A question for my US friends...

[kellifer]

Do you guys have ATMs (Automatic Teller Machine) and PINs (Personal Identification number) for banking or is it called something else? I was just writing something and then thought... wait, am I doing that thing where I refer to a footpath when it's a sidewalk to you?

Comments

[moxie-brown.livejournal.com]

This came to mind: I'm not sure if it's true of people of later generations, but at least amongst the 20-something crowd, we tend to use credit cards more often than going to actual ATMs and withdrawing money. Everything's on credit or debit! In fact, going to the ATM is a chore for me that I only do once or twice a month.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah. If I need cash (which I seldom do), I usually just ask for cash back when I make a purchase. You can do that with a debit card at most stores, usually $20 or $40. Many stores have limits on the amount of cash back you can get, but since I rarely use cash, it lasts for quite a while.

People on the lower end of the economic scale (at least, the financially responsible ones) tend to use cash instead of debit/credit cards because it's a lot harder to get into trouble. I mean, if you have an overdraft with an ATM card, it's usually somewhere around a $25 fine even if the overdraft is only $.50. If you're on the edge financially, it doesn't take many of those to create a real problem, y'know? And credit cards have such high interest rates.

Finances in the US--these days, it seems there's a payday loan place on every corner in big cities. What those places do is, you go in there and tell them how much your next paycheck is going to be, and they give you an advance on it. Problem is, the interest is incredibly high. And since the people who live from paycheck to paycheck are the ones who can least afford to pay that kind of interest ... it's a real problem. Here in Oregon the legislature is considering a bill that would regulate such places. They're objecting because it would restrict their busines. Which is, um, kind of the point.