Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with cash

History ---> Cash

Avenger — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:35:51 -0800

1) Get BA in beloved liberal arts field 2) ??? 3) Profit? Help me balance my desire for a degree in History with my desire to earn a decent living for myself. This spring I begin my Junior year of college -- working towards a BA in History. I love History and I consider it to be one of my passions. Probably my "main" passion. It's difficult to describe to someone who hasn't felt the "history bug", but I am "that one kid" who spends his lunch hour reading up on John XXII and the political intrigues of the Avignon Papacy. There really isn't much that I enjoy more -- intellectually speaking -- than history.

So, naturally, I went for a degree in History. My struggle right now is finding an algorithm that will result in "History --> Cash".

Grad school is a definite possibility (I have a 4.0 -- that should help me to get in, right?), although my parents are bankrupt and I'm poor, so financing might be tricky. But what should I study there? I really have no desire to teach high school. I suppose I could do it if the alternative were starvation, but I never liked high school and, frankly, I don't like kids that much. My parents have been encouraging me to head into law school after I graduate, but the
idea of having $100,000+ in debt is too scary for me to even contemplate. Also, lawyering doesn't thrill me either.

I've considered teaching at a college level, although when I ask my professors about it, their responses are usually shades of "don't bother". Apparently, a glut of humanities professors and deep cuts in state and Federal education budgets makes it very hard to get onboard a faculty without somebody dying first. Math and Science professors are much more in demand -- and while I enjoy science and am competent at math, I just don't see an academic career for myself in either.

I've also considered "Government" (a vague term if there ever was one) and a Masters in Public Administration, although I'm not even completely sure what I could do with that. I'm probably too much of a humanitarian to get a job with the FBI, CIA or just about any political campaign.

This is also difficult because I'm trying to figure out exactly how much money would be enough for me to be comfortable living on. 40,000/yr? 50? 60? I've never made more than 16,000/yr in my whole life. I'd like to make more, of course, but I have no absolute goals for how much money I feel that I need to earn. I guess you could say I'm still exploring my values in this regard.

On a more practical note: This fall I will be taking an EMT course to improve my near-term employment prospects. Entry-level EMT's can make $25-30,000/yr, which is pretty good from my current $9/hour vantage point.

So should I try to get a job that relates to my History degree somehow, or should I get it just for the enrichment and pursue a more practical route to financial success? Am I missing something here?

Point of sale shenanigans

zap rowsdower — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:52:32 -0800

Cash back? Why? Why is the burden of choosing "NO" to the cash back option placed on me every time I use my debit card to purchase something? Am I atypical? Does the rest of the world routinely get cash back?

Why aren't there a few more options on the initial screen- Debit, Credit, Debit w/ Cash Back? Surely there's enough screen real estate.

Is it just a really poor design choice or is there some other reason I'm just not aware of?

Help me stash my cash

t0astie — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:22:10 -0800

I am absolutely crap at saving and live pay cheque to pay cheque. This must change. Help me find the best place to squirrel away a small amount of cash each week, where I *won't* be able to withdraw it easily. Despite my general uselessness with saving, I've become quite good at paying bills. But only because I make micro payments on each bill, each week on pay day. So, I pay $60 for my car loan, $12 for health insurance, $5.50 for my landline… and so on with six or seven different bills. Hurrah! For the first time ever, I am not getting angry overdue letters from phone/electricity/credit card providers.

I've tried to do something similar with savings, putting money each week into online savings accounts like ING. But it hasn't worked, because, well, I can take it out.

I really want to find somewhere, or some sort of investment strategy, where I can put away $25-50 a week for an emergency fund, until I have $1000. And not access it. I mean, I'd like to be able to access it if it's life and death, but not overnight, or the next day, like with ING.

But I'm a complete investing novice and have no idea where to even begin looking for something like this, or what name / names it might have.

Any suggestions for what sort of place I should direct the cash would be great.

And can I just clarify – I'm *not* looking for general advice about being a better saver, like cutting out my daily coffee, or being more disciplined or whatever. I'm looking specifically for advice about *where* to put the small amount of surplus cash I do have so I can't spend it easily. ING and online banking are waaaay too easy to access, so no tips in that direction, thanks! And I'm in Australia, not the US, if that makes any difference in advice.

Super depressing winter murder movie.

agentofselection — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:13:41 -0800

Forgotten movie: Winter, small crashed plane in the woods, bag of money, resulting woes. Spoilers inside. I remember a movie probably 10+ years old. A man and I think his brother find a crashed small plane containing dead men and a bag of money. They take the money. It corrupts them, and one man and his wife end up killing the other, and a few other people. Eventually the FBI come to town looking for the money, which was apparently from a ransom or something. They don't catch the couple, but do disclose that the serial numbers of the bills were recorded, making the cash unspendable. In the end, the couple end up with the blood of friends/relatives on their hands, and a bag of money which they can do nothing with but burn. Anyone remember this?

