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I know we're all pretty wealthy here on HN and only a very small fraction of us like myself were ever poor (I was dirt poor in my uni years, where to park the Ferrari while I was in the luxury dorms was not a problem for me, LOL). The point I'm making is has anyone here, anyone, used this? Because I have some questions. At my employer they get a commission for signing up which comes out of the fees and my employer likes money, so they have tables at the care fair and had salespeople visit each department trying to convince us to let them pay us via a highly fee'd VISA networked debit card instead of "old fashioned" direct deposit to my checking account. But what I don't understand, and probably should have asked the HR lady and salesperson when they put on the show, is how does this even work day to day? Like I probably don't spend more than $1K retail in total per month, mostly food. And I usually spend on average less than $1K per month online shopping (computer hardware, clothes, just "stuff"). Most of my pay goes into non-credit payable bills. I have a bunch of bills that do ACH direct withdraw from my checking, I hand write 5 paper checks per year, 4 to the water utility that won't online or direct bill because their whole system is like something out of the 60s, and 1 to city property tax but I must pay 5 or 10 bills per month using checking. I'm old enough that I remember in the 90s writing like 10-20 checks per month, now I write like 5 per year LOL, I have two boxes of blank checks which absent the Singularity means I literally have a supply for the rest of my natural lifetime. I don't even ... how do you ... so lets say you've got a prepaid VISA with say $15K to $20K added per month. OK. Now how does one pay rent when my bachelor pad only accepted checks? All that stuff, none of it accepts credit card payment. I don't even know how I'd pay my water bill. I could mail them a money order if I could get a money order using a VISA card but I don't think that's allowed. I sweep money to an investing account once in awhile and for better or worse the brokerage won't let you gamble by paying via credit card. My local independent chain supermarket doesn't even accept credit cards because of processing fees, so I'd have to withdraw cash from the (pay) ATM then pay cash for my food, so I couldn't even directly pay for food. Or I'd have to buy all my food at the gas station convenience store which sells no produce nothing fresh, only cooked hot hot dogs and pop tarts, but does accept credit cards? The weekly farmers market is cash only. How do those cards work in practice for adults with adult expenses? Being poor is apparently very complicated. I can't pay most of my bills with one of those cards, at least not as I understand how they work. |