No, I meant a letter, a written correspondence with a friend or relative. You know, "Dear Hazir, Blah blah, Sincerely, EK"Originally Posted by Hazir
No, I meant a letter, a written correspondence with a friend or relative. You know, "Dear Hazir, Blah blah, Sincerely, EK"
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
What do you do if, say, you've had surgery, and you pay some company to mow your lawn? What do you pay the plumber with? Ther person who cleans your house? You really charge all that stuff?
Anything money
My grandma still uses paper money orders, because she doesn't have internet. I have personally never even seen a check, and it costs €25 to get one from the bank.
A lot of bills simply include their bank account number (and if international, IBAN etc), their name, and ask to transfer the money with the bill number (and sometimes customer number) as a comment. That's also how we sent out bills when I was treasurer for a foundation, and how we paid most.
For example, my university tuition can be paid either by direct debit, or by transferring straight to their account with your student number as a comment.
Edit: that's also how plumbers and cleaning companies generally send bills.
Last edited by Flixy; 10-01-2010 at 01:36 PM.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
The US Government actually only accepts certain forms of payment for paying taxes, one of them being a check...since they don't accept cash directly, which I find odd since they print on all the currency "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". So essentially you can't pay the US Government with its own issued currency, you have to go through another party to do so.
. . .
Used to do it regularly, but it pretty much died as a habit around 7 - 8 years ago.
Surgery, insurance would take care of that. But I'm certain that it would electronic transfer if that were not the case. If a company does anything for me the transactions would most likely be electronic too. Either through e-banking or by means of a portable terminal + my debit card. If it's really a one-person thing, most likely cash. Cheques, never.
Dutch government accepts electronic transfers only. No cash, no cheques, no credit cards.The US Government actually only accepts certain forms of payment for paying taxes, one of them being a check...since they don't accept cash directly, which I find odd since they print on all the currency "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". So essentially you can't pay the US Government with its own issued currency, you have to go through another party to do so.
Congratulations America
I'm uncertain how its fair or makes sense that in order for me to do something required of me by the government, by that I mean pay them money/taxes, that I have to pay additional money to a third party because they won't accept their own printed currency.
. . .
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty much impossible to live as a respectable citizen in Europe and conducting yourself cash-only. Banking fees are negligible. This sounds like one of those freedom harglebargle things, can you explain why you feel it's important that you can conduct yourself cash-only?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I'm considering this issue from the perspective that our money has printed on it, by the Government, something contradictory to what you're actually allowed to do with it. If you're going to print "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" on your money, then you should be able to pay the Government with it.
As for myself, I only ever carry cash on myself for the odd occasion where I want to purchase something and they don't accept credit or debit cards. Beyond that, I'm unsure of the logistics of it, but plenty of banks that I know of will charge you money to have an active checking account with less than a certain amount of money in it, with this amount usually being thousands of dollars, not hundreds. This fee is usually around $8, but if you can't afford to keep a few thousand in your checking account (not savings, checking, it earns no interest in the checking account but you have immediate access to it via debit cards and checks), you likely would be better off with $96 a year or more extra cash.
. . .
There are multiple banks. If one bank has shitty terms, pick a different one.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Are you implying the free market actually works?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps not, since you'd think no one would be stupid enough to use a bank that charges them to use a check/debit card, or a high monthly fee (honestly, I'd say any monthly fee), so those banks would go out of business.
And clearly there are people who are that stupid.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
The government also prints "In God We Trust" on the money. So I doubt the government meant for any of the statements to be taken literally.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Update: While I maintain that my accountant screwed this up (and he's probably losing my business), the income was indeed not properly declared so I wrote the check. I guess lucky for me interest rates have been so low (the penalty was just interest on the owed amount).
It took them two years to spot this accidental error, but four days to cash the check.
Anyone have any favorite tax preparation software for Mac?
Depending on who you are, it may be important for there to be little record of your doings, or even of your existence. You can only do that with cash payments.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Or they're (they're as in banks that charge fees) the only option, and other institutions insist on being paid with something other than cash, thus requiring your use of the bank's services.
. . .
What? Cash is by its nature untrackable, that's why drug dealers love 500€ bills
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Very few of those small business people carry debit card readers when they come to the house. Depends on the service, too. An independent lawn mower or house cleaner wants either cash or a check at time of service. At least where I live. Some pizza delivery places will take a phone order with a debit card, but some don't. Some will accept a check, but some won't. It's kind of all over the map. And for higher cost things like plumbing or HVAC work, they'll set up a payment plan, but I won't authorize that kind of automatic debit to a contractor (too much room for screw ups).
The only auto-debit I use is for my health insurance. Some like to do it with mortgages too, but when the servicer (seemingly) changes hands every 6 months they ask for authorization papers in triplicate and...well fuck that. I tried to change the bank for my health insurance payments, and they acted like I was enrolling a whole new account. Plus, I have two main bank accounts and a third ancillary one, so my bills aren't paid from the same bank every month. Ditto for the one credit card I use. Doing that on-line adjusting is more work than writing a check (for me).
For one time payments they generally just provide you with their bank account number, and you can transfer the money you owe them to their account. No debit card reader needed.
Also, bank fees are what, 10€ a year, maybe. As long as you don't have a corporate account. And with some banks you can even get interest on your checking account.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I'm pretty certain my bankfees are more than €10 but including a credit card, debit card and checking account it shouldn't be much more than €45 a year. I don't see the obsession with cash either; if you really need something to stay off the record you can still go to an ATM withdraw money and pay cash.
Congratulations America
Yes, I know. Perhaps I worded my post too oddly. But yeah, we're speaking the same language here.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Looks like American Express is going to fight the law suit that Visa and Mastercard agreed to settle. Passing along "discounts" and rewards points....
Too bad cash payers can't get a built in discount, so every time someone swipes a card the merchant "swipe fee" is only passed onto that user.
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