Where is All My Money Going?

davidstandaford — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 14:30:48 -0800

What is the best online web 2.0 personal expense tracking sites? I recently started using Mint, and I'm very happy with the way it can keep track of all my money from different account in one centralized location.

I'm hoping there is something similar that I could use to keep track of how I spend my money, where I could enter in my credit and debit card info and it would auto-import all the money I'm using with my plastic. Obviously, this would require entering in cash and check expenses by hand, but I mostly use cards for day to day purchases.

If there doesn't exist any sites that will automate part of this, I'm looking for the best websites where I can enter in daily expenses by category and get monthly reports of what percent of my money goes to different categories (rent and utilities, transportation, food, entertainment, etc.) and check trends over time.

How to turn a gift card into cash?

clcapps — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 10:52:56 -0800

Is there a way to turn a VISA gift card into cash? I got a $100 visa gift card as an early christmas present, but I really need cash - the only thing I can see myself spending money on in the near future is going to the bar with my friends, and the one we frequent is cash-only.

Are there places where you can buy something with a card and return it for cash?
I thought about buying videogames and selling them back to gamestop, but that would be crazy expensive.

Any other ideas?

Cash or carry?

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:02:25 -0800

I'm buying a new car, I have bad to mediocre credit (my score is 563) and I have an inheritance I could use to pay cash instead. Which is best for me? The car is $35,000 and I'd be putting down $15,000 against an interest rate of 13% through a CapitalOne loan (via the dealer).

I have a $100,000 inheritance sitting around that I could use to make up the remainder to avoid the interest rate, but that wouldn't do anything for my credit. I'm perfectly willing to take the loan if it will help me more in the long run, and the dealer says I can refinance the car in 6-9 months once my lazy bill-paying falls off the 30-90 day incident window for my credit cards.

As a software engineer I make $82k/yr and I don't have any other debt (I usually clear my cards every month) and my monthly overhead is about $1500 (rent control apt + utils), so I can afford the $550/mo car payment, but looking at loan calculators it seems I'll be paying about $8k in interest on the $20,000 loan. Though I've never bought a new car before (I'm 39), I'm very excited about this one and committed to getting myself something nice in general (though my second choice is a Scion, my #1 criteria being "size").

I'm thinking that while it's more expensive in the long run, my credit would really benefit from carrying the loan (how? I don't know). I'm kind of money-dumb, so I cast my numbers to the MeFi oracle.

She just wants to pay cash for a new car.

ScarletPumpernickel — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:41:56 -0800

Please help -- How do you buy a new car in California for cash? Dealer has agreed to a cash deal, but at 11th hour, insists on signing a loan agreement?!? Help my cuz get this guy to close a cash deal. My cousin has saved up to buy a new car for cash in
SoCalifornia. She got the deal she wanted, and they knew
from the start that she was paying cash. So they should've
gotten a deal they can live with, too.

She pays by cashier's check, signs over the trade-in, signs
all the papers, then finally comes the sales agreement...

...and it's a loan agreement.

She declines, they insist. She reads, and the contract
says:

(a) customer can choose to pay cash. Sign this form, and
you're choosing to pay by credit;

(b) oral amendments are not binding, mutual written consent
only.

She declines, they insist, complete with lies and tactics.
Around and around they go. Finally, she leaves. She has a
paper trail on everything she's given them, so she feels she
can get it back with just some hassle. Most importantly,
she'd like to buy that car -- in cash.

What tactic/consumer law/shibboleth/ninja-finger-sign can
she use to get the deal closed without a loan?

P.S. -- In between claiming that it was State Law that she
sign a loan agreement, one of them offered to make it a
"zero-dollar loan." WTF?

Thanks in advance for prompt suggestions. Clock is ticking.

Brother can you spare a dime?

Gungho — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:36:24 -0800

How much money did people carry pre-ATM?. Alfred Hitchcock often uses the exchange of cash to move the plot of his films. In Psycho a house is purchased with cash. An automobile is too. In Dial M for Murder weekly cash withdrawals of a mere 5 pounds is enough to bring suspicion upon Ray Milland, and in North By Northwest Grant goes 3/4 across the USA with only what he has in his wallet. So I ask How much money did the typical upper middle class man (as most of Hitch's characters are) carry before the advent of the ATM?

From reel .com "Throughout the New York section of the film, Grant is constantly giving cash to people — cab drivers, Plaza Hotel bellhops, the valet service guy, a $50 bribe for his mother (Jesse Royce Landis), and so on. Then he tries to buy a train ticket to Chicago on the 20th Century Limited. After that, he buys lunch in the dining car, bribes a train porter so he can wear his uniform, buys a bus ticket from Chicago to the Illinois farmland, and so on."

