Preparedness for when

Perplexed_Pineapple

jk0 wrote: »

Anyone heard of 'The One Bank'?

(It's nothing to do with the current account Virgin came up with a few years ago.)

http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/intl-commentary/26287-the-one-bank

jk0 that's interesting reading but although it seems to be true that massive economic power is concentrated and divided between a relatively small number of trans-national corporations, I doubt the conspiracy theories. This is just the end consequence of the current form of the capitalist market. Foolishness rather than conspiracy. Of course I may be wrong <reaches for foil hat>....

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Fuddle, I'm nearly 20 years older than you and when I started work a paypacket was a small manilla envelope with a folded up payslip and actual coins and notes. Even typing this feels like a blast from the past.

Didn't stay that way for long as the technology to do BACS transfers, allied with a succession of increasingly vicious payroll van robberies, saw the death knell. In less than one generation cash payment had become a synonym for black market.

I think that the cashless society is dangerous because it allows us to distance ourselves from the concept of real limits on the amount of our personal money.

When I was a nipper, I can recall standing in line beside my folks down at the council offices to pay our combined rent and rates. Then we'd go to the shop.

Mum wasn't the best at mental arithmetic and sometimes the stuff would be rung up and there wasn't enough cash in her purse. Something had to be deducted, sometimes two or threes somethings. There was no leeway to spend more that you had. Overdrafts were something posh people might have and direct debits hadn't been invented. You put down notes and coins or you didn't get the goods - end of.

People of my parents age and older regarded having something on the tick as a disgrace. You might need to resort to it but you certainly weren't proud of it.

At home, we had an oblong blue moneybox with slots for coins, each slot dropping its coin into a separate compartment. On the lid were little paper labels saying things like Coal, Housekeeping, Clothing. The idea being that you emptied the paypacket into the appropriate slots.

Coal would be bought all year round, as if you waited until winter (when my Dad's wages as a labourer were sans overtime due to the shorter days) you'd never be able to afford it all.

I think a lot about how we handle our finances without cash is about training us to be good little debt slaves. Have you seen teen children using cash cards? And adverts for similar, aimed at parents? My bank was running an audio ad touting these last time I was in there; I was appalled. And the acceptance that debt is the only way to fund an education, and in for a penny in for a pound.

When I was a student in the early-mid 1980s, student were poor as church mice, subsisting on the pickings from the market stalls after closing time and jumble sales, living in drossy bedsits. I live near several students homes now and can testify that car ownership is common enough to cause parking crises at the uni and the FE college, and that you can't rent a house to students unless it's pretty plush and has WIFI - woman I know makes a living renting out 40 student houses here and the expectations are very high. Most of them still don't ever clean the bliddy places and she will have spent the past several weeks scrubbing them from top to bottom, as she does every summer holiday.

It's all about training people to spend more than they have, to have a mahoosive sense of entitlement to the finer things in life, regardless of their ability to pay for them. Using plastic instead of bank notes and coins is part of it. O Iwork with late-twenty somethings who are being bled white by their student loan repayment.

I've said it before on MSE (maybe on this thread, maybe on another on OS board) but I used to work for a not-for-profit debt advice outfit. As part of what we did, people would send us their bank statements.

You can tell a helluva lot about people by their bank statements in under a minute and you don't need to be inspector Closeau either. I seriously wouldn't want my personal business exposed like that, so my bank statements show a few DDs for boring stuff and the rest is cash withdrawal only. I've even stopped using "my" clubcard and that is one in Mum's name that we both use.

I have my rent and my utilities on DD, the council tax I've paid in full at the start of the financial year, I pay my line rental up front once a year for a better price and the ISP is on DD. They all go off within a few days of each other after payday, I check that they've gone off and then I know that what's left is my business. I let the water company bill me every 6 months and send them a cheque.

I'm a firm believer in KISS (keep it simple, stupid) as a way of managing life. Any fool can over-complicate things but it takes the consistant practice of intelligence and commonsense to KISS.

IMO, you won't go far wrong in this world if you run every change someone is proposing that you make in your life through the How will this complicate my life? filter. If people are promising to take over some functionality from your life to make everything easy-peasy for you, you can bet the farm that it will be anything but.........:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I pay cash all the time.

Me too, except when buying online, and even then, I use a pre-paid card, topped up with cash.

[Deleted User]

nuatha wrote: »

(Not that it works from the privacy point of view since the transaction has to be recorded with the DVLA)

That's not entirely true.

DVLA record the transfer of the vehicle, but not the financial transaction, which lead to the transfer.

GreyQueen

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Me too, except when buying online, and even then, I use a pre-paid card, topped up with cash.

:T Neat idea. I just don't shop online; I want to go to the goodies and touch before I buy.

I've even heard the suggestion that people have a dedicated online shopping credit card with a pretty low limit (£100-£200 was suggested) in case the details escaped into fraudsters hands. But pre-paid would be better, I think.

People who won't use cash for teeny tiny purchases drive me loopy. You buying well under £5 worth of goods and you can't organise yourself to pay cash? Got stuck behind one of them in the 99p St0re other day - should be a law against it. *

I have been accused of shopping like a bloke before now. I research what I buy and then go for it. Went to buy a washer and just pointed to the model and said; one of those please. Think that was the fastest sale that guy got that day.

* When I rule the world there probably will be.

[Deleted User]

fuddle wrote: »

Anyone else pay everything themselves and not signed up for automatic electronic payments? Pro's and Con's?

I don't pay all my bills cash, but I do pay all the household ones (Rent, CT, Water, Electricity, Gas) in cash.

The Pro is, I get a receipt, so I have hard evidence that it has been paid.

[Deleted User]

jk0 wrote: »

Unfortunately he forgot to make July's payment.

I'm always almost a month ahead.

CT is due on the 5th, but I don't get paid till the 10th ,so, on the first free day after the 10th, I make a CT payment, to cover the payment due on the 5th of the following month.

That gives me about 3 weeks, to realise I've forgotten.

[Deleted User]

westlothianlass wrote: »

and a couple of the hurricane lamps for tea lights that Bob mentioned earlier (thank you).

Proper Hurricane Lamps are brighter and cheaper to run, for the same amount of light output.

Plus, they put out quite a bit of useful heat.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I think that the cashless society is dangerous because it allows us to distance ourselves from the concept of real limits on the amount of our personal money.

Not only that, but if something goes wrong, and your account is accidentally frozen (or the government orders it frozen), you are totally penniless.

Willow92

I don't often pay for anything with cash, I feel safer not having much cash on me. What can somebody do if they run off with my card? They don't have my pin and I can ring the bank and cancel the card.

If I had just cash on me and they took that they can just spend it and you don't get it back.