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Employers Switching From Payroll Checks To Prepaid Cards With Fees
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports a growing number of American workers are being paid by prepaid payroll card. The cards often have fees attached to basic services like making a cash withdrawal or for inactivity. Some employees report that the employers pay by card by default, with paperwork barriers to opting out, and some report that their employers refuse to pay them by check or direct deposit. The issuing banks pitch the cards to employers as a cost-cutting payroll alternative, and sometimes even offer a financial reward for each employee they sign up."
They don't. They tend to pay bi-weekly.
I don't understand how this can be legal - fees for withdrawals is basically a pay cut. I guess this is what you get when you believe unions are evil...
Most companies switched to direct deposit by now.
Weekly? Bi-weekly seems to be the most common in the US.
I've been thin for cash during that second week enough times, I can only imagine how much worse it would be to go a whole month.
They were in the process of doing this when i left the company about 4 years ago, no word if it went through.
If so, that's a few million right there.
The NYTimes talks about the fees that come along with the use of a preloaded debit card, but in some states (e.g. California), there is a legal requirement that the employee be able to get their pay without any fees, etc. , and at a location convenient to them. No paycheck drawn on a bank in some other state with only 3 branches in that state, etc.
Mind you, that doesn't mean that employers actually follow the rules, or that the employees, who typically are spending all their time just staying alive, will pursue this with the Dept of Labor Standards Enforcement, but at least it is the law.
Depends on the job. Most salaried workers get paid monthly in the US.
As someone who gets paid once monthly -- it's not that bad, once you get your budget set up. I get paid on the last day of the month, unless that is a weekend, in which case I get paid the Friday before. I have *most* of my bills set to be due on the 5'th, so I get them all out of the way right up front. I have a few that are due around the 20'th, but since they are stable (IE: they don't change), it's easy to budget around them.
bork bork bork!
Some colleges have been doing that with student aid payments. Alamo Colleges in San Antonio started doing something similar.
Tell me again how it is the employee's responsibility to defray the employer's payroll processing costs?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Congress should step in and outlaw or regulate this kind of thing.
This frustrated me this year. I received a pre-pair card from the State of Oklahoma for my OK Tax Return. I swear I filled out the direct deposit info, but perhaps I didn't (I could check my copies...). What upset me is the fees for funds withdrawals/etc. This is my money, the state and its corporate partner shouldn't be making money off me when I try to get it.
The card did allow a single withdrawal without a fee at an ATM. I couldn't find an ATM it would work in. Finally logged in to the associated website and transferred to my banking account, with a $0.75 fee. What a crock!
Here's the Oklahoma website pdf detailing the info: http://www.tax.ok.gov/it2011/RefundCard.pdf
and their FAQ: http://www.tax.ok.gov/faq/faqDEBITCARD001.html
I should have mentioned -- I'm also paid via direct deposit. If my 'default' pay were via one of these crappy cards, I'd do *whatever* paperwork was needed to get a normal check or direct deposit...
bork bork bork!
McDonald's is being sued for allegedly paying less than minimum wage using this method.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I kinda like bi-weekly, myself... I budget myself around the idea of 24 (2x12) paychecks... but GET 26... which means two paychecks are entirely outside of the budget and are free-for-alls, basically.
The check cashing services are also closely allied with the pay day loan services that charge interests that work out to something like 240% on annualized basis. These check cashing services are one of the main opponents of Wall street reform, they are very well organized and media savvy. I would not be surprised if this sudden interest in prepaid card fees and the media blitz is actually organized by these loan sharks.
It costs money to process these transactions. It is not as much as the banks charge as fees and the fees can be unreasonably high. But still that is not as bad as what these check cashing services charge. I would rather work towards giving the regular banks some tax incentives to provide these prepaid cards without fees when they were given as wages for people below poverty line. Killing the whole idea of prepaid cards or demonizing the employers who provide them will prove to be very counterproductive.
Please educate yourself about the plight of the poor at the hands of check cashing services on one hand, checking account with fees on the other hand, people not having fixed addresses or visas who can not open bank accounts in the first place before jumping on the band wagon denouncing the wage card with fees or the employers who provide them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Are you certain? My personal experience is that salaried workers in the U.S. usually get paid every two weeks or twice per month.
Ostensibly, this is a means to help folks who don't have a bank account to carry electronic money around. In some cases, it's on the up-and-up; many of these cards charge monthly fees that are lower than what, say, Bank of America will weasel out of you on a monthly basis. I had a NetSpend card for awhile as an experiment of sorts, and it worked out very well... enough to get me to drop my old BoA account for about a year, until I found a credit union that better suited my needs.
OTOH, many of these cards are shady as hell, and little wonder some employers push them - the kickbacks have got to be extremely tempting, to say the least. Then again, many banks are just as bad, if not worse.
Long-term, I see it as an overall move towards ditching cash altogether - the poor are the last barrier to such a society, and these card programs are aimed squarely at them. Most are unable to get a bank account (bounced checks, etc), they often get state assistance nowadays in the form of debit cards now. OTOH, cash has a wonderful way of getting paid without the IRS knowing about it, so I can see government's angle in wanting e-money over the regular stuff. Cash also makes it hard for police to track money flow, etc... so yeah, I can see the allure from that viewpoint. I can also see the allure of not having to print and distribute paychecks from the employer's end.
All that said, I wonder how long it will be until cash is done away with altogether, and what the drawbacks to society will be from doing so. Cash is a beautiful means of buying things without the purchase being tracked (and yes, most times it is not only legit, but done for good reasons), and it has the advantage of being accepted pretty much anywhere (even if you have to convert currency first. Finally and most important, cash doesn't require a transaction fee every time it gets used - way too much room for abuse and corruption there.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This one makes the point well.
http://consumerist.com/2013/06/17/ex-mcdonalds-employee-sues-because-she-doesnt-want-her-paycheck-on-a-prepaid-debit-card/
> Most salaried workers get paid monthly in the US.
Really? I thought most state laws establish bi-weekly as the longest period allowed. In all the states I've worked it was that way.
It's not hard. Really, unless you're saving absolutely nothing, you should have enough of a cushion to be able to spend into that in advance of the paycheck. If you budget properly, the dint in your savings is only short-term.
I get paid monthly; it goes into my mortgage, and I transfer out a weekly sum for day-to-day needs. I pay my bills straight from the mortgage.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I owe my soul to the company store
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Any company stupid enough to drive people away with such a stupid payroll system definitely deserves to go under after leaving behind only the bottom of the barrel worst employees. Anyone with half a brain left to go work somewhere else.
I work at Walmart, which not so long ago began to require direct deposit. I prefer direct deposit myself, and have always been using it with my local credit union.
Yes, the debit card that walmart offers has fees attached. BUT If you are an employee AND you have direct deposit to that account, the usage fees are waived.
I have one of the walmart branded "money cards" even though I've always has my regular checking account with said local credit union. Due to cut work hours hours I donate plasma (to supplement my income) twice a week. The plasma donor pre-paid visa has fees attached, which really sucks. To minimise the fees that I pay I set up a measly $10 per pay check to be direct deposited to the walmart debit card. I then load money from the "plasma" card to the "walmart" (one transaction) which allows me to avoid fees. Normally loading the "walmart" debit card would cost me $3, so it's a total rip off for the general public.
I agree this is heinous, but it's just a symptom of a problem that's beem going on for decades. Why are bank transaction fees acceptable *at all*? Banks used to pay interest for the privilege of using/investing my money while I have it in their bank. I shouldn't have to pay to use what belongs to me, and I don't understand why people put up with it. I personally use baning services that don't charge fees; they exist, why dont more people uae them?
I think the norm in the US for exempt employees is twice monthly, with non-exempt being paid bi-weekly.
Once a month isn't too bad if you're salary. It takes a couple of months to get the budget set up but once you do, it's not much worse than biweekly.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
McDonald's is NOT being sued. McDonalds has nothing to do with employee payroll processing in individual restaurants. The franchisee pulling this stunt is the business getting sued.
Agreed. I would opt the hell out of those BS cards. I can't believe that this is even a real thing. The first I heard of it was last week.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Not in my case as a US citizen. Four employers, four places where I was paid (and still am in the latest case) bi-weekly via direct deposit.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
1) You can, indeed, get free checking from Credit Unions pretty easy. Some banks too. There really are places that'll do business with you for no money up front and they won't charge you fees so long as you don't do things like overdraw.
