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Episode: 2574
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Title: HPR2574: Personal cash-only finance
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2574/hpr2574.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:57:15
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---
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This is HPR Episode 2574 entitled Personal Cash Only Finance.
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It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 30 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
|
||||
The summary is Klaatu discusses the advantages and disadvantages of going mostly cash-only.
|
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This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
|
||||
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
|
||||
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
|
||||
Hey everyone, this is Klaatu and you're listening to Hacker Public Radio.
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This is an episode about personal finances.
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I talked about personal finances in previous episodes, speaking very specifically toward
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the big mystery of saving for your future and investments and things like that that
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no one ever explains to you.
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So in this episode I want to do a complete 180 and talk about what if you don't do any
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of those things, the conventional wisdom, what if you reject that and decide to take part
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in none of it.
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Now part of this episode is really just a thought exercise, something to ponder, to imagine
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what would happen if I went cash only entirely, no bank accounts, nothing like that.
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But part of it is experiential.
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I've flirted with this a little bit and so I'd like to share at least some of my experiences
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and also some of the things that has kept me from actually implementing it, at least
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completely.
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Whether or not that's a good idea is up to you and I think largely whether it's a good
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idea or not really depends on what kind of future you are intending to build for yourself.
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Because certainly there is no denying that if you do not invest your money in something,
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your money will then not increase, it will not grow.
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That's what investment is, it's taking in this context your money and purchasing some
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thing that will in the future be more valuable than it was when you first obtained it.
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That's all investment really means.
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So to turn your back on the idea of conventional job, paycheck, banking and so on and attempting
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to live your life without those features slash limitations, it's kind of an interesting idea
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to explore and I'd like to explore it here because it's something that I've had a little
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bit of experience with, although not to any real extreme, which at least as a thought
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exercise I think might be kind of interesting to consider.
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So here we go, let's consider it.
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So first of all, not having a bank account has a couple of different benefits I guess
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and that would be that there's really no way for any one or anything to leverage a
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judgment against you deciding that you owe them money.
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So I mean they can make that judgment but there's no way for them to then get to the money
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that you supposedly owe them.
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So that's kind of cool because a lot of times in adult life you end up owing something
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to someone whether or not you agree with that or not.
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Not all the time, I'm just saying it can happen.
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There are little weird disputes that happen here and there, maybe a landlord claims that
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you didn't pay the security deposit and you claim that you did or maybe someone, there's
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a car accident and someone says that you owe them some amount of money for a repair and
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you claim that they owe you for a repair because of circumstances.
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So there's lots of little things like that that happen in the real world and in theory
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those things can culminate in one power saying okay well you owe this person money.
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Now they can say that and they can declare that all they want but if there's no, if there
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is no bank holding your assets then the buck kind of stops with you and if you say truthfully
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or not that you have no money to give then there's not really a way to verify or not verify
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that.
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So that's kind of an interesting angle on why one might not want to use a bank.
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And my experience, not having, and of course there's the obvious just kind of like maybe
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you want to have the physical asset, rather than abstracting money away from yourself and
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into a bank which is pretty much I think a modern defacto.
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Maybe you prefer to hold on to the money and say that if you have $1,000 then you want
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to see $1,000 in your pocket.
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You want to have that somewhere that you can point to it and say yep there it is.
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So in my experience, not having a bank account is quite difficult and I've never been without
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a bank account entirely because any time that I've worked for practically anyone, a couple
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of exceptions but most jobs that I've had and certainly all like real jobs that I've
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had, they simply pay you with either a direct deposit or a paycheck and the direct deposit
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requires a bank for it to get deposited into and a paycheck requires that you cash that
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check.
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||||
Now you can check, you can cash a check without having a bank of your own.
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||||
You can go to the bank that issued that check and redeem that check for cash or you could
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go to a cash checking service which is less optimal because they'll take a cut.
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They'll, they'll give you the cash in exchange for the check but then they'll take some
|
||||
of that cash for themselves because now they have to deal with this check.
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||||
They have to, they have to go to the trouble of getting it cashed and they have to take
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any supposed risk of maybe that check not being any good.
