That friction could use some lubrication, at least in Europe. I loathe outdated/misconfigured card payment terminals outright declining payments that go over the 100€ cumulative total on contactless.
The better configured ones just ask for a PIN and that's it. But there are many which just decline the transaction, leaving both me and the shopkeeper frustrated requiring me to "try again".
That's not my experience, it lasts many more times for me and it says "INSERT CARD". Which is also what it says when you haven't got money to cover the payment.
Yeah, I think it's based on an amount instead of times. I have been to my local shop for months and they never asked for card yet. Each time spending like £3-4
I think this would add friction on the whole, adding an authentication step to transactions where you currently just type in your card number and hit submit. It reduces friction compared to an alternative where you confirm transactions with SMS codes, but I don't think that is very common.
Some people like to save and invest instead of spending every single cent they have.
We'd be a much more stable society if the majority of the population wasn't one paycheck away from being financially ruined.
37% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency[0]. That percentage goes up as the amount goes up and a $400 emergency is easy to hit - medical bill, moving expense, car repair, etc. It becomes 68% at $1,000[1].
Saving money is basically buying into the baning industry’s narrative of a fat bank account, or of borrowing money in order to pay it off for 30 years.
Now investing is another story! Buy durable things with your cash that hold value over time!
Right, because people don't use credit cards for the additional protection, points or miles. It's because they are all borrowing money they don't have.
And billionares who borrow money because it's tax efficient must all be secretly broke too. /s
> Right, because people don't use credit cards for the additional protection, points or miles.
I actually don't know, because I'm not American. Over here just having a credit card draws questions about one's financial stability and responsibility.
At the end of the day it's really not your money you're spending like that. I mean - it's in the name even. You'll have to pay it back eventually.
Investments are not very liquid on the time scale of less than a day. It's very often not about having to borrow money, it's about being able to leave less money sitting idle in your bank account.
Saving and investing are not realistic options for you if you're living paycheck to paycheck. That's why it's called that, because you have no money left over after paying for your necessities. Sometimes you don't even get to cover all your bills and you start racking up debt or are forced to be clever with frugality (read: giving up recurring payments like healthcare).
That’s what I ask all the 401k nerds. You could literally die next week. Sure seems like a great way to live; when you’re young and in your prime, live below your means to max out your 401k, which there’s a fair risk you won’t live to see or enjoy, or… just stop hoarding money and live your life (I’m not saying be financially ignorant or irresponsible).
17.27% of men don’t live to age 60, and another ~6%, or 23.57% of men overall, don’t make it to age 65.[1] For reference, one must typically be age 59.5 before they can withdraw from their 401k without penalty.
So, if you save for 40 years, live below your means so you can maybe have a chance at enjoying all that money you’ve socked away. Pretty crazy to think that nearly a quarter of us won’t live to see or use the money beyond 5 or 6 years after retirement.
Interesting you cite Social Security, the mandatory pyramid scheme that every American pays into and many/most retirees rely on for income. If you die before you retire, you get nothing from Social Security. If you have a 401k and die before using all the money in it, your beneficiaries (the people who inherit your stuff when you die) keep it; nothing like that happens to your Social Security benefits.
> If you die before you retire, you get nothing from Social Security. If you have a 401k and die before using all the money in it, your beneficiaries (the people who inherit your stuff when you die) keep it; nothing like that happens to your Social Security benefits.
Social security has both death and survivors benefits, actually.
As someone who spends quite a bit of his time counting the sand in the hourglass that is one of his relatives' retirement funds...
There's no definite win-strategy here. It is possible to die young. It is possible to outlive your savings and live a miserable final years. We can't guarantee a happy solution.
(Well, TBF, we could decrease the misery of the one option by deeply funding social security, not to sustain it but to raise to a higher standard of living than previous generations ever knew because we currently live in a world with a higher productive capacity than previous generations ever knew. So I'm speaking of transient political reality and not concrete laws of the universe.)
> 17.27% of men don’t live to age 60, and another ~6%, or 23.57% of men overall, don’t make it to age 65.[1] For reference, one must typically be age 59.5 before they can withdraw from their 401k without penalty.
You are making the almost certainly mistaken assumption that the population of men who "live below [their] means to max out [their] 401k" are representative of the overall population of American men with regards to life expectancy.
There are a few ways you can withdraw from your 401k early without penalty. The best is probably Roth conversion laddering, which requires that you plan your withdrawals 5 years ahead of time. If you have a spouse and children, then it also makes sense to consider what will help you best set them up for a good life; you might not get to benefit much from that savings, but maybe your children will be able to avoid starting their adulthood as debt/rent slaves.