2) They say companies are trying to do this instead of direct deposit. DD costs companies next to nothing. The Automated Clearing House (which is how they all do it) charges $0.35/transaction. This is why companies like to pay people that way. It adds just a trivial cost, and it all automated, the money comes out of their account in to yours. Well the only reason to go prepaid cards instead would be because the bank is bribing them, not because it is cheaper because the ACH cost is just fucking trivial.
This is not a matter of being nice to poor employees, this is a matter of fucking people over.
I could certainly understand offering it as an option. Maybe some employees would find it convenient or financially advantageous. But trying to force people on it? That is just trying to screw them over for a very minor benefit. Like I said, ACH is $0.35/transaction (or 0.06% of a minimum wage paycheck, not counting payroll tax and all that jazz if you want to look at it that way) and it is good bookkeeping wise since the transaction hits right away so you know the status of your current accounts.
Who knew there were so many state laws on this:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/payday.htm
I've done both. I've been salary and bi-weekly, semi-monthly and monthly. I don't think there really is a "normal" in this regard. It's just whatever the employer feels like doing.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I worked for Gamestop and they had this convoluted system where you got an atm card and stack of blank checks to the account. This was their method if you couldn't direct deposit. It was bullshit because there is no bank to go to in order to get your money that you earned with the card. Most ATMs would fee you, effectively a pay cut. The consolation was that you could go to Wawa ATMs because those were free, but because ATMs are limited to $20, you couldn't get to the remainder of your money from 0.01-19.99$. And the "convenience" checks they gave you were ridiculous. You basically hand wrote your own paycheck, had to call the company for an authorization number to put on the check (which didn't look like a real check to begin with) and then you had to get the teller to call in another authorization. There were a few times where I had to get bank managers involved because the tellers would look at the check and tell me it wasn't legitmate and wouldn't go through the effort to try to cash it. On top of that It's even more bullshit because the company doing the payroll here CLEARLY is making interest off of your money, not you.
This has to die.
I've mostly seen it used by companies that insist on direct deposit, with employees that refuse to have a bank account for whatever reason. Mostly labor workers, not skilled workers.
Why would ANYONE want these cards - that completely contrary to all sorts of desired activities, such as paying your bills, mortgage, and saving.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
These cards are usually issued to people who work in low-wage, low-skill jobs who may not have the means to acquire a traditional checking account. Many banks require you to keep a minimum balance in order to have a checking account, and we're talking about people who largely live paycheck-to-paycheck and would find it difficult to impossible to keep a few hundred dollars just lying around, untouched.
Payroll debit cards are seen as an advantage for people in this situation, because they can use it virtually anywhere and don't need a bank account.
That said, charging a bunch of fees is bullshit.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I actually preferred being paid monthly. It was easier to get all of the bills paid in one chunk rather than having to balance them between paychecks (and still have enough to buy food). I also found it much easier to put money away into savings. With 2 checks it seemed easier to allow myself to be nickle and dimed, knowing that there would be another check in a few days.
I worked at one time where I was paid with one of those cards.
We were paid weekly because we were peon min wage packers.
It was free to transfer to a bank account. There were no fees if we kept a balance - I moved my money out of the card as soon as the company deposited money into it because I didn't trust them.
Anyway, I don't have the fee schedule in front of me to make further comments about the particular card I have.
But the point is, peon min wage jobs pay weekly.
That was a shitty job. You had to show up over an hour before you could even clock in with the hopes of getting selected to work that day. If you got selected, you were able to go to the head of the line the next day. If you had to take a day off, you lost your spot and back in line.
If you weren't selected, you just spent you morning -5AM - 6AM waiting around for no pay. A lot of folks got discouraged and never cam e back after a couple of days waiting around and not working.
The body shop that brought the workers in was ALWAYS recruiting more and turning away more in the mornings - it was retarded.
They would train people on a machine, and the operator would work for a month or two, and then when business dropped they would not call anyone into work.
There were many times as a machine operator where if you still needed to work, they would demote you and you were back to min wage loading machines or packing games.
And when business was slow, no work at all.
And then after work, you had to stand in line for about a half hour - UNPAID - in order for security to search you to make sure you're not trying to smuggle out a video game.
So, you would spend at least 90 minutes a day at the plant unpaid.
Don't like it, you don't have to work there.
And the treatment by the company! It was clear that you were crap. Nothing. That you could be replaced at ANY time - and it was true. There are so many desperate people WANTING to work - contrary to what the conservative pundits say -that they can replace you at ANY time.
The poor are treated like garbage in this country. They are treated as subhuman. And when you're constantly treated that way you start to wonder if it's true.
We, the US, are a class based society - with very little mobility. And if you fall off your rung on the ladder, good luck getting back up it's nearly impossible. Just try saying in an interview - if you actually get one - "when I was out of development work, I worked a min wage job 11 hours a day."
And the industry still expects you to keep your skills up having to live that way.
These cards are usually given to people who are working paycheck-to-paycheck for not much money. Going an extra couple weeks (or even just one week) without getting paid can be the difference between eating and not eating.
Your setup where you withdraw from your mortgage is a luxury that I would say most people--especially those who are most likely to be offered payroll debit cards--are very unlikely to have access to.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I can see where these would be a valuable option for the "unbanked." I agree that obtaining a free checking account is simply not possible for many people; if they've bounced checks in the past, many banks will refuse to open a checking account for you, no matter the cost. However, this should never be mandatory, or even a default. Instead, many employers are making it the default choice (and in many cases the ONLY choice.) The default should, of course, be Direct Deposit, which has the lowest total cost and hassle for everybody. These payroll cards foist all the payroll costs on the employee.
For those that don't have a poor ChexSystems record, locating a bank that will provide free checking if you have Direct Deposit is not difficult.
Alternatively, physical checks should be able to be cashed, free of charge, at the bank of issue, and should only be issued from a bank with reasonable local branches.
So.. if this is anything like a real Debit/Cred card, the same security holes would seem to apply. Holes you wouldn't have with paper check or direct deposit. When my paycheck has been spent and I didn't make the withdrawl, who is going to believe me?
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It all depends on how you set it up with your employer. Usually the lower paying jobs pay more often, since the workers are so cash strapped that they simply have no bootstrap to live for 30 days without being paid.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
You know, for as much as I see people from European countries bash on big corporations, you guys sure seem fine with letting them earn interest on your money for an extra 6 months a year.
The benefits to monthly payroll are purely for the employer- they don't have to spend as much processing payroll since it happens half as often, and they can earn more interest on the money before giving it to you.
It started with some states, getting rid of both checks and direct deposit for unemployment benefits. Yeah, you get your card, and there's some way to get some cash for free, but there's all sorts of limits and restrictions. You either use it to buy stuff so that the merchants end paying the issuing bank, or you get your cash to your checking account in one payment and it costs you.
As an employer I can attest that payroll services have been pushing this on me hard since at least 2008. They're obviously getting a commission, or they would not be promoting it so aggressively. My default is always direct deposit, but I do pass along the paperwork for the debit card to new hires--this results in a blank uncomprehending stare as they process the idea; "why in the hell would I want to do that???" ;-)
If the banks could charge us fees for paying in cash, they would. From their point of view this is the next best thing.
Ah, but you see many employees can't have a bank account. If your history with bounced checks is bad enough, no bank will ever open an account for you. Sad but true. Maybe credit unions are a tad better, but then they require a deposit of usually $25-$35. For people who are in such dire straits that they can't get a checking account open with a mainstream bank, coming up with $25 to be frozen "forever" may be a problem.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The GP wasn't talking about payroll debit cards; he was talking about the difficulties of a monthly pay-cycle versus weekly/fortnightly.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
<sarcasm>
We lose so much MONEY on payroll that we should FIRED whoever came up with that idea.
What's wrong with paying in company scrip or gift certificates?
</saracasm>
It is certainly true that non-bank check cashing is a blight on poor communities. Debt cards that in-practice have the same fee structure do not help the situation.
In the case of something like McD's, they should simply issue cash. Yes, the corporation loses out on "playing the float," but that's just found money anyway.
I've never heard of it until this morning when I read it on Slashdot. If an employer tried to pay me with these, I'd laugh in their face.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Oh, there's plenty of banks that don't need a minimum balance. The problem is that if you bounce checks, like the poor people often do, eventually no bank will want to open an account for you. Alas, let's not think that only poor people bounce checks. I've seen a big ten university salary check bounce, and that was regular tenured faculty salary check, not grad student "handout".
