Um ... sorry, but cash isn't one of the thicker things in my wallet. Two credit cards is about as thick as 5+ bills.
Unless your cash is wrinkly like mine, and you carry a trifold. In that case one wrinkly bill probably averages around 5+ and I only have to carry one card. Besides, cash carries nasty germs from who knows where.
VISA is accepted everywhere.,
No, it certainly is not.[..]
It's everywhere I want to be. ;)
Can you pay your buddy back $20 with your credit card?
Yeah, PayPal, I do it all the time.
Can you hand a hungry traveler $20?
No, but you can buy him a meal.
What happens when the phone lines are down? The power's out? Etc.? It seems incredibly risky to me to not have any fungible non-intermediated currency on hand.
Food storage. What's fungible mean? Anyway if things get real tight food /is/ money.
As I mentioned before, there's also the most-likely permanent record in various databases of the places you've been, the things you've bought, places you've patronized, etc. Backups are cheap, data mining is Fun & Easy, and companies get bought so often that your buying habits will probably live a long time. Perhaps you don't care. In 30 years, even if you do care, it'll be too late to get your privacy back.
My buying habits help companies know that I don't care about enlarging my organs. I don't mind so much.
Using credit cards is pretty reasonable if they're acutally adding value: facilitating faster ecommerce, constraining corporate spending to certain dollar limits or categories, or giving me a relatively low-interest loan on demand, without having to talk to a bank employee every time. Those are all worth something, but they're relatively rare occurrences and have nothing to do with my regular buying groceries, gas, etc.
Hmm, you know you can save 10 cents on the gallon with most Gas cards?
I just shudder at blanket credit-card cheerleading.
Me too.
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