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> Moving to cashless has made things harder to track How so? As I see it, if anything it has made it extremely easy to track things.

by gklitz 2y ago

doubled112 2y ago
I think by "track" they mean "keep track of". A lot of people don't get the same connection to digits in a DB as they did to cash, plus you can't spend cash you don't have. If you hand somebody $500, they know how much they have, and they know how much they spent even after a few transactions. If you hand somebody a debit card with a balance of $500, it's easier to lose track and keep swiping until it's in overdraft.
physicsguy 2y ago
It's easier to see an instant balance, but I think there's a big difference between that and managing money that was much more manual before. I think by virtue of the manual process, people had to be much more familiar with the maths. I can remember my parents sitting down with a cheque book which had a transaction log at the back, and all of their receipts and logging those so that they knew their exact balance at a given time and knew how much they'd got left to spend from the account.
- gklitz 2y ago
  > I can remember my parents sitting down with a cheque book which had a transaction log at the back, and all of their receipts and logging those so that they knew their exact balance at a given time and knew how much they'd got left to spend from the account. Nothing about being cashless prevents them doing this, of cause if feels silly since you also have all this information instantly available without the work.
  - xg15 2y ago
    And yet, no one is doing this, because it's perfectly possible to spend money without keeping track of it. On the other hand, with cash, you're sort of forced to keep track of it, because otherwise it will just physically run out.
  - Pamar 2y ago
    The "instantly available part" is not really true, though. I am an expat in Germany, I have two different German bank accounts plus one in my home country. My main income is the monthly check from my company but I have lots of different ways to spend it (the aforementioned acvoubts, credit cards, paypal and sometimes even just cash. So the only way to have an overall picture of what I am spending my money is to actually periodically log it manually, labelling each transaction and adding a short description of what it was for.
    - gklitz 2y ago
      I mean sure, you either need an app for it, or a piece of paper, but that’s no different from before cashless, the difference is that before I had to get manual extracts from my bank and go through them myself, and now I have an app that automatially tracks purchases to steam as “hobby/games” and our local supermarket as groceries. Point is that it always required some action on your part, but today it requires way way less, and is far more automated.

> Moving to cashless has made things harder to track How so? As I see it, if anything it has made it extremely easy to track things.

by gklitz 2y ago

> Moving to cashless has made things harder to track How so? As I see it, if anything it has made it extremely easy to track things.

doubled112 2y ago

I think by "track" they mean "keep track of". A lot of people don't get the same connection to digits in a DB as they did to cash, plus you can't spend cash you don't have. If you hand somebody $500, they know how much they have, and they know how much they spent even after a few transactions. If you hand somebody a debit card with a balance of $500, it's easier to lose track and keep swiping until it's in overdraft.

physicsguy 2y ago

It's easier to see an instant balance, but I think there's a big difference between that and managing money that was much more manual before. I think by virtue of the manual process, people had to be much more familiar with the maths. I can remember my parents sitting down with a cheque book which had a transaction log at the back, and all of their receipts and logging those so that they knew their exact balance at a given time and knew how much they'd got left to spend from the account.

gklitz 2y ago
> I can remember my parents sitting down with a cheque book which had a transaction log at the back, and all of their receipts and logging those so that they knew their exact balance at a given time and knew how much they'd got left to spend from the account. Nothing about being cashless prevents them doing this, of cause if feels silly since you also have all this information instantly available without the work.
- xg15 2y ago
  And yet, no one is doing this, because it's perfectly possible to spend money without keeping track of it. On the other hand, with cash, you're sort of forced to keep track of it, because otherwise it will just physically run out.
- Pamar 2y ago
  The "instantly available part" is not really true, though. I am an expat in Germany, I have two different German bank accounts plus one in my home country. My main income is the monthly check from my company but I have lots of different ways to spend it (the aforementioned acvoubts, credit cards, paypal and sometimes even just cash. So the only way to have an overall picture of what I am spending my money is to actually periodically log it manually, labelling each transaction and adding a short description of what it was for.
  - gklitz 2y ago
    I mean sure, you either need an app for it, or a piece of paper, but that’s no different from before cashless, the difference is that before I had to get manual extracts from my bank and go through them myself, and now I have an app that automatially tracks purchases to steam as “hobby/games” and our local supermarket as groceries. Point is that it always required some action on your part, but today it requires way way less, and is far more automated.