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Sometimes you need a bootstrap. People in low-wage jobs often run on razor thin budgets. Imagine you have no money and have to get a job and still come to the job dressed and clean. That's a real issue, not something made up.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It's called money management. You don't go and burn it all as soon as you get paid.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My point stands just as well whether the cards factor in or not. Many people cannot really afford to go that long without a paycheck--not getting paid for one or two weeks is a huge hardship.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Quite true! Once you find yourself in ChexSystems (I think that's what they're called), you're blacklisted from all traditional banks.
But then, hardly anybody takes checks anymore, and those that do often process them electronically on the spot, eliminating much of the "benefit" of checks for poor people (namely, "floating" checks a few days before you get paid when you don't have the balance to cover it.)
I was young and poor once. Juggling checks so I could get by without bouncing any is an art all its own, and a much harder one to accomplish nowadays.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Do the companies who issue these cards also have staff shops eager to accept them?
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Here in Canada, most jobs seem to pay every 2 weeks.
At this point in my life it probably wouldn't matter, but coming out of school, not getting a paycheck for a month (or more likely a month + 1 week if they pay in arrears like most places I've worked) would have really sucked.
Also I've known a lot of people (some actually otherwise intelligent) who wouldn't be able to budget that far. If they got a larger influx of cash, they'd spend it and be screwed by the end of the month.. so I guess it's good for that too.
I switched to a credit union in 2010 after I got fucked over by S & T Bank. My credit union charged me $10.00 for membership.
If you're in a bad financial situation, it can be hard to come up with a spare $10.00 but isn't that better than getting charged $4.00 EVERY TIME you want to access your money?
Yes, being poor sucks. But at some point, you have to start making decisions with an eye towards the long term.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This plus a lot of places that offer temp jobs (daily workers) that have a set dollar/per hour for these temp jobs use them around here. The company just gets a batch of them in and issues those at the end of the day, the accounting is done all at once and it's easer to hand them out. Some companies also get half day worth of cards when the person is not working out, if they don't need the worker anymore or as a bonus for doing a better than normal job.
Next step will be making the cards so they can only be used at certain stores. Welcome to the virtual company town.
Yes, that $10 (which at most CUs is refundable when you close your account) is better than being charged $4 every time you want access to your money, but a lot of poor people simply don't think that far ahead, and have zero financial management ability whatsoever. I've seen it with people I've hired for domestic duties; they use check-cashing stores for absolutely everything.
People who get paid with these cards don't have mortgages, and certainly don't save any money.
I don't understand how this can be legal
There is a very good chance that imposing certain fees is illegal, at least in some states. (PA, TX, NJ and more) There is nothing wrong with offering debit cards as an mutually agreed upon option for payment and there are some advantages for both employer and employee in many cases. There are a fair number of caveats however and fees and certain other restrictions seem to be pretty clearly wrong/illegal in many circumstances. There should always be a convenient way to get the entire net amount of the paycheck without any extra fees. There are a lot of unsettled legal questions surrounding the use of these though so I would expect to see additional legislative and legal action in the near future.
And these cards don't help change that scenario either.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The benefits to monthly payroll are purely for the employer- they don't have to spend as much processing payroll since it happens half as often, and they can earn more interest on the money before giving it to you.
By this argument, everyone ought to get paid daily, assuming banks calculate interest daily where you are. At some point, it just becomes absurdly inefficient.
Paying monthly in arrears is the standard for salaried work here in the UK, and since most household bills are also monthly and the related government tax calculations tend to be monthly, everything lines up just fine.
And it's not your money they're holding on to, if your contract says you'll be paid monthly in arrears. It's theirs until payday, in black and white. If you don't like that, negotiate yourself a tiny payrise or something to compensate for your lost interest.
By the way, you're pretty much wrong about the whole interest-earning thing for businesses as well. Here in the UK, businesses earn about 0.1% annual interest rates on money in most bank accounts. The amount they save by deferring salary payments to monthly instead of some more frequent interval is negligible. The saving is in halving the admin overhead (relative to fortnightly payments) and making fewer financial transfers (for which banks will charge a fee).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Dunno. When I was salaried, I was paid twice a month. Now that I've been doing contracts, I've never been paid anything other than weekly. I got used to twice a month, I balanced my bills so half were on the 5th-7th and the others 21st-23rd. I don't live pay check to pay check (never have), and I don't really pay attention other than I expect a message from my bank on Thursday saying they got a deposit. Time cards are faxed in Mondays for the prior week, and the check in is in my bank that same Thursday. I check my balance once a month, around the 5th and see if it's going up or down and change my spending for the month accordingly.
Please don't take this question as an attack, I do not mean it as such...
Have you ever offered to give one of those domestic employees a $10.00 loan to open an account at a Credit Union?
$10.00 interest free, paid back $2.00/month...
I would suspect not. I would also suspect the reason is that you know they either wouldn't take it or for some other reason it wouldn't work out.
My point is that at some point, people are responsible for their own decisions and their own positions in life.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I remember when they started this....I thought it was a great thing to see checks clear instantly. Then i realized, banks still kept their "hold" on the money. So it was the worst of both words, the check writer has no float time, AND the person cashing it still has to wait that whole float time. Basically, the banks stole the float time for themselves.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I don't know. I know people who get these cards who consider them a good thing (as they don't have bank accounts), but they are often not very cognizant of the fees that go with them, or view them as an unavoidable cost.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
We're presumably not in the kinds of jobs where this would be happening. People being paid through that method may not have the option to take a principled stand by bursting in to laughter before nipping home for a glass of Grey Goose.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I've been paid monthly, 1/12 of my annual salary regardless of month length.
Currently I am paid biweekly, hourly actually, as I am currently a contractor, though the rate is my annual salary / 2080.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It only impacted people unwilling to get bank accounts they could use for direct deposit. Even people with very bad credit can usually get a passbook savings account, where they are free to draw money without charge. I know .. it happened to me about 20 years ago.
.. wake me up when Slashdot has a real story about social injustice instead of people just too ignorant to do what most of us do.
I think that the number of people this actually impacts is very small. The largest number is simply those that won't get bank accounts so they have control over whether or not to get a prepaid card. Those that can't get accounts are usually those that can't handle their money very well, which is why they can't get bank accounts, and why they have to pay fees on debit cards because they tend to overdraw them so often.
Yawn
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
IBM used to (in the UK at least) pay monthly in advance. So you get your first salary payment when you join, and then the next one a month later after you've worked there a week. If you get terminated or quit, you don't get any more money and might owe them.
This screws up people who can't budget just as effectively as the opposite. Mostly I think this just reminds us we should learn to budget. My (somewhat posh and full of rich kids, though technically state funded and free at point of access) school used to do classes on stuff like that, but apparently schools for people whose parents don't own a yacht don't cover this stuff. I'm guessing you also don't get classes on how to present yourself in a court of law, write letters to elected representatives or look for a job. It's almost as though people don't WANT you to succeed.
Here's a link to a story of a McDonald's employee being forced to get paid off of one of these cards.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/mcdonalds-worker-sues-franchise-paying-wages-debit-card/story?id=19420181#.UcKz7Otlt4F
It's one thing if the employer is offering these as an alternative to a pay check for people that can't get a bank account somewhere. It's an entirely different issue when they are defaulting to these or forcing them on people. Pay employees the traditional way, via check but offer alternatives if needed. The alternatives though should not be saddled with these fees. I received a similar thing as a rebate from Goodyear for some tires I bought. It was a prepaid Visa card. There were a lot of fees for not using it (they charge per month), using it to get cash, going over the limit of what is available on the card, etc. So, I just took it and bought an amazon gift certificate for the full value of the pre-paid card and applied it to my Amazon account. These stupid cards are ridiculous. I can't imagine having to get paid off of one of these.
Do they have a hole in their pocket? If you get twice as much money half as often, will the second half of the money have magically disappeared by the time you're done going through the first one?
Ezekiel 23:20
No, it's pretty horrific, taking advance of peoples' ignorance like that.
Short of that, they may just offer "no fee" transactions at certain stores, while charging noticeable ($2-5) fees at any other location. They don't have to ban the cards from specific stores, just give you an incentive to shop at one specific store.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
You seem to be under the delusion that people are rational beings that are not subject to their upbringing. Even you would probably be in the same boat as they if you had their life. Just feel lucky that you had a better life that lead to you being in a superior position.