Certificate of Deposits

benji — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:32:26 -0800

What is the best place to get a CD (Certificate of Deposit)? I am looking at getting a CD for about 10,000 for around a year. Anyone have any experience with this? How legit is eloan.com (who seems to have the best rates)?

Storing & printing photos w/o a credit card or CD burner

ROTFL — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:58:15 -0800

I've bought a digital camera for a friend who is not a legal resident of the US, has no credit cards or bank accounts, and doesn't have much money to buy computer hardware. How can I help her store and print the photos she takes? She has access to a computer, but doesn't own one. And she's a bit of a technophobe; I just know she wouldn't be receptive to learning how to burn CDs, for example, even if she could afford to buy the equipment. I got her a 2 GB card to go with the camera, but that'll fill up soon enough.

Would an online service be the way to go? It'd have to be something that didn't require any credit cards, and there'd have to be a way she could get prints using only cash. Or is there some other way to swing this so she has permanent access to her photo archives and can print them as desired?

Avoiding scams selling expensive items on craigslist

freshgroundpepper — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:25:04 -0800

I'm about to list a relatively expensive item on Craigslist (asking ~$700) and have been reading up on all of the different scam horror stories and what _not_ to do. I'm only going to be dealing with someone in person, and I won't accept any wire transfers, cashier checks or money orders because of the high abuse potential, but I'm not sure what this leaves as viable alternatives for what I _should_ do to receive payment. Is it OK to ask for that much cash? Is there some other alternative that I'm missing? Anything above a couple of hundred dollars seems like a lot of folding money to me. Is there some sort of unspoken maximum amount where cash is no longer viable?

Should I be asking the person for some sort of identification (driver's license?) when I make the deal? Do I need to worry about counterfeit money and get one of those pens that I see some stores use on large denomination bills that identify counterfeits?

How have other people dealt with large items that they've sold on Craigslist (or a similar forum)?

Making quick cash while waiting to hear back for a job

Kwirq — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:06:03 -0800

How can I make some quick money for groceries & bills while I'm waiting for my job interviews to pan out? Hi folks. My first and only job (six years, programming for the university) terminated in March, forcing me to look for work in the Real World. Days after I put my resume online, a recruiting agency had me in and started getting me interviews with programming companies, which seemed pretty promising.

Problem is, these companies (really just one that I'm interested in) are taking forever, and my Sweetie's paycheque isn't carrying us very far. I can see that I should have had many more irons in the fire and I would have been employed by now, but what can I do in the meanwhile to make some extra cash to keep us going?

What I've thought of:

• Temping: Can someone tell me their experiences with this? Is it a day-by-day thing or per-week or what? Do you need a car to get around? When do you get paid? The only experience I have is .Net/Web development and flipping burgers in high school.

• Selling my junk on ebay: Having taken stock of the apartment, everything falls into pretty much two categories: Stuff we want to keep, or stuff no one would buy.

• Freelancing: Is there such a thing as micro-freelancing? As in, do a few=n hours coding, make n*$20 (or whatever) that day? Or other e-labour? (The Mechanical Turk would be cool, if it paid better, and more quickly.)

Any help with the above, or other ideas, or links to relevant past AskMes that I missed, would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

What is the availability of "under the table" work in Europe?

wile e — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:03:55 -0800

What is the availability of "under the table" work in Europe? I understand it's a per-country answer, but that's exactly what I am looking for. Here in New York, you can pretty much do any job for cash. Which makes this country extremely popular with foreign workers that do not have any visas or work papers. I am looking to find out how easy it is find these types of working conditions throughout Europe.

My Girlfriend is Finnish and claims that it is next to impossible to find this type of work in Finland. Now I am not sure if this is her being naive, or if Finland truly is this tough. I tend to believe her as Finland is one of the least-corrupt countries in the world. But what about England? France? Italy I hear is quite easy to find this type of work as I have acquaintances that have done so, but I do not know of the extent.

/This is not for political research or statistical observations. More of a realistic evaluation for my own personal situation. Looking more for personal experience answers rather than a political discussion on the subject. Thanks!

Cashing US cheques

Mossy — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:40:39 -0800

How can I cash a US$ cheque quickly in the UK? My bank has said it will take 3 weeks and will charge £15 per cheque (I have two for $3k each). Any ideas how to do this quicker (can't get new ones)?

Investment options for the young and the restless?

killdevil — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 11:03:32 -0800

A friend needs to find a good place to park some money that will ultimately be used for house down-payment purposes. Help me come up with a few good investment options. My friend has around $100k sitting in a low-yield savings account. It pains me to see the cash left there when better options are legion.

Key points: the money will be invested for around 1-3 years. I think one or two good mutual funds would be a reasonable choice, but am not really an investor myself so I don't have specific funds or fund families to which I can point my friend.