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So either of those two options are available is just the trouble of going to my employer's
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||||
bank every time I get paid to go get the cash has been something that I've never really
|
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relished so I've just had a bank and then I get the money from the bank whenever I need
|
||||
it.
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But you can do that, you could, you can work and not have a bank account.
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It is possible.
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The first thing that you might worry about are things like rent and food.
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So I mean, food's fine, you can get that with cash so far.
|
||||
But the, the rent thing is, is a little bit trickier depending on what your living arrangement
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is.
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If, if you are very low, let's say maintenance and you're just living however you might
|
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live, maybe you've got a roommate that you can give cash to, maybe you don't have
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||||
a home at all, maybe you have an arrangement where, where the landlord is nearby and
|
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you can bring them cash.
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Now I've done that several times.
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I've, I've had several.
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In fact, I don't think I've ever, no, that's not true.
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I did have one apartment for like a summer that was like one of those big kind of, um,
|
||||
big corporate sort of control departments, you know, where, where you don't know who
|
||||
the landlord is because the landlord is like this company that owns the building, you
|
||||
know, management, you know, property management company and they own the building and, and
|
||||
you have no, there's, there's not really a person behind, behind the, the living arrangement.
|
||||
It's just, it's the apartment building and you send in your rents by a certain time
|
||||
or they threaten to kick you out within a day, you know, it's, it's, it's very draconian
|
||||
and faceless and really kind of a disgusting way to live.
|
||||
But I mean, if you need a place, that's what you have.
|
||||
But a lot of times those places don't, don't make it easy for you to pay in cash.
|
||||
Sometimes you, you can, you can go to their, their office and, and deliver cash to them
|
||||
for your, your rent, but they tend to expect you to either do a direct deposit or send
|
||||
in a check.
|
||||
So those are options.
|
||||
You can, you can, you can make arrangements to pay in cash in your, for, for your living
|
||||
space, but I feel like the, the bigger and more official your living space, the less convenient
|
||||
it is for you to, to pay in cash, which is weird.
|
||||
But this, that's going to be a reoccurring theme throughout because it, it, it seems like
|
||||
the, the more convenient you, the more convenience you want, though, the less cash can actually
|
||||
purchase for you, which I think traditionally, like at one point, the, the exact opposite
|
||||
was true.
|
||||
Cash was a lot more convenient and could get you, could get you certain, certain deals
|
||||
that, that, you know, we're a little bit above and beyond the, the check or credit card
|
||||
method of payment.
|
||||
Okay.
|
||||
So there's rent, there's food, there's pay, pay days sorted.
|
||||
What else do you need money for?
|
||||
Well, money does things like get you, um, internet service and utility bills and things
|
||||
like that.
|
||||
Now, once again, most of these places have options for you to pay in cash.
|
||||
Not all of them, to be honest, but most of them do, uh, but you, you would have to make
|
||||
the physical journey to their office with cash because it's not something that you could
|
||||
really do safely through mail or anything like that.
|
||||
So you'd have to go to their, their location and, and pay your bill in cash, which it is
|
||||
possible.
|
||||
It just takes a lot.
|
||||
It takes a chunk out of your day and it's something that's reoccurring.
|
||||
It would be kind of cool if they would take really large prepayments.
|
||||
I think that would be super convenient, you know, where you could just say, look, let's
|
||||
just figure I'm going to have your service for a year and let me come in and just put
|
||||
a bunch of cash down and then you can take that cash and you can divide it yourself each
|
||||
month.
|
||||
You just take whatever you need off that stack every month and, and we'll just call it,
|
||||
call it even.
|
||||
But it just doesn't, in my experience anyway, that's not usually how businesses want to
|
||||
work.
|
||||
They, they, if they are billing you monthly for a service, then that's what they expect.
|
||||
And some, some services are, are variable in amounts anyway.
|
||||
So your utility bill, whether it's electricity or water or, or, or, or, what's the other
|
||||
one?
|
||||
Oh, gas.
|
||||
All those things they, they tend to be a little bit variable.
|
||||
So it would be difficult to prepay unless you overpay intentionally and I guess that
|
||||
would work out.