I've been fortunate enough never to be in such circumstances, but I have met people who, in order to save $25 would need to stay hungry for a week. Just for kickers, sign up for a minimum-wage job at Walmart, and see how many days you'll last without eating, doing full time or more, as many people are forced to in order to make ends meet. Yes, over a month or two saving up $25 is doable, but sometimes you don't have that much time, and the need to get paid now means you may squander those $25 on fees etc.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Fortnightly payments are pretty much standard in Australia. I lived for years with the monthly cycle in Europe, and I always found it a struggle.
With all due respect sir, you don't know what my life and upbringing were like.
I've been luckier than many. Perhaps in some ways, I've been luckier than most. However, I have faced more than my fair share of hardship.
These are not perpetual infants that we're talking about. These are people who are presumably adults and are responsible for their own decisions, rational or not.
At some point, we become responsible for ourselves.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...I owe my soul to the company store.
I'm not sure what bank you deal with, but at my bank funds are available the next business day after I deposit, and the first $100 is available immediately. Maybe that's "float", but not enough that I'm going to squawk.
One important thing for people to realize is that even if the bank clear the check immediately, as in the instant you present it, it can still bounce. All the electronic clearing does is validate that the account number is real and that the account has sufficient funds to cover the check. The account holder can still claim that the check is a forgery and you are then liable for the amount of the check unless some other resolution is arrived at, e.g. it can be shown that the presenter of the check is lying that it is a forgery.
Please don't tell me these organizations aren't stocked to the gills, from head to tail with sociopaths. It's long past time we stop spending money to bail them out, undo the damage in other people's lives they've done, and in this case spend time writing new legislation to stop them from doing something they know perfectly well they should not be doing - exploiting the lowest paid workers in society for everything they can , until the Congress gets around to making it illegal.
It's so outrageous and such an egregious evacuation of all moral responsibility you have to ask yourself is it just a money grab until Congress acts or is it deliberately designed to provoke the legislation-reaction and designed to be used as a bargaining chip, something their political allies in Congress can use to bargain in exchange for some other , less immediately outrageous but more systemically poisonous , "deregulation".
The whole issue is virtually made-for-Democratiuc moral outrage and gives the Republican something to "trade away", something for the Democrats to parade around as a victory and all the while Wells Fargo, Goddamn Sachs and Bunch of Assholes are gorging themselves in their box seats watching their favorite blood-sport, raping the poor and defenseless.
Don't doubt for a minute is the META level the 1% thinks at, this is exactly what preoccupies them. When what you personally decide to do or not do results in legislation, then that's something worth considering the implications of. Of course, you and I don't spend time doing that because what we decide to do this morning doesn't result in legislation, but if for some reason it did, it wouldn't be long until you understood that you have the power to create horses for the horse-trading bazaar Congress ultimately is.
That is, when Congress is working at all.
I would go further and say that instituting these fees is an example of collusive signalling between banks. One does it and the others see. Each knows internally it's going to be legislatively forbidden soon enough. They recognize in it a Congressional bargaining chip, as do members of both political parties who know how to hit a softball when one is lobbed at them.
No one has to say anything explicit to anyone. Someone makes a move and everyone else follows on. From a certain, naive perspective, it's market based response, a decision to enter a profitable market on the part of competing players.
In reality it's an play to influence legislation on another, much more potentially profitable issue . No one can prove anything. There was no collusion to be proved (and we all know what high standards for proof the DoJ has for the coke snorting class ) and no one is coordinating to do anything.
I don't buy it. This goes well beyond the mere presumed sociopathy of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon and their henchmen. I smell a too-stinky rat. Far far too stinky.
No, of course not, but for several reasons. 1) You really don't want to get too entangled with people that have that many problems in life; from what I saw, many of them had constant drama of some kind going on in their lives: relatives going to jail, relatives getting maimed in drug deals gone bad, one housekeeper even had a nephew who raped and murdered a small girl. And 2) they wouldn't know what to do with a CU account. These people operate solely on cash; keeping money in a bank is a foreign concept for them.
Yes, to an extent, people are responsible for themselves and their own decisions, but as a society, it's our (collective) responsibility to educate all our members so that they can function in a modern society, and American society is failing miserably in that regard. These basic life skills like having a bank account and managing money should be taught to kids in grade school and high school, and obviously that's not happening. I had to learn all that stuff on my own, which isn't so hard when you grow up in a middle-class household with a parent who already understands these things (my mom took me to get my own bank account (savings of course) when I was about 10 years old; this was back in the good old days of the 80s when banks didn't charge fees for every little thing), but if your parents don't understand this stuff at all, you're screwed in this society because no one's going to teach you. However, now with even poor people using the internet, maybe things will change because all this stuff can be easily looked up and read about.
IBM used to (in the UK at least) pay monthly in advance.
I don't know when that was, but I did a spell there for IBM in the mid-'80s when the rate was monthly in arrears.
I wish I could do what you're doing, my debts alone consume 50% of my monthly gross income., then subtract taxes, throw in bills like rent, food, gas, and there isn't anything left. Actually, I haven't paid my one student loan in 6 years because i would giving up something like, having a car(taxis are more expensive than owning a car), eating, electricity, my apartment, Internet(use for work), cell phone(required for work).
I got my VA tax refund on one of the cards. I found the protocol for activating the card to be lengthy and elaborate. Needless to say since I post here such processes are not overly troublesome to me. But the process, which involved numerous hurdles -- including snagging a keyword from a PDF that opened separately -- was tiresome. And I wondered how many people would get so confused that they simply gave up. Especially since State refunds are not always that big. If enough people bailed in frustration the state could make out pretty well I thought. The sum of unclaimed refund money might be interesting to know in light of the headache involved in getting access to one's part of it via one of these PITA debit cards.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Everything is more expensive when you're poor. Not just a saying, entirely true. Can rarely purchase when stuff is on sale, get late fees on everything, interest to pay, higher interest and fees because you pay interest and fees. It's like saying, because you have little money, we're going to charge you more!
Was poor once.. it sucked. You get sick more often, meaning you get more bills and miss more work because you can't afford good food. I have been clawing my way out of the hole for many years now. Almost 50% of my gross income goes to paying debts, which are mostly medical, school, car, and credit debts from not having enough money to eat so I used my credit card to not starve.
I've learned to not judge people, they tend to be victims of their own circumstances.
I remember when they started this....I thought it was a great thing to see checks clear instantly. Then i realized, banks still kept their "hold" on the money. So it was the worst of both words, the check writer has no float time, AND the person cashing it still has to wait that whole float time. Basically, the banks stole the float time for themselves.
Maybe my bank likes me better than your bank likes you, but I get 100% of the money instantly if I go in and deposit with the teller. If i use the ATM, I get 10% of the money immediately (limit $300), or $100 immediately, whichever is greater.
The cards and fees sounds more like a RICO charge waiting to happen....
But more seriously, it is quite amusing since you know the same people who bash unions would throw a shit fit if they lost their weekends, 40 hour weeks, and other benefits that the average worker now takes for granted that took unions decades to get us.
I don't think any sensible person would argue that many of the things unions accomplished in years past have been unambiguously good. Furthermore a union can be an important counterweight to management excesses. My father was a union member for many years and it probably kept him employed in the face of some pretty inept management. Unions even can help make companies more productive in some cases. Conceptually I'm actually a supporter of unions.
The problem is that many unions have ceased trying to fight for what is reasonable. They aren't fighting anymore for a reasonable work week or improved safety or to get benefits in most cases. They often seem to care little about the health and competitiveness of the company. They make the (false) argument that their own actions and demands somehow cannot have a detrimental effect on the company and that the only goal of management is to screw the union members. Once things become reasonable the unions seem unwilling to drop their adversarial position. I have NEVER seen a union go to management and say, "hey, I see that our retirement costs have become a big burden that is hurting the company. How can we help?" No, instead they simply fight tooth and nail for more even when more isn't really possible. Unions quite simply haven't realized that they've won and keep fighting to the long term detriment of everyone.
If companies tried to change the 40 hour work week then unions likely would enjoy a surge in popularity because then they would be fighting a worthy cause for reasonable working conditions. When work conditions and pay are already are reasonable, unions need to recognize that they need to serve a much more limited purpose. Should management start behaving unreasonably then a union has every right and obligation to take measures to protect the union membership.
Most banks will waive a minimum balance if you have direct deposit...if you are getting these payroll cards, it means you are employed and thus you could also do direct deposit (if your employer would allow it).
Bottles.
