mint. It's not a bad way to go if you won't have trouble coming up with the lump sum on an annual basis. I wouldn't exactly say you're "bad with money" if you can't, but it's worth the effort. Of course, paying credit card interest on that sum would be bad with money.
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May 19, 2014 00:06
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I've been paying rent online since 2000, with my bank's online bill pay. They issue a paper check for me, if the recipient isn't in the system. Hell, I've sent my mom a check that way.
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May 19, 2014 00:37
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I use checks for bills and I hate it because you never know when the person on the other end will decide to finally cash it. I wish there was a way to set aside or escrow money in your own checking account to dedicate to the check you just wrote for whenever the person decides to cash it. For free, not a cashiers check with a $10 fee. (There probably is, right?) Bad with money story: Friend of a friend is a huge gambling addict and once drove 6 hours in a blizzard so that he could get to AC on a random Tuesday night to play blackjack. Allegedly this dude went to a casino the other day with $500 and turned it into $40,000 playing blackjack, he took $10,000 and put a downpayment on a brand new escalade and then went back to the casino and gambled away $30,000+ in one day. On another occasion, he turned $500 into $15,000 and gambled it all back in two days. I imagine this dude is down $100,000's in lifetime gambling losses.
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May 19, 2014 02:17
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daggerdragon posted:Most landlords don't take credit cards. My mortgage company and village utilities charge me a fee every time I pay with a credit card. The village charges 2 bucks a pop and Ocwen an eye-watering $3.95. I would be very bad with money if I eschewed the $5 for a book of 500 checks to pay $1,500 in credit card fees (assuming the price never went up in 30 years) because "using checks is insane". EugeneJ posted:I only use checks for my rent and a medical bill. I could write my credit card number on the medical bill and mail it, but that seems horribly insecure. Old Fart posted:I've been paying rent online since 2000, with my bank's online bill pay. They issue a paper check for me, if the recipient isn't in the system. Hell, I've sent my mom a check that way. fruition posted:I use checks for bills and I hate it because you never know when the person on the other end will decide to finally cash it. I wish there was a way to set aside or escrow money in your own checking account to dedicate to the check you just wrote for whenever the person decides to cash it. For free, not a cashiers check with a $10 fee. (There probably is, right?)
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May 19, 2014 05:18
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Old Fart posted:I've been paying rent online since 2000, with my bank's online bill pay. They issue a paper check for me, if the recipient isn't in the system. Hell, I've sent my mom a check that way. My apartment complex only takes paper checks, so if I can get my bank to file the check and I just process it via online, holy hell would that be great. I never thought that would work.
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May 19, 2014 05:54
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Duckman2008 posted:My apartment complex only takes paper checks, so if I can get my bank to file the check and I just process it via online, holy hell would that be great. I never thought that would work. Yep. It works.
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May 19, 2014 05:55
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fruition posted:I wish there was a way to set aside or escrow money in your own checking account to dedicate to the check you just wrote for whenever the person decides to cash it. Isn't that exactly what the checkbook ledger is for? Balance your checking accounts monthly kids, you'll never know when the bank screws the pooch unless you do.