|
||||
It, it, it, it gets a little bit more complex.
|
||||
Other stuff that you might need in real life are, you know, the things that you get in
|
||||
general.
|
||||
So, I mean, for me, it would, things like coffee and, and food at a, at a cafe where, where
|
||||
I tend to, to do my work.
|
||||
Well, I'm, I'm saying, where I tended to do my work.
|
||||
A lot of, a lot of all of this is, is a theory for me now because I'm undergoing a bunch
|
||||
of immigration things that require me to do a lot of stuff sort of very visibly for
|
||||
the, for the local government to, to observe that yes, I am making money.
|
||||
I am not relying on social services to survive and weird things like that.
|
||||
So a lot of this is right now on hold for me because I, it's in my vested interest
|
||||
to, to maintain a healthy bank account to, to, to demonstrate that I, that I can manage
|
||||
a credit card, it responsibly, stupid things like that, which in real life I couldn't
|
||||
care less about.
|
||||
But for immigration purposes, I'm trying to put on a good, a good demonstration of my
|
||||
responsibilities.
|
||||
So that's, that's in real life right now.
|
||||
Previously, however, other things that you might want in real life would have been for
|
||||
me coffee and food at a cafe where I tended to do a lot of work.
|
||||
Of course, now I work at home, that's a lot less important for me.
|
||||
But anyway, I'm trying to get to the point that there are things in real life that you
|
||||
need.
|
||||
You just, you end up needing and, and this is an interesting one for me because this
|
||||
is really demonstrates the power of, of free culture.
|
||||
So in a lot of different realms of, of interest that I have, there, there's, there's an alternative
|
||||
to whatever the big obvious target is.
|
||||
So for instance, with computers, for a lot of us, you, you yourself probably included
|
||||
dare listener.
|
||||
There are alternatives to getting a computer.
|
||||
If you need a computer and you are a hacker, then chances are you know how to find a computer
|
||||
for very, very, very cheap, maybe even free if you know where to look.
|
||||
And it might not be something like if you go to a store, like if, if you wake up one
|
||||
day and say, oh my gosh, I forgot all this time, I needed it, I need a computer by noon
|
||||
today.
|
||||
Okay, that might not happen for you for free.
|
||||
But if, if you're thinking about it in advance, then, then very frequently, at least in my
|
||||
experience, you can find a computer, whether it's just posting an ad on a bulletin board
|
||||
somewhere, advertising your services as a data transfer specialist, I can, I can transfer
|
||||
your data from your old computer to your new computer.
|
||||
And then you take a couple of those jobs, maybe three at the most, one out of three of those
|
||||
jobs, you might just say, you know, instead of paying me today, you could just, I'll just
|
||||
take your old computer if you don't want it anymore, done.
|
||||
You just got yourself a computer and it's, it's quite possibly a perfectly fine computer.
|
||||
So or, or, or maybe you just know where to look, like you know the businesses that throw
|
||||
computers out, you know the loading dock where they stash them before the, the recycler comes
|
||||
by or, or you know the dumpster that they throw them into or whatever, you know where to
|
||||
look and you get a new computer again, easy and free.
|
||||
Now there might be parts associated with that that you have to go purchase, like, oh,
|
||||
this one's going to need a replacement keyboard.
|
||||
This one's going to need a hard drive because they took the drive out and smashed it, something
|
||||
like that.
|
||||
And, and for that, the cache actually becomes a little bit more difficult because you're,
|
||||
you're looking at specialized parts for, for a, for an industry that makes different
|
||||
versions of, of, of every single part, every, every month, it seems, it's, it's insane.
|
||||
I don't know why there have to be so many different, you know, laptop keyboards out there.
|
||||
Surely, surely five different designs would do per, per, per language would, would be fine.
|
||||
But no, it, it seems like everything has to be redesigned every single iteration.
|
||||
So that becomes very difficult drives, hard drives are obviously a little bit, you know,
|
||||
better, those are a little bit more standard, uh, RAM, not necessarily AC adapters just as
|
||||
bad as keyboards.