Ah, but you see many employees can't have a bank account. If your history with bounced checks is bad enough, no bank will ever open an account for you. Sad but true.
Excuse me if I sound like a troll, but checks are what my parents used in the early 1980s. How the hell are these still even present in the US today, let alone a dominant form of exchanging money?
It's called money management. You don't go and burn it all as soon as you get paid.
The current statistic is that 70% of the people in the US do. Wages are flat, taxes continue to increase, and prices are skyrocketing (despite the phoney numbers from BLS).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The first thing you need to get into your head is: The "Free Market" is a myth. Like a frictionless bearing it is useful only in an elementary theory. You don't get to choose if you have to pay rent and feed children and there are no other employers near you.
Are those cards considered legal tender? If not, how it is acceptable to be paid with it?
bickerdyke
The Nigerian scam still works on this principle. They send you a check drawn from a foreign or at least out of state bank. You deposit it and the check clears. One business day later all of the funds are available. If you're stupid enough to send them the money, when your bank finally figures out that the check was worthless, they back-charge your account. You end up several thousand dollars negative that you have to repay out of your own pocket.
Despite the instant clearing, this process can sometimes take 8 weeks to play out.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If you look at number of households mention in article. Underbanked means they usually just have savings acount and not credit card nor checking account. Credit blacklists or high fees are the culprit.
I do the same. I basically operate on that schedule and have 2 accounts - one has enough to cover all my bills split into 2 paychecks per month with about a $150 "buffer" per month. The remainder of my check goes into a 2nd "spending" account that I use for variable costs (food, gas) and general spending money. All my fixed or nearly fixed bills like mortgage, power, water, internet, car insurance, etc, auto draft out of the first account.
That $150 buffer plus two "free" checks into the bill account give me about $4,000 or so of "extra" money at the end of the year in my bills account that I can use for something nice like a vacation or such.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Assume you're some poor sob. You have $0 to your name, you need to pay rent by next week or you get a $20/day late charge on-top of your normal rent, If you don't pay your phone, you get cut off along with a $30 reactivation fee, your electricity will be cut off and all of your food will go bad, meaning you'll have to go out to eat which costs a lot more, your car is almost out of gas and a taxi will cost your $10/day.
Let me know how the first month goes.
Being poor is expensive.
Think the above is crazy talk? I've been faced with this kind of situation, but at least I didn't have to wait 30 days to get paid.
At mine it was $25 and that was your initial deposit. I also have to maintain a minimum monthly average balance of $25 but that value comes from all accounts you have there and has never been a problem.
Time to offend someone
and the banks have fun with the float time. If they see a check come through for a high amount that can drain the account, it will go through fast. Instead of one bounced check, that big one magically finds its way to the front of the line so that all the little checks that had not cleared yet have insufficient balance.
For welfare payments and general benefit payments like SS. For the same reasons: many of these people are unbanked. And its a lot more efficient than mailing paper checks. Some kind of government cards may used anywhere. Others are restricted to pre-approved supermarkets and doctor offices, etc.
I dont think the government cards have onerous fees on the distribution end. But a recipient might be hit my ATM withdrawal fees.
Right... this is the whole strong helping the weak philosophy at play here. My only statement is that the weak need to remember it's a choice for the strong to help them, not a right.
What you'll find though is pride gets in the way, when I was younger I did try to help people I didn't really know that well only to get "who is this guy and why does he thing he knows better" type attitudes / responses.
So... as a result, call me a terrible person, but I leave people to their own problems now no matter how basic, I have my own to deal with.
And when I read something like TFA, I immediately flag atm fees and know that I would mitigate them (my bank has free atm withdrawals at their atms), but passing that knowledge on? Words to the wind.
If you don't have a bank account... doesn't cashing a check cost money too?
If you are a waiter and all of the sudden need some cash to fix your car, its a lot better if you can pick up an extra shift or two and not have to wait a month for the paycheck (especially since you can't walk out with a pocket full of credit card tips like you could when everybody used cash). Same goes for people who get paid overtime...put in some extra hours and see the money right away.
I would agree that if you are an exempt salaried worker, payment frequency shouldn't matter that much. You are only going to earn $X in a month and earning it once, twice, or four times a month shouldn't have a significant impact. Monthly is easy with bill cycles (get paycheck, pay bills, spend/save rest), but months are not all the same length so you either have to get paid slightly less in February or the company has to do a 1/12 split--but then hourly workers still need to be paid by hours worked so each month will vary. Bi-weekly and weekly at least guarantee that all pay periods are the same length and that you always know what day is pay-day. I worked somewhere for a while that had Twice-Monthly paychecks and thought it was kind of weird--was never clear which day was pay day since they wouldn't cut checks on weekend (or mondays IIRC). Pay periods were always different lengths and started/ended on different days of the week so as a part-time hourly worker, my checks would have huge variance.
Bottles.
They charged you to be a member? Neither credit union I've joined had membership fees. Generally, maintaining membership involved keeping a low balance of around $25 in my savings account with them. The two credit unions I joined were:
Kirtland Federal Credit Union (military only)
San Diego County Credit Union
sHi
This was never presented to me as an option. How, if you don't mind my asking, did you set it up? CAS
If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is.
These basic life skills like having a bank account and managing money should be taught to kids in grade school and high school, and obviously that's not happening.
They were teaching that stuff in my grade schools back in 1981, and it was a working class are public school. I was under the impression that they pretty much all include some basic "personal finance" in the required curriculum these days.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Yes. As a member of the Board of Directors for an HOA, I see it all the time. Before a house in an HOA is sold, there is an inspection for violations. The results go into the package that all new homeowners get and should be presented to the new or prospective homeowners before signing. The reason for that is because the new owner becomes responsible for all violations, so the inspection is there for disclosure and as a point where the new homeowner can make sure that either the old homeowner fixes them, or the price is adjusted to deal with the extra hassle.
Many new homeowners indicate that their packages do not include the inspection report when the deadline to fix their house passes. Of course, many of them are lying about that, or simply didn't read that material. Still, in many cases, we believe that the real estate agent is either not very good at what they do, or they are purposely leaving that document out so that nothing complicates the sale. We know this because the management company has on record when a copy of the inspection has been requested and delivered. So, we know that the material has been delivered from us to the buyer's agent.
Whatever the cause, this leaves the new homeowners on the hook for potentially thousands of dollars in repairs, and there is often a deadline to get those repairs completed. As you would expect, this leads to a great deal of drama.
Word to the wise, real estate agents need to be carefully monitored, and you need to make sure you are getting all your paperwork and READING all your paperwork. They are looking to get you into a house, or to sell at all costs (depending on who they represent), and a lot of them are either bad at representing you properly, or they are alternately quite willing to screw you over to get you into a house and get their commission as fast as possible.
Replying to undo errant mod.
Anyone know of cases where this happens?
In some cases you can't opt out. RTFS.
I only know one person in my circle of acquaintances (the vast majority of which are salaried) that gets paid monthly. Almost all are salaried workers are paid bi-weekly with the hourly workers being split about half-way between bi-weekly and weekly.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Weekly? Bi-weekly seems to be the most common in the US.
I've been thin for cash during that second week enough times, I can only imagine how much worse it would be to go a whole month.
If that's the case you are managing your money badly. Unless you are being paid pennies you should not be living hand to mouth.
Audit your spending for a month and see what's going on, it's a really educational experience.
Couldn't people just go to their bank, and take out all the money from their payroll card in one transaction and then immediately it all into their bank account?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Being able to choose how gently you get screwed is hardly a choice.
Doesn't your work place pay for your internet or cell phone? If they don't, you should be able to write it off on your taxes as a business expense, I believe.
I do know places that won't pay for your phone and internet, but everywhere I have ever worked, they give you their phone or some shitty internet option of their own to compensate.
But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.
It's like the Company Store raped some sharecroppers, and this is their unruly bastard child...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What you say implies that one has no choice in their decisions. It's far from possible to be brought up in poverty and work/reason one's way out of it. Suggesting anything otherwise is downright insulting to the poor.
This is true also. places like HomeDepot, who have a lot of money that's "doing nothing" overnight literally invest it for the 8 hours they're not open, then take it back again, with profit. A small amount of money from a lot of people sitting in your account for even a short time can turn quite a tidy profit- a profit they make because they are able to reliably gate, through the device of manipulating the user interface people have to use to get their money out, just how many people take out their money.
The poor have no representation in our government. None.