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May 19, 2014 06:38
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GAYS FOR DAYS posted:Are you somewhere overseas? There's no way we're talking US dollars here, right? I'm assuming you're somewhere in Asia since you called it a Navara. Australia. Where everything is mad expensive... Actually, I'm waiting for my car parts to come in from the US because it was $300 cheaper to get it shipped over than from home. I've told him how much money he is pissing away but he is dubiously ignorant of it, I don't think he wants to acknowledge how much of a ride he is being taken on
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May 19, 2014 08:07
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CuddleChunks posted:A buddy of mine went and listened to the siren song of some mutual friends and now they all have a lovely mortgage together. Naturally they got this property before the housing bubble popped so it's tanked in value. It's from pages back, but I had to comment here. I actually lost a very close friend by doing the exact opposite of this; he was buying a house in 2005-2006 at peak bubble and got incredibly angry that I wasn't going to join him in renting from the bank. We were best friends before this. We met at a large software company where we were both developers (no, not that one, another one). It's pretty good money. Moreover, being a software developer at most well-respected companies requires that you be somewhat intelligent, good with numbers, and generally pretty dogged about working hard and digging through arcane poo poo for a solution. On top of that, Sam was one of the best developers I knew. He had no college degree, and so was self-taught. He was no stranger to critical thinking or hard work. In other words, looking at basic finances like "can I buy this house" should have been right up his alley. He bought the garbage that was being peddled. He bought the whole thing: renting was throwing away money, he needed to buy now or be priced out forever, home ownership was key to adulthood, it was a sound financial investment, and there was no way it could go wrong (just look at the property values in the last ten years!). He pressured me to buy a house, too. So I started looking into it. I found what a lot of people did when they did the math: it made no sense to "buy" a house in this part of the country. There was a bubble. Renting from the bank - paying for all your own repairs, garbage, water, sewer, etc - would have quadrupled my monthly rent from a landlord. Not to mention the fact that my washer and dryer broke, and were replaced the next day for $0.00 all-inclusive. Instead, I took that money and saved it in places where I could move it around. I tried to cautiously explain to Sam why I wasn't interested in buying a house. I don't know if it was cognitive dissonance, or just that irrational rage people get when you point out (however non-confrontational) that they've been swindled. He got SO MAD. I wasn't smugly shattering his worldview, or anything like that, just shrugging about the fact that the numbers didn't add up to me, and therefore I wasn't going to buy a house. In hindsight, I suppose I should have kept completely silent and kept the friendship - but it was awkward enough that I'm kind of glad I didn't. Edit: He lives paycheck to paycheck (from what I hear). I have literally doubled the money I invested. Hyzenth1ay fucked around with this message at 20:06 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 20:04
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fruition posted:I imagine this dude is down $100,000's in lifetime gambling losses. Depending on whether or not he has an income it could be worse. A buddy of mine works for a small family owned service company. There are 4 or 5 permanent employees, 4 or 5 full time supervisors, then about 25-30 part time/minimum wage/temp positions. None of the employees except the top 4 have benefits and none of the supervisors make over $15 an hour. My buddy is #2 in the company, so he makes a professional wage with benefits, and he manages everyone. For the last few years he's gone to the owner asking for small raises for his supervisors, like 25 or 50 cents an hour. Every time he gets shot down with "money's tight, can't swing it" etc. So he's been really worried about his own job security, as the owner has been completely secret about the overall finances of the company, even from his wife, except to say there's no spare money. Last December, the owner had a heart attack and died, and my buddy is now on track to being #1 in the company with the owner's widow as the temporary CEO. Together they've been going over the finances and basically discovered that the boss was losing about $200,000 a year to gambling. They knew he loved gambling but they didn't know that he never, ever won. And they didn't know that between losses and his salary he was sucking a third of a million dollars out of the company every year. Money that could have grown the company or retained good employees or bought new equipment or whatever. For Christmas my buddy got a $20,000 raise and $1/hr raises for his supervisors, with more coming once the company gets out of probate. That's right, the owner didn't have a will. At age 60 with heart problems.
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May 19, 2014 20:43
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Nobody who loves gambling ever wins.
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May 19, 2014 22:24
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LloydDobler posted:Depending on whether or not he has an income it could be worse. That's incredibly depressing.
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May 19, 2014 22:53
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LloydDobler posted:Depending on whether or not he has an income it could be worse. Damnnnn, at least the dead owner's wife is cool. Gambling can be really hosed up, I have an uncle who ruined his life at the greyhound tracks and another who does drugs and trades momentum stocks on 4X's margin for fun. I enjoy playing blackjack but it's always in the back of my mind to keep it reasonable because I know addiction runs in my family.
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May 19, 2014 23:02
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LloydDobler posted:Depending on whether or not he has an income it could be worse. Depressing and makes me angry that people like that are consistently rewarded while the people that are willing to work are punished with higher taxes and less opportunity.
