knightly the Sneptaur

Eh, the job comes with certain expectations, they don’t even have cash tills in the cafeteria.

I use my credit cards just enough to generate a plausibly normal profile, and cash for everything else.

I’ve been looking for a more ethical job, but the market for tech work is real fucked up right now…

Best I can think of is taking a traveler’s check to a local bank or currency exchange.

I don’t think those benefits are worth it when you consider the cost of having your purchase history and personal data for sale to anyone who wants it.

My personal opinion is that the convenience isn’t worth the unspoken costs, much less the overt ones. Credit card processors already charge merchant fees on top of the interest charged by the banks that issue those cards, but they also get all your personal data associated with that card. It’s more than enough to be worth selling to advertisers, so anyone who cares to spend a few bucks can buy your purchase history and build a profile. Name, address, contact info, the coffee shop you visit regularly and when you can be found there, the daycare you send your kids to, etc. It’s very not-safe, especially when the government decides your type of person is now unpersoned.

More fundamentally though, I think the problem comes down to money itself. The use of any form of currency as both a store of value and a medium of exchange creates a multitude of perverse incentives to the detriment of society. Families work best when money isn’t coming between them, and I think that principle is generalizable to our species as a whole.

I work for an American credit card company, and my advice is to ditch credit and debit cards entirely. Use cash.