Your employer may also not offer healthcare and pay the fine (it's cheaper for them) and stick you with Obamacare. That's if they don't already make you a "contractor" and shift all the liability to your ass too. All the risk, none of the reward. That's the future of corporate america for the majority of Americans.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm not saying fees are a good thing. They are quite excessive in many cases and sometimes border on criminal in my opinion. But it's worthwhile to look at things from the bank's perspective.
I agree this is heinous, but it's just a symptom of a problem that's beem going on for decades. Why are bank transaction fees acceptable *at all*?
Because the act of providing that transaction is not free. It almost certainly doesn't cost the bank what the bank actually charges (banks make a lot of profit from fees) but there is a real and significant cost to each and every transaction. The fees are at attempt to recover these costs and of course to make a profit as well. There is a cost to servicing your banking needs and it isn't unreasonable for the bank to have some means to recover that cost and yes, make a profit as well.
Banks used to pay interest for the privilege of using/investing my money while I have it in their bank.
And they still do for many types of accounts. However unless you have a rather substantial amount of money stored at the bank it is actually possible that the cost of servicing your account is higher than the investment income that can be earned from that money. These numbers are made up but illustrative of my point. Let's say you are depositing of $1. That deposit might cost the bank $0.25 to process. Let's say that your neighbor deposits $1000. Processing of the transaction is identical so it still only costs the bank $0.25 to process. The cost is the same to the bank but the profit is wildly different. That is why banks insist on maintaining a larger balance if you want higher interest payments. It also means that not all customers and all transactions are equally profitable to the bank. If you withdraw money from an ATM not owned by your bank, there is a cost to that outside bank but no income to offset the cost. So the impose a fee. Not usually a reasonably fee ($3? Seriously?!?) but in principle they are simply recovering their costs.
As for investing the money you deposited, remember that how much profit the bank can make depends on how much you deposit with them. Having a bunch of accounts with small balances is much less profitable than having a few accounts with bigger balances even if the total amount deposited is the same. Also bear in mind that when interest rates are as low as they are right now, the investment income a bank can make on your money is somewhat limited.
I personally use baning services that don't charge fees; they exist, why dont more people uae them?
I do most of my banking through one of the largest banks in the US. I don't pay ATM fees, debit card fees, account maintenance fees, overdraft fees or frankly much in the way of fees at all. It's not really terribly hard to avoid most if not all fees. If they start charging fees I consider unreasonable I'm more than willing to take my business elsewhere.
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can''t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Normally, if you take a check to the bank that issued it, they will cash it at no charge. Banks that charge for this are scumbags.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
This is The United States of America. How dare you expect anyone in this nanny-state to be responsible for their own decisions, good or bad. If you make good decisions and manage to claw your way up to the upper echelons of society, you need to pay your fair share. And if by some chance you are aren't one of the lucky few, then by god, the Federal govt will take care of you. Because bad decisions are never based on your decision making shares, but it must be someone elses fault.
21st Century Renaissance Man
I'm not aware of any, and it may not be something that is done except in some very fringe cases. I'd certainly want to see more evidence that this is a thing that happens, I'm just saying it's not totally outlandish that it could be done.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I've long felt that schools have been doing a disservice to pupils since the 70's; preparing grade school kids for life should include basic money management, awareness of the state and federal tax code, family law, and the penal code. It takes an education to understand the responsibilities society places on you and the consequences of ignoring them, yet we toss our kids to the wolves as soon as they complete primary without any of that. Its really rather silly.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Actually most schools these days do try and teach this information, but the problem is that the kids aren't there in school to learn the material. Their parents aren't doing their job as they should. The system might be flawed, but the root of just about all the issues is that the parents aren't doing their job and teaching kids to do the right thing.
and there was only one place in the whole city where we could take the card to deduct the cash without taking a transaction fee hit. it's a dick move, folks, from employers who are shitheads.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Ostensibly that would be an illegal tying arrangement.
In practice, the corporate elite have such a deathgrip on the government this cushy arrangement is probably going to be given a blind eye.
Follow up:
Being poor does suck. What's worse than just being poor is that many things are more expensive to the poor due to basic economic principles: poor neighborhoods have higher crime, increasing cost of doing business in poor neighborhoods, increasing prices for said business, etc. On the other hand, coming from a middle income family most certainly doesn't not mean that you automatically know how to handle money. Most of my friends growing up did not handle money well and they came from similar upbringings as my own. On the other hand, my parents are awful with money (though not as awful as using check cashing stores), yet I do far better with it.
I don't recall anyone sitting down with me and explaining taxes, the penal code, family law (with regard to chihldren out of wedlock), and how to manage my checkbook. Other than only cursory explanations from my parents and some half-assed sex ed in school I had to figure out on my own what the implecations are of handling any of that stuff incorrectly.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
For small numbers of "many", perhaps.... while the nationwide number of people with bad credit may not be a tiny number, it's not anywhere near a majority. Besides... you'd be talking about people who've committed enough cheque fraud to actually have a criminal record, and maybe even served time.
Also, every bank that I know of has a "chequeless" type of account... which often even has lower fees (and sometimes even better interest) associated with it. Even people with extremely piss porr credit should be able to get such an account.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Careful of your assumptions. Several of us Slashdotters have had messed-up upbringings and managed to figure it out eventually. Upbringing is a fine excuse for making stupid financial mistakes at 20, but it's no excuse at 30.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Because he's definitely not an illegal alien, subject to likely being paid daily before they are dropped back off at the 7-11, and he's probably not an H1-B, where they pay your contracting company your fee, and the contracting company pays you peanuts whenever they feel like it because they have you over a barrel until you've got a Green Card.
I wonder if the CEO gets paid in prepaid cards
Or is that inconvenience reserved only for the wage-slaves?
All else being equal, the shorter the time period between checks, the better. Because money in-hand is better than money promised, since you can always make more money on money that you actually have.
The problem is, all else is NOT equal.
Next step will be making the cards so they can only be used at certain stores. Welcome to the virtual company town.
That was the way workers used to get paid, with factory credit that could only be used at the official factory shop. Of course this shop was overpriced.
I'm thought there was some law about being paid in local currency now? Because if you are paid by card that comes with fees to get the cash you are not really being paid in local currency.
I started with the thought that declaring an ultimatium to the employeer to pay cash which is legal tender and compulsory for any transaction else use a direct credit was a good idea until I found your own currency isn't legal tender.
Until America accepts it's own currency in any transaction (within it's own borders) then corporations can issue their own cards, bills, or currency for which you'll continue to pay the rate set by the issuer (which is a horrible, terrible idea). Make your own currency legal tender would give you the tools to solve this problem.
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
Didn't the article mention something about employers were refusing to pay the employees by check or direct deposit? Seems to me that it'd apply even if one did have a mortgage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I stand corrected. But my company pays monthly.
Why do you need a checking account? Wouldn't a savings account be adequate?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Fortnightly payments are pretty much standard in Australia. I lived for years with the monthly cycle in Europe, and I always found it a struggle.
I've lived with monthly payments all my life. I've not found it a struggle since I started being a bit careful with my money.
My bills are all monthly so it works out nicely. Are your bills weekly?
If you don't mind me asking how did you run up debts that take away 50% of your income?
Just when you think evil banks and companies have reached the bottom of the scum nope they pull out shovels and start digging even deeper. The U.S. and many other countries are in need of some serious major changes right across the board.
Do you not understand the concept of spending all the money you have, because you don't think ahead? Not understanding that some people think this way, despite the concept being repeated again and again, is almost as stupid as the mentality itself. Please accept that some people have trouble with this.
It depends on the shop. I've worked many places that paid weekly. Some shops paid me bi-weekly or on the 15th and the 30th.
Yeah, right.
Let 'em burn, eh?
No penny for the guy, eh?
I hope you find your Ayn Randian paradise soon (but make sure it is far, far away, please!)
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. — Mahatma Gandhi
Yeah, right.
I find vegetables and fruit from the local market cost less than just about any other kind of food. They definitely count as good food.
If I'm trying to save money I'll buy whatever is in season and going cheap and look up recipes on supercook.com where you can search by ingredient.
Cooking isn't a dead art yet :)
That skill was taught in the class known as "Home Economics," which was one of the first ones cut after the 'Reagan Revolution', along with Art, Music and PE.
Yeah, right.
I've long felt that schools have been doing a disservice to pupils since the 70's; preparing grade school kids for life should include basic money management, awareness of the state and federal tax code, family law, and the penal code. It takes an education to understand the responsibilities society places on you and the consequences of ignoring them, yet we toss our kids to the wolves as soon as they complete primary without any of that. Its really rather silly.