|
||||
So there are, there are weird things that you might find that you have to get and a lot
|
||||
of times it's very convenient to get that online.
|
||||
You just go on to whatever site you typically go to for your spare parts and you order what
|
||||
you need and then they send that to you know, obviously that's not going to happen with
|
||||
cache probably.
|
||||
So I mean, unless it's a local place where you can, where you can go and pick up the item
|
||||
and pay for it, but that, that, that'll get a little bit trickier with just cache.
|
||||
And I think again, that's kind of a theme of this is that the convenience factor goes way
|
||||
up if you have at least a bank account and, and you'll find that, that cache insisting
|
||||
upon cache all the time I have found in my experience at least limits the, the options,
|
||||
the maneuverability you have with when you're looking at an expense, you know, and you're
|
||||
saying to yourself, okay, I can get this $300 cheap computer, I'll, I know in getting
|
||||
that that I am now supporting an industry that's producing, that's over producing stuff
|
||||
and I'm buying something new and it's going to come with Windows, which I'm not even
|
||||
going to boot into anyway.
|
||||
I'm just going to put Linux on there and all these other drawbacks of going to really
|
||||
the trouble of going to get some new computer off the shelf.
|
||||
I mean, there are benefits as well because you know it's a, or you can expect that it's
|
||||
going to be a reliable computer, that it's going to, everything that you expect to work
|
||||
will probably be in working order, that sort of thing.
|
||||
So there are advantages, don't, don't get me wrong, but, but a lot of times for, for
|
||||
us, for you and me, that's just not, those are features that are kind of like nice to
|
||||
have, not necessarily need to have.
|
||||
So the free stuff is quite good and so you can look at that free thing and say, okay,
|
||||
this is going to cost me $0 or maybe it'll cost me an afternoon of work if I have to,
|
||||
I have to help someone transfer their data off of it first before I can take it or whatever,
|
||||
but it's going to, it's, it's going to be cash light and then I'll have to get some
|
||||
replacement part for this or that or, you know, I'll need to, I'll need to get a new
|
||||
battery because the battery's completely shot.
|
||||
So that's maybe a hundred bucks right there, but then how do you get that, that part?
|
||||
Like how do you actually get it?
|
||||
And so if, if, if, if insisting on paying in cash is limiting your ability to just say,
|
||||
cool, I can pay a hundred for a used repurposed thing or 300 for a new thing that supports
|
||||
an industry that I don't, I'm not really super fond of, then I think I'd rather just
|
||||
have the bank account so that I can get that hundred dollar part so that, so that enables
|
||||
me to, to get this used thing rather than saying, oh, I gotta, I have to pay cash so I have
|
||||
to go to the store and get this thing because that's the only thing in town that I can
|
||||
pay cash for.
|
||||
That's kind of the way that I see it and, and I guess it's mainly the reason that I've
|
||||
maintained the bank account for, for all, you know, for my adult life, I've never been
|
||||
without a bank account.
|
||||
It just hasn't really paid as it were to not have a bank account.
|
||||
So anyway, you have this cheap thing, you need this part or maybe it's something else,
|
||||
maybe it's something else entirely, maybe it's a, a, a video game that you want to purchase
|
||||
which has a whole other category actually, but let's just, let's call it a video game.
|
||||
Or a book, even a book, a, and a really good book that you want to purchase and we all
|
||||
know that bookstores are basically non-existent now.
|
||||
So you know, there's, there's an expectation in other words, as we're trying to say that,
|
||||
that certain items are just, that you just go to the internet for them, that's what you
|
||||
do and, and of course that means that you need to have a bank account, credit card, whatever.
|
||||
So there's, there's that, there's that limitation sort of.
|
||||
Now there are two answers to this, this limitation, this perceived limitation and one of them
|
||||
is to go to the A store, this doesn't work for everything, and I find it works less and
|
||||
less as the years get on.
|
||||
I haven't tried it lately at all because I haven't needed to, but even in, in, in the US
|
||||
towards the, towards the end of my stay in the US, it was starting to work less.
