Do you prefer cash or credit/debit cards ?

[nice gaijin]

When you use a credit card, money is an abstract concept. You don't need to carry things of value to make purchases, how novel and yet so very dangerous! Even though the gold standard has been done away with, we still attribute a certain value to our legal tender, and it hurts to give it away, especially when we're exchanging it for crap we know we don't really need. With a credit card, you don't have to watch your money pass from your hands to someone else's, it's easier to just sign your money away.

I'm generalizing here: I'm not talking about you or the company you run... hopefully.

Americans are horrible with money, on the individual, corporate, and governmental level. We are so incredibly hung up on the appearance of opulence that we hammer our own economy into the ground.

On the individual level, we borrow and borrow and borrow, and drown ourselves in a sea of mortgage payments, car loan payments, credit card bills, cell phone bills, etc. We pay the minimum balance that we can so we can keep spending the money we don't have. We struggle to look like our standard of living is so much higher than it should be when we should be living comfortably and actually saving a portion of our earnings.

This façade is prevalent in our companies, who doctor their quarterly reports and lie to the investors and stockholders to artificially inflate the value of the company's shares, while taking jobs overseas to see just how low they can take the bottom line and continue raising prices on the consumer, who gladly pays for that pair of jeans the equivalent of a year's salary for the person who made them.

And finally, the Fed, who should be the moderate voice in all this, saying "hey, let's just print more money!" and screwing with the interest rates to do everything they can to keep the next recession/depression at bay. The longer they put it off the harder it's going to hit us, all we are guaranteeing with our hesitation to actually have to go through some tough times is that our children are going to have it that much worse. But no one wants to hear that we have hard times ahead, that we're doing things wrong, that this is going to bite us in the *** (hell, that extends to politics and foreign policy, but that's not the point of this thread). I recently found a 10,000 yen bill in my wallet from a recent trip to Japan and I think I'm just going to hold onto it and see where that note stands in a couple years from now.

From what I have seen, Japanese people in general are much better with their money, especially saving it (with short and long-term goals in mind). The concept of keeping track of your savings with a little handbook is lost on Americans (what savings?). The difference I see between some American teenage socialite with a Coach handbag draped over her arm and her Japanese counterpart with the same bag is that the Japanese girl had the money to pay for the bag before she bought it.

I think the fact that it is a cash-based economy over there just reinforces the value assigned to their currency. Americans treat money as if it were worthless.

[Maciamo]

When you use a credit card, money is an abstract concept. You don't need to carry things of value to make purchases, how novel and yet so very dangerous! Even though the gold standard has been done away with, we still attribute a certain value to our legal tender, and it hurts to give it away, especially when we're exchanging it for crap we know we don't really need. With a credit card, you don't have to watch your money pass from your hands to someone else's, it's easier to just sign your money away.

I also don't think like that. With cash, money can be stolen, lost or destroyed. One can also get short-changed. With a credit card, all you have to do is read that the amount is correct and sign. If it's lost or stolen, just call the card company within 24h and any money that may have been usedby a thief will be reimbursed by the insurance that cover all major credit cards. There is no such security with cash. Debit cards are even safer as there is a pin code required for every transaction. In fact, credit cards in most European countries have now introduced a pin code instead of signature since this year (not in Japan though).