If you got rid of Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History, Science, P.E., and Recess we might be able to cover the U.S. tax code in K-12, although it would be woefully outdated knowledge by the time they got to college. If we started sending every kid to summer school it would make a dent in the rest of the Federal statutes. States would have to do their own statutes as extra homework and weekend sessions. I have no idea when country/city ordinances would be covered. Good idea, though.
And why can't they transfer the salary to the bank account of the employee????
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If you have such, I would urge you to do the same. This is outrageous and should be banned under US labor law.... I harkens back to the "company store"
Want your money, pay me to get it.
Gack!
This isn't the only horrific industry. You will be shocked to learn that the very base of real estate is to take advantage of people's ignorance, then turn around and say "you should have known that".
I thought that was investment banking!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
No, but you typically only get paid *after* you work. So, at first at least, it means going twice as long without any income.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
I work in the prepaid industry.
Yah, I have a credit union with DD.
TBH, prepaid seemed pretty sleazy to me my first few years working here.
Anytime you want to gripe about prepaid debit go park in front of a check cashing store for a while.
If you have trouble finding one, they are usually between your liqueur store and a pawn shop.
Prepaid is a step up from that, an it's hard for many people to accept.
I know company payroll cards are issued to people more fortunate and they feel slighted, but nothing is free, handling cash is not free, writing checks is not free, setting up DD for employees not likely to stick around more than a year is not free. Payroll cards are a good deal for employers, I'm sorry some costs shifted to the employees, but you can always ask for DD anyway and debit cards keep a lot of people away from the pawn shop, liqueur store strip malls, they do some good :/
I find vegetables and fruit from the local market...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
Stop talking like everyone shares your privileges.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just having an hoa is enough to make me walk away; having to deal with someone else's opinion on your house sounds like a rental.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Assuming it's all electronic, the inefficiencies are negligible.
No, they aren't.
Signed,
Someone who actually runs a business and has to arrange payments and file tax statements accordingly
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No lawyer would take a case like this on a contingency since the amount earned would be too low. Instead, we would have you huffing and puffing in self-rightous indignation since you are still so naive to believe that the only thing holding you back is the grownups stopping you from screwing everyone else over.
If you are poor, then you probably shouldn't bother with a car. A monthly bus pass will cost, perhaps $80 to $100... which is going to be far less than a taxi, and is probably even less than what you'd be spending on gasoline and insurance.
Also... don't be late with payments, and then you don't get hit with late fees or disconnection issues.
If you're waiting until you get paid to pay this months bills, you are already doing it wrong. The money you use to pay this month's bills needs to come from your previous paycheque, not your next one. That means you need to keep a monthly float, and you can figure out exactly how much that is by adding up all the essential expenses, which should include minimum payments on any debt. Do *NOT* let any bills go late or try to justify not paying one bill by suggesting to yourself that you will try to just double another bill next month simply because they won't just immediately disconnect you being only one month late. If you don't have enough money to pay all your monthly bills payments in one month, then picking and choosing which ones to pay this month and hoping to play catch-up next month just isn't going to work anyways... you either need to lower your expenses or find a better paying job. Again, however, if you are counting on your next paycheque to cover the bills you are facing right now, then you are already doing it wrong.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They pay however they feel like it. Employees tend to like getting paid in smaller checks multiple times a month.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The funds are available as a convenience... If the check you deposited doesn't clear, the funds are taken back... I JUST had this happen with BofA with painful consequences, as I had spent the deposit (which ended up as an overdraft on my account because the deposit was taken back).
Bi-Weekly or monthly doesn't make any difference for being cash strapped. You make the adjustment once (which is the hard part) and afterwards it business as usual. Unless if you're someone who sees money in an account and has to spend it just because it's there. If that's the case, then a money management class or instructor may be the most beneficial thing you could spend some money on!
I don't know if you've read Rand, but that's not quite what she says.
It is perfectly alright for one to help others according to Rand. The only condition is that you do it with consideration for your own benefit. The thing most people miss is that this benefit does *not* need to be material. You can help someone because it makes you feel good. That's entirely valid according to Randian principles on the condition that you value that good feeling more than the cost of said help. That is compatible with your Gandhi quote, btw.
- OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because you want to.
- Not OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because his condition somehow *entitles* him to your help.
- Definitely NOT OK with Rand: Some thug(s) using force or threat of force to take that 20 bucks from you and handing it to an arbitrary group of bums they feels deserves your help. Typically as a selfish political strategy to maintain and increase that ability to use force.
Mind the frickin' laser...
There's no difference unless you lack any sense of self control. The transition month between the two types can be tricky but still you're not losing out unless you took time off between jobs.
Oh, very few of those evil taxes... just fees for everything instead.
If there's a fee for *using* the cards, then the employers, who presumably got a "good deal" from the vendors, have just given their employees a back-door pay cut.
mark
Well said.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Cashing payroll checks without fees attached should be a service provided by US Post Offices, along with offering accounts with an inverted fee structure (above a certain amount - say $10,000 - monthly fees start to kick in). Hey Bible-Thumpers: you say work is a morally good thing? Then make a real difference in the lives of the working poor via the USPS.
Don't ask me, I only live here, not set policy.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Do you know many landlords who take debit or Visa? Or do they instead insist on paying cash so the money doesn't get reported as income?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The law is US dollars shall be accepted for payment; it is not a bi-conditional. You can pay in anything you wish but the recipient must always accept if you choose to pay in dollars.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The cost to actually send the money to the employee direct deposit is $0.35 per transaction. That's what the payroll service pays, and what you'd pay if you did it directly. That is what ACH charges. It is a cheap system. That's why places are more than happy to have bills paid via ACH. When they do an ACH deduction, they pay the fee (the initiator pays), but it is so very cheap in terms of getting money. Much less than a CC.
In terms of an actual check, it varies but is generally in the range of $0.75-$1 when you count the cost of the check stock, printing, envelope, and postage fees. Perhaps a bit more if you factor in labour (depending on how automated the system is).
Neither system costs an employer much. Checks cost the bank somewhat more to deal with, though they have automated that to a large degree, but ACH costs them nothing (when they receive). The sender pays a small transaction fee and that's it. ACH is cheap on purpose because it can be, and is, used for massive volume and thus does well.
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't cost much. The costs are mostly in the other services, as you of course notice from the cost of your payroll service that does all the other work for you (my folks used a payroll service when they ran their business for the same reason).
Still a trivial cost as compared to all the others, as you point out. $15 is trivial shit compared to the other costs of having an employee, even a minimum wage one.
Besides... you'd be talking about people who've committed enough cheque fraud to actually have a criminal record
LOLWUT?! A bounced check doesn't equal check fraud. I have a separate checking account just to receive PayPal funds. I keep no balance there. One fine day by mistake I've paid for a bunch of things via PayPal without switching the payment method to the credit card (each and every time). PayPal submits the ACH transaction twice before charging your alternate payment method (credit card). The bank account ended up with hundreds in negative balance from all the fees ($35 per each try, and it was a dozen PayPal payments). It took a while to untangle. I also promptly got listed in one of those "persona non grata" databases in spite of having excellent credit scores and in spite of all the fees having been forgiven by the bank (after lots of hassle). So, I'm in a situation where my checks are sometimes rejected in spite of having excellent credit and sufficient funds, and I can't open a checking account without providing a lot of documentation first. I have never not paid a bill on time in my life, BTW.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
While these cards are a shitty setup, they are NOT company scrip in any way, shape, or form. They are denominated in US dollars and can be cashed out in that, or spent as that at stores that accept the reliant payment processor (Visa or Mastercard).
Company scrip was money that could only be spent at stores owned by the company, not anywhere else, and had no value in terms of government currency.
Don't make shit up. It weakens your argument. When something is bad, demonstrate its problems as they are. Don't try and invent new ones. When people find out you are lying they'll disregard your argument.
I happen to know the state of New Mexico was also using this stuff a while back, for their unemployment insurance.
Posting AC because I know juicy bits. I didn't learn about this by being unemployed; I learned by knowing someone who works at their Department of Labor. Basically what happened is that Bank of America came in pushed it hard, since it's so profitable for them to take this money away from the claimants. The state doesn't resist, because paying people costs some money anyway (not just the money you're paying; I mean other overhead) and Bank of America set it up so that it cost the state of NM less, if they shafted the people. So it was a cost-savings thing, combined with "who cares what problems we're causing for others" attitude and the usual corruption that is just totally rampant and unopposed in our state govt.