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May 19, 2014 23:05
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fruition posted:Damnnnn, at least the dead owner's wife is cool. Fun story; here in Australia popular band The Whitlam's greatest hit is most likely Blow Up The Pokies. The song was written about bandmate Andy Lewis, who had a gambling problem and ultimately committed suicide after he blew an entire weeks pay on a poker machine. If you or somebody you know has a problem with gambling, get help. On a more lighthearted side, I think my grandmother's complete unwillingness to adapt to new technology makes her bad with money. I get that that she's a pensioner and is probably somewhat resistant or scared of change, but even my other grandmother has an ATM card. In some sort of bizarre hangover from Depression era England my grandmother still receives her pension in cheque form and takes her money out manually each week at the bank and is only getting an ATM card because the bank is phasing out whatever retro system she currently uses (and she's really upset with them daring to change things).
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May 20, 2014 00:03
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LloydDobler posted:Last December, the owner had a heart attack and died, and my buddy is now on track to being #1 in the company with the owner's widow as the temporary CEO. Together they've been going over the finances and basically discovered that the boss was losing about $200,000 a year to gambling. They knew he loved gambling but they didn't know that he never, ever won. And they didn't know that between losses and his salary he was sucking a third of a million dollars out of the company every year. Money that could have grown the company or retained good employees or bought new equipment or whatever. This sort of thing happened to a local oil supply business from my home area. Except there was no sudden death and the company didn't turn around: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/phillipsburg/index.ssf/2013/12/richard_norton_owner_of_norton_1.html Third generation oil company, been in buisiness for something like 70 years, very well known, had had customers going to them for their entire adult lives. And the owner gambled most if not all of it away. The lovely despicable thing is that he was taking discounted pre-payments on heating oil orders while he knew the gig was up and he would be going bankrupt, leaving the company unable to make good on the orders. My cousin and grandparents, all of whom live on relatively fixed incomes, lost their entire season's heating oil budget. Grandparents had been using the family company for like 45 years and never thought twice.
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May 20, 2014 00:06
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froglet posted:The song was written about bandmate Andy Lewis, who had a gambling problem and ultimately committed suicide after he blew an entire weeks pay on a poker machine. Only a week's worth of pay? Sheesh...relatively speaking that's not that big of a loss; most people spend that much money on Starbucks coffee in a year. I imagine that loss was probably the last of a long string of losses and the final straw. I have an honest question: What do the people who are bad with money and don't save for their own retirements expect to happen when they become too old to work? Are they just banking 100% on social security? You always see retired seniors in front of the slot machines but I assume most of them are spending their pensions + social security, baby boomers and gen-Xer's won't have pensions to supplement so what the gently caress are they going to do?
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May 20, 2014 01:17
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Tons of people just aren't planning to retire. Two of my grandparents didn't; my parents probably never will.
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May 20, 2014 01:23
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There's elderly now who scrape by on Social Security and food stamps. That's the thing - even if you don't plan for retirement and have no assets, the government bails you out with public housing and supplemental Medicaid. I can't even imagine owning a home, having no savings, and then having to rely on SS payments to maintain the house. You'd be forced to sell.
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May 20, 2014 01:59
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Did some groceries yesterday and saw some old crones (and the male equivalents) slowly shuffling through the aisles messing with inventory. It's sad that they have to work at that age for what is probably minimum wage, and I hope I'm never in a position to have to do that. My parents are retiring this year a bit earlier than expected (he has cancer, she's a nurse and is giving notice to help look after him). They both liked their jobs and didn't mind working but cancer aside it's  to know that they have enough to do their own thing while they're still around.
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May 20, 2014 02:14
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EugeneJ posted:There's elderly now who scrape by on Social Security and food stamps. Welcome to the future - we're going to be working until the day we die.
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May 20, 2014 02:33
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fruition posted:Only a week's worth of pay? Sheesh...relatively speaking that's not that big of a loss; most people spend that much money on Starbucks coffee in a year. I imagine that loss was probably the last of a long string of losses and the final straw. I told my wife that my retirement plan is skydiving without a parachute. She was not amused.
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May 20, 2014 03:01
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RandomBlue posted:I told my wife that my retirement plan is skydiving without a parachute. She was not amused. My wife is amused by this though!
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May 20, 2014 03:08
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RandomBlue posted:I told my wife that my retirement plan is skydiving without a parachute. She was not amused. How are you going to be able to afford the plane ride once you turn 70? 
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May 20, 2014 03:10
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