|
||||
But in the past, what I could do I, I found was go to a store, talk to someone, usually
|
||||
it had to be like the manager and, and for this reason, smaller stores were usually the
|
||||
better bet.
|
||||
That's a whole other problem because smaller stores are increasingly more difficult to find,
|
||||
like actually independent stores, but back when that was a thing and you could find them
|
||||
in certain towns, you could go to a store and talk to the, the manager, slash owner, slash
|
||||
whatever, and just ask them to order a part for you, say, it's as much like you would like
|
||||
at an auto shop now, like if you need, if you need some weird part for your weird car,
|
||||
you just go to an auto store and say, hey, you know, this is my car and this is the part
|
||||
that I need. Can you find that for me? And now they, they can do that. They have all the
|
||||
resources that, that they have that I don't certainly understand, but you know, I mean,
|
||||
it's just kind of like, yes, we can do that. We can order that part, we'll call you in a week,
|
||||
whatever. And it's, it's really convenient and you used to be able to do that in stores.
|
||||
You could just go to the manager and say, hey, look, I'm looking for this book or this,
|
||||
this computer, you know, this exact model of this computer part or whatever and people would
|
||||
just order it for you. And then they'd, I would imagine I never really asked, but I have always
|
||||
assumed that they tack their, their markup on top of whatever they've special ordered for you.
|
||||
And then they sell it to you from there. So you're probably, you know, you're not getting those
|
||||
magical like Amazon.com or what is it? AliExpress.com or whatever. You're not getting those magical
|
||||
prices of dirt cheap straight from the factory to your door type, type deals, but you are doing it
|
||||
completely, not completely, but you're doing it fairly well under any kind of radar. Really,
|
||||
you're, you're going to a third party, a middleman to say, hey, get an item for me and I will come
|
||||
back to you and I will pay you cash and then I will have that item. So it's a pretty, a pretty slick
|
||||
way to go about doing business if you can manage it. Like I say, these days it seems to be a lot
|
||||
more difficult because you can't, first of all, find an independent store anyway. And then even if
|
||||
you do a lot of times, they're just not, I don't, I don't get the sense that that's, that's something
|
||||
that really makes sense anymore maybe. I don't know, I don't own a store, I've never owned a store.
|
||||
So I don't really know that that's not the politics, but the, I don't know what that, what it demands
|
||||
of, of someone to just go randomly special ordering parts from stuff that's not on their usual
|
||||
kind of like delivery list or whatever. So I don't know if that's just not done anymore or, or if
|
||||
I just haven't tried lately, but other people are perfectly happy to do it. I don't know, but that's,
|
||||
that's one way to do it. No, the other way to do it, possibly, is to get a prepaid, like a gift card.
|
||||
And the gift cards you can purchase at, at least in the States, you can get them at any
|
||||
pharmacy at a drug store, you know, like a CVS, right aid, Dwayne Reed, whatever, you go there,
|
||||
you get the gift card, you put money on to the gift card, and then you use the gift card. And I
|
||||
used to do this quite, quite often. It was pretty dark and convenient. There's, there's a weird
|
||||
sort of caveat there. And that is that some sites don't know how to take a gift card for some stupid
|
||||
reason. And I haven't run into this a lot, but I have run into it before where you'll be purchasing,
|
||||
or you'll try to purchase something. And for whatever reason, the site just will not understand,
|
||||
I guess, that, that the card, you know, it doesn't actually have your name on it or, or isn't actually
|
||||
married to your, your billing address or whatever. So there are, there are times where it will not work,
|
||||
but generally speaking, it works out okay. And that way you can get the things that you want to get
|
||||
without having an official bank account tied to your name. You can just have it with this
|
||||
floating bank account that is disposable after a while, or that will, you know, get finished up,
|
||||
that you used up after a while. There are disadvantages to this as well. In addition to the fact that
|
||||
some sites just can't handle the fact that there are gift cards in existence. But they,
|
||||
and by gift card, in case you don't know what I'm talking about, there are credit cards. They
|
||||
look exactly like a credit card. They, they, the ones that I've ever seen and had our visa branded.
