Plastic Or Cash.

There's another very good reason to pay cash: No identity theft. Just about any victim of serious identity theft could only wish they'd simply been 'mugged for $100' instead!

Lots of identity theft still happens from stealing checks! (stolen routing number + Versa-Check = DOOM)
I don't use paper checks, and would I encourage you not to, either!

I have used credit-card based 'gift cards' when traveling. There's only the fixed amount on the card (especially if it's not 're-loadable'), which the issuer may replace if you report the card as lost or stolen, and it's worth the 5 to 10 dollar 'activation' fee to protect yourself from identity theft when you're out of your home area .

Credit is a bad trap. There is no emotional commitment with a piece of plastic. That is why it is so easy to spend so much. You can't see the money in hand, and it isn't your money, so what do you care how much you spend?

Try taking your hard earned in physical form and just fritter it away on useless stuff you don't need day after day and see how long you can do it for.

Even better, for two weeks, write down every single cent you spend, be it credit or cash, and what you spent it on. At the end of the two weeks, look at what you bought. Add up all the things you didn't need, or could have obtained in a different or cheaper way (eg. buying lunch at work, instead of making it at home and bringing it to work)
Then multiply it out into a yearly spend to see how much money you could be using for better purposes.

And here is a question for everyone. How much time do you actually spend managing your yearly budget? Most people spend more time planing a weekend away than they do planning their finances.

I have a folder next to me here on my desk that has a weekly, yes weekly, breakdown of income and expenses for the entire year. These are personal income and expense, not my business ones. I can look back over the last year to see what was working and what wasn't and adjust accordingly. I know what bills are coming up and how much needs to be budgeted for them so I don't have to touch my savings. I don't use credit cards, but I have one in case of emergency when I travel, I do have a debit card.
My budget allows me to pay all my bills, living expenses and entertainment costs, a savings plan for my kids and savings for myself and wife.

Before I started to use this system 3 years ago I had over $35,000 in credit card debt. Now I have none, and never will again.

Just Carl,

In your opinion, if coins and cash vanish in the future then how will this affect the value of coins and the hobby?

I firmly believe that in the future there will be no monitary system as we know it. However, coins as a hobby may always be around. Same with other hobby fads such as Hot Wheels, Beanie Babies and even postage stamps. Recently there was a special on TV and one thing noted was that in China there is a massive stamp collecting craze going on. This also means that our stamp hobby which has recenetly been in the dumps may come alive again. Our Mint will probably still make Commemorative coins in the future but coinage and currency for circulation will just slowly vanish.
As to the value of our coins. Just like American Flyer and Lionel Trains, in the future the coins of today will also be worth a lot of whatever is used.


The fallacy to this is you have to remember that almost everywhere you go the monitary transactions are already computerized. Credit card or not, when you go to a store your items are scanned into a computer and that is what your charged. Slowly all businesses are going computerized for monitary transactions.
Cash in hand? Not long ago in Walmart the power went out. The cash registers wouldn't open. Everyone had to leave. No transaactions could be made. Another time at Kmart I was half way through checking out and the computers went down. Waited for about 10 minutes and they came back on line. The cashier completed my purchases. At home I noticed only about half was charged. The reset of the computers put all back to 0. In the past things like this has happened to me occationally and cash or no cash, you can't buy items if the computers are down.

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True, but if the store's computers are down, no other method of payment works either!

What I was saying is that if the central approval computer (run by the card issuing bank) for someone's card is down, the customer cannot make the purchase even if they have a sufficient balance (debit) or credit line (credit) in the account.

I rushed to a major electronics store to buy the last particular on-sale TV they had in stock (as shown on their webpage store inventory list). Someone had got there just before I did, and they had that 'last' TV in their cart and were at the checkout.

Guess what happened? The guy's card came up 'unable to process', and he was mad. He kept swearing that he had the money in his account, and stormed off in a huff!

Yours truly got that TV, because I had the money in my wallet, not (stuck!) in my account!

I think that as long as the US Mint is making a profit on collectible coins, they will continue to make them, even if they are no longer minting any for circulation. Whether or not I would continue to collect the new issues is to be determined.

Simple - we start collecting credit cards. My brother started doing this years ago and would actually open and close accounts just to get a new card design.

I don't think it is likely that coins or currency will ever disappear and I too was surprised the first time I received one of the new multi-colored $10 bills. I actually liked it so much I kept it, which also surprised me because before that I thought a lot of the newer issues of bills looked really bad.

Hard not to use credit cards though, since mine gives 1% to my kids college fund and I pay it off every month. Now businesses are wising up and giving discounts for using cash, so we will see if it becomes more cost effective to start using cash on a regular basis.