Other options are welcome, of course, provided they are relatively conservative and are low-maintenance (i.e. they do not require active monthly monitoring; keep in mind that my friend is relatively young and is not an experienced investor).

Thanks!

Secure my documents abroad.

|n$eCur3 — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:06:21 -0800

I am taking a surf trip to costa rica. Because of the nature of the trip, I will not be able to keep important documents on my person for large chunks of time. Where can I put them so that they are secure? Not in the rental car - I've heard of professional robberies happening too often. Not in my unsecure hotel room? What other options do I have? I've thought of scanning them in as images and keeping a copy in my gmail. But what can I do with cash and vauables (ie, camera)?

Help me ifgure out if I'll score brownie points by giving LP albums as art or not.

n'muakolo — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:48:59 -0800

Grateful Dead/Dylan/Phish/Johnny Cash/Hank Williams lovers. How do you feel about LP albums as art? I'm thinking it might be cool to get my bf - who is pretty intense about the Dead, Phish, Dylan, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, bluegrass and jazz (sorry I can't specify more) - some LP albums that I would frame and hang on the wall as art for his music lair. He has a lot of concert-related memorabilia. I'm just wondering, though - LP album art - hot or not hot? I'd rather not ask him too many questions or I'll tip him off.

If hot, any tips on Dead, Dylan, Johnny Cash, Hank, Phish, albums that would make his little heart sing? (I do know some favorite shows/albums of his, but I'm wondering if there are albums out there that almost anyone would recognize as awesome to have on their wall. If they liked this stuff on their wall.)

How much is US citizenship worth?

xanthippe — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 04:48:34 -0800

What is the cash value of an American passport? I'm not asking about how much it would cost to buy a passport on the black market or anything along those lines, but rather, what is US citizenship worth approximately, if you were to put a monetary value on it?

Cash Cab Tipper?

gregoryc — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:12:04 -0800

Do (can?) people tip Ben Bailey, the driver of the Cash Cab? Looking for answers from people who have been on the show (or some other authoritative source), not just personal opinions. Thanks.

Selling Stamps to the PO

catcatwomanman — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 22:24:21 -0800

Ok, burning my question for the week with something really stupid yet I don't have the time to sit on the phone on hold or make the trip, so here goes: in the US, will the post office buy back your stamps at face value (and with no questions asked)?

Are ATMs the perfect machine?

TBoneMcCool — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:00:45 -0800

Do ATMs make errors? I realized the other day that after a more than 15 years of constant ATM use, I've never erroneously received too much or too little money from a cash machine. ATMs break down all the time, and they sometimes run out of money, but I've never heard of a cash machine handing out too much or too little money. My question is twofold: First, have any of you ever received an erroneous withdrawal amount from an ATM? Second, how can these machines operate with such an extremely low error rate? Every other electronic/mechanical device that I can think of -- cars, bicycles, computers, electric grids, airplanes -- break down or make critical or catastrophic errors from time to time. But the cash-dispensing functions in an ATM somehow seem to be immune.

Investments for Dummies

trinarian — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:02:48 -0800

Just inherited a bit of cash, need eschatological investment pointers Its in the tens of thousands. I know crap about investment compared to most current eventish things.

I'd like to place it somewhere more liquid than real estate and somewhere it'll still grow if the dollar drops. I have no real inclination to put in the stock market but am curious about commodities. I have a pretty negative outlook on the American economy in coming years and would like to put my bets in that direction. I guess I'm looking for solid, but not rapid, growth with the expectation of more instability in the world.

Kicker: I have five days to do this before moving to China for a year.

Where does one cash a check from the Financial Management Service?

Firas — Wed, 31 May 2006 12:31:44 -0800

Cluelessfilter: So I got an income tax refund and the only organizations marked on the check are 'United States Treasury' and 'Treasury / Financial Management Service'. Where is such a check cashed?

It's all about the benjamins (and ulysseses), baby.

oaf — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:38:49 -0800

No bills larger than...? I manage a box office at a theatre. Occasionally, people will try to pay with a large bill ($50 or $100). Unless they're buying more than five tickets, this is not reasonable, and it has the added effect of wiping out my ability to make change very quickly (sometimes instantly). I want to develop a consistent policy to avoid this. Currently what I'm thinking is that I won't accept a $50 for a purchase of less than $25 or a $100 for a purchase of less than $50.

Does this seem reasonable? There's no legitimate reason to try to pay for $20 worth of tickets with a $100, especially since no ATM I've ever been to actually dispenses bills that large; you've got to be trying to impress someone by carrying around huge denominations like that.

(The only other thing I've thought of is to keep a wad of $2s stashed in the safe, and then to give change for large bills entirely in $2s if possible. Because nobody but me likes them.)