|
||||
And so you can, I think MasterCard probably has them too, but they've got, they've got that little
|
||||
logo on them. And you, you just purchase them and you put some amount of money onto them, you know,
|
||||
or, or you buy them in pre, pre declared values, like a hundred dollar card, you pay like 110 bucks.
|
||||
And there's another disadvantage is that you're paying to buy the gift card. So there's a little
|
||||
bit of a service fee on top of that. And I think all the gift cards that I've ever seen, usually in
|
||||
really, really small print, have an expiry date. So you can get one this year. And if you,
|
||||
if you, you know, get a hundred dollars and you only use up 50 bucks because you're just super
|
||||
free and low maintenance and you just don't spend that much money, then especially online,
|
||||
then, you know, in, but by this time next year or might be longer than that, but it, there's,
|
||||
there's a time timeframe where that gift card eventually just evaporates, just the money that you
|
||||
had for no good reason. It just goes away. So I've always thought that was quite strange. And,
|
||||
and I never really much cared for that sort of, that blatant money grab, but it's a thing. But
|
||||
by the same token, they're, they're a thing that you can get them. And, and then you have that
|
||||
flexibility of, yeah, I've got a bank account. Look, here's my fancy Visa card that doesn't have
|
||||
my name on it and is a gift card. And it's got digits associated with it. So I'll give you those
|
||||
digits and magically money happens. And that's basically that's what, that's all it is. So those are,
|
||||
those are an option in addition to special ordering things from, from people with who are connected.
|
||||
Now, in theory, if we're, we're, and now I'm getting way out of my, way out of my realm of,
|
||||
of experience, but in theory, if we're talking about, okay, so we're going cash only. And we're
|
||||
going to live in this super inconvenience, non-connected way. How would we then even potentially
|
||||
begin to invest in things? And, and the important thing about investment and that concept to
|
||||
understand is, well, a lot of people say that you should invest or you should, you should say,
|
||||
for the future, you should take for retirement, whatever. And, and we tend to, I think, get this
|
||||
idea of what investment is and that generally is what I spoke of in my previous episode on personal
|
||||
finances, which is either a mutual fund or a certificate of deposit or, or stocks or a 401k if
|
||||
you're into the whole, let the company and government manage your money and social security,
|
||||
stuff like that. But investment, like I've said earlier in this episode, investment is just,
|
||||
it's, it's simply purchasing a, a good that is cheap today and more valuable at some point in
|
||||
the future. And the, there, there's a guarantee or a perceived guarantee. And, and I guess,
|
||||
historically, it's been pretty reliable, and for some definition of historical. And, and that is
|
||||
the guarantee with a, with a big official sort of bank-sponsored investment or, or company-sponsored
|
||||
investment. There's kind of this guarantee that you're, that, that when you arbitrarily decide,
|
||||
that's time to sell, time to cash in on my investment, then there's going to be a buyer. So,
|
||||
in other words, it is completely expected that if you buy your $20 or, let's say, $1,000 shares
|
||||
of GWO, a new world order, the, the big company that has just gone public recently and their,
|
||||
their stocks are super hot. So you buy $1,000 worth of stocks and then you wait 40 years and you
|
||||
decide, okay, GWO has grown exponentially. It's gained a lot of money. There by my, I have gained a
|
||||
lot of money. My investments are now worth a lot of money. So now I'm going to sell that. And so,
|
||||
when you click sell in your, uh, fidelity or your e-trade.com account or whatever it is that you
|
||||
signed up with, uh, someone will just magically buy all, all of your stocks. It'll, they'll just fly
|
||||
out the door. There's, there's a market there. There's a demand for it. You're going to get the money.
|
||||
You spent a thousand 40 years ago. You have a million now. You hit sell and now you have a million
|
||||
dollars. Don't expect that kind of return on investments, um, on anything. But I'm just,
|
||||
I'm just using lots of numbers. So there's that expectation. Now, if, if you're investing in other
|
||||
things, so whatever those might be, you know, you, you hear people saying, oh, I'm going to invest in
|
||||
gold. I'm going to buy actual gold and I'm going to scroll it away in some safe location. And then
|
||||
in 40 years, presumably gold will be more valuable, uh, or at least no less valuable. And then I'm going
|
||||
to, uh, I'm going to sell. Now that, that, it kind of means that now you, you're able to find a
|
||||
market for that. Hopefully in the 40 years that pass, you'll have, you'll have discovered where all the
|
||||
the rich people who just want gold hang out and so that you can bring your bags of gold to them in 40
|
||||
years and you'll plop them down on the table and they will give you a thousand dollar or a million
|
||||
dollars or whatever it is. So there is, there's, there's, there's less of an expectation, I would say,
|
||||
that there's going to be a market necessarily for whatever it is you chose to invest in. And then
|
||||
investment, like I say, it can be something sort of classic like gold, but it can also be in, uh,
|
||||
certainly among the geek community, a lot of people rather famously invest in, in, in memorabilia,
|
||||
you know, so you, you buy the, the comic book, the, the new 52, uh, the first, first volume of the
|
||||
new 52 from DC, uh, of all your favorite superheroes, uh, of their, of their new origins or you buy
|
||||
an issue of all those, those when they hit the shelf and maybe you get the variant covers and you,
|
||||
you know, you've got everything that you could possibly get for that, for that set. And, and then you
|
||||
put it in the comic book sleeve and you put it in a safe temperature controlled non-damp environment.
|
||||
And then in 40 years, you're hoping that those comic issues will be worth substantially more than
|
||||
you spent on them. So if you paid 15 bucks for, for a comic, then in four years, you're hoping that
|
||||
they're, you know, 300 or 600, 1000, 3000 who knows. And, and obviously you don't really know what's
|
||||
going to, what's going to hit, uh, possibly an artist who contributed to that issue will become
|
||||
very famous and anything that he or she has ever touched will jump up in price and, and, and then
|
||||
it's up to you to find that market. Again, it's, it's, it isn't like the stock market where it's
|
||||
super obvious where everyone's hanging out. They're at the stock market. It's, it's a bigger,
|
||||
fuzzier market that, that you kind of have to just kind of hope that there's longevity in what
|
||||
you invested in and that there's that, that whether or not there's longevity that you can locate
|
||||
the person who has the ability and the desire to pay, you know, 20 or a hundred times what you
|
||||
originally paid for the item in the first place. So those are the theories of investing, I guess.
|
||||
But more importantly, it's the theory of not partaking in a system that has everything recorded
|
||||
and tracked and traced back to your name and traced back to who you are and what you've done and
|
||||
where you've been. It's kind of a cool thing to at least know about even if even if you don't
|
||||
necessarily go off the grid and close all your bank accounts and and shut down all of your stock
|
||||
option things, your brokerage accounts or whatever they're called in real life. That's fine,
|
||||
but it's something good to know about that that sometimes there may be things that you want to
|
||||
purchase locally because it's less of a footprint or maybe sometimes there are things that you
|
||||
want to purchase online but not tie it to your bank account for similar reasons. Of course,
|
||||
if you're logged into your Gmail account by default all the time and you're doing anything and
|
||||
you think that you're being clever because you're using this card or whatever, trust me. It's not
|
||||
it's all being tied back to to this database entry of of whatever and whoever you might be. So just
|
||||
be aware of that. But in terms of of having the ability and flexibility of switching on and off
|
||||
the traceability of purchases and things like that, it's good to kind of remember that cash
|
||||
exists, gift cards exist, middleman still exists. You can make certain things happen with smart
|
||||
purchasing habits. I'm not talking about drugs just in case for a day. If I don't know if I'm being
|
||||
too mysterious, I'm not talking about drugs or weapons or anything like that. I'm just talking
|
||||
about the freedom to live your life without necessarily having all of your life jotted down into
|
||||
a ledger. Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening and I hope this has been somewhat informative or at
|
||||
least entertaining. Talk to you next time.
|
||||
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio. We are a community podcast
|
||||
network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday. Today's show, like all our shows,
|
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then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is. Hacker Public Radio was found
|
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|
||||
at binrev.com. If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment
|
||||
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|
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|
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Reference in New Issue
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