What I find intersting about that last thing, is that externalizing costs is totally rational, but when you've got governments doing it, you have left the path of wisdom. Part of the reason we have government, is to fight unfair externalization.
Look, if anyone is foolish enough to move into a development with a home owners' association, he/she probably has enough money to paper over any of the association's ridiculous demands. I just had a roof replacement done, and the roofer almost fell down and kissed my feet when I told him our neighborhood had no association, that we do what we like in our block and no one cares as long as it isn't too loud or involves crack houses. Now, back on topic, these new pay schemes are absolutely unconscionable. If the employer can't man up (woman up? gotta be equal here) and pay what was promised without some weasel scheme to pinch pennies, he/she should be sentenced to work at some low-paying job for several years with no option to advance. Jerks, I have never sympathized with those guys.
Yes, this is a son of the old "company store" scam. I just looked at the California Labor Code section on this:
212. (a) No person, or agent or officer thereof, shall issue in payment of wages due, or to become due, or as an advance on wages to be earned:
...
(1) Any order, check, draft, note, memorandum, or other acknowledgment of indebtedness, unless it is negotiable and payable in cash, on demand, without discount, at some established place of business in the state, the name and address of which must appear on the instrument, and at the time of its issuance and for a reasonable time thereafter, which must be at least 30 days, the maker or drawer has sufficient funds in, or credit, arrangement, or understanding with the drawee for its payment.
(2) Any scrip, coupon, cards, or other thing redeemable, in merchandise or purporting to be payable or redeemable otherwise than in money.
(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (1) of subdivision (a), if the drawee is a bank, the bank's address need not appear on the instrument and, in that case, the instrument shall be negotiable and payable in cash, on demand, without discount, at any place of business of the drawee chosen by the person entitled to enforce the instrument.
So California law prohibits the "company store" scam - employers can't pay with a "gift card" that doesn't convert to cash. And if they pay using a bank, the check or card must be cashable, without fees, at any branch of that bank. The problem is ATM fees for off-network ATMs, which have become a huge profit center for banks.
If the card is from a bank with a huge number of branches and lots of ATMs, it may not be too bad. If it's from some second-tier bank, it's a rip-off.
seriously, why is the system such that the bank has to worry about bounced checks?
around here the banking system operates in such a way that you can't overdraw using your payment card(visa electron in most cases if you don't want credit). the banks don't take any risks with cheques and even if they did operate the now long buried cheque system they wouldn't have needed to give them to people they didn't want to nor would they have deposited the money before the payment cleared.
as a consequence everyone gets to have a bank account in any bank and that's where you get your social security, your salary etc. you could say it's almost(or not even almost since it's a necessity) a human right here - no matter how badly you've screwed up. the only people going without one are those who are either dodging taxes or dodging debt recovery payments.
and yes that card anyone(even with bad credit history) is good for purchasing online from pretty much anywhere that accepts visa, usable in grocery stores etc(the system is such that the electron cards are checked everytime they've used if they have balance, with most places having chip+pin readers - even the immigrant run kebab places, taxis..).
lobby for a banking system from the 1900's, I say.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I discovered years ago that banks will not honor paychecks drawn on their own banks. They won't cash them unless you have an account with them. Why can't we replace the crack users in prison with these guys?
Why does US companies pay weekly when other countries pay monthly?
It mainly depends on which State you live in. Some States actually require weekly payment unless the business can land itself a special State exemption, and most have made the option of monthly payment illegal.
"His name was James Damore."
My "local market" is QuikTrip. Do potato chips count as a vegetable?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I don't write many physical checks (I had to order checks a few months ago to buy a car, for writing the down payment) but there are some things that checks are the best way to handle.
I pay my bills via "check" through my bank's bill pay service. Most are delivered by electronic transfer, but in some cases my bank mails an actual check (my lawn guy, my exterminator, etc.)
If it's a reasonably large expense to a small independent vendor, checks are often still the best option. They may not take plastic. More and more of them *can*, but it's not universal.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
I used to manage a GameStop, and for the hourly employees they were all but required to get this form of payment. The real shitty thing is that most ATMs require you to withdrawl in $20 denominations. A few will let you do $10, but rarely can you go lower than that. For these part time hourly employees, sometimes their paychecks would be ~$50, making it difficult to get to that last bit of money which consequently could make up a significant percentage of their overall paycheck. They're total BS, and I empathize with anyone who has to get paid using such a draconian method.
Comparing the costs of these cards to the cost of using a cheque cashing store is apples and oranges. Someone who gets a cheque can take it to a bank and use it to open an account.
I don't have a problem with these cards existing, however, I am completely opposed to them existing without opt-out. Nobody should ever have to take your pay on one of these, not even for your first pay cycle on a given job. They should be offered for those who have no other options.
Oh, and the kickbacks that some employers are taking from your industry? That's bullshit. That's got to stop.
www.wavefront-av.com
Of course you can choose whether to pay rent. Many people choose the alternative of paying a mortgage. Others live in their parent's basement, or they lower their rent by renting just a room.
You can also choose whether to have children.
You can also choose to live in an area with a lot of employers or with only a few employers. It might cost more to live close to employment centers, but if that lets you get rid of an extra car, you would have an extra $9,122 per year that you could pay towards rent or a mortgage.
There's no such thing as a perfectly free market, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to make the market as efficient and equitable as possible.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
'm sorry some costs shifted to the employees, but you can always ask for DD anyway and debit cards keep a lot of people away from the pawn shop, liqueur store strip malls, they do some good :/
Which is fine until the costs shifted to the employee shift their income below minimum wage -- then it's a class action lawsuit and some lawyers are about to make a shit ton of money.
National City got nailed by a class action suit for exactly this a few years ago. At the end of the day, they would process all that day's withdrawals prior to that day's deposits, so you could overdraft but then end up net positive later in the day, regardless of the order the transactions actually were in. Since then, PNC bought them out and PNC handles it better.
That's certainly true. Assuming we're talking about someplace with the basic social and currency stability of America, said people are not adults by any measure. (Spending everything at once because of hyper-inflation or weekly robberies is an entirely different story.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Really?
I had an employer (during the dotcom era) that was flaky enough that I *always* went to his bank and cashed my paycheck. And did so as soon as possible, because if you waited a day it would probably bounce. Sometimes it did anyway, but presenting it in person meant no bounce charges, they just said try again later.
Maybe it's changed since then.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
The moral of the above story is "NEVER OWN A HOUSE WITH A HOA"
Now, get off my lawn or I will shoot you.
I think it should wait until kids have mastered basic addition and subtraction and multiplication and decimals, but that's it: they should start being exposed to it early (like around 9-10), but have more advanced classes in it later on in high school (where they learn about interest, compound interest, loans, collections, garnishments, child support payments, mortgages, etc.). This stuff is all pretty important for living in modern American society, and it should be taught in school. I don't know if it is or not, but it certainly wasn't back in the 80s and early 90s when I was in school, except maybe in an optional "home economics" class which college-bound kids weren't allowed to attend (and non-college-bound boys did not attend).
Talking about Walmart, last year the largest pension fund in the world, the Dutch ABP and today another 4 of them have withdrawn their investments in Walmart because of the miserable treatment of personnel by Walmart, including their refusal to accept unions as representatives of the personnel.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The reason free checking disappeared and made things like this pay-card an option is big government trying to impose bad legislation to banks: the Dodd-Frank thing that all but killed free checking by cutting off the revenue stream that subsidized it.
Now banks are looking for creative alternatives and one gets junk like this pay-card nonsense.
Creative alternatives... like bundling bad mortgages together that banks were forced to accept in the first place by the community re-investment act and playing hot-potato with them until the market fell out. Adjustable Rate Mortgages? A creative alternative to be able to handle these forced loans to ppl who would not qualify for a normal loan. That turned out well.
But hey, evil corporations and banks, amiright?
I switched in '97 when the bank I was using bounced a check. When I asked why it bounced when I'd deposited more than sufficient cash to cover it, they said that cash deposits take 5 days to process going from Northern Virginia to Richmond and back.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Well, that is good luck for you. Here are the gory details: I had just started working for Rois Manufacturing in Philadelphia. They paid me with checks drawn on First Pennsylvania Bank. I dutifully hustled over to the Center City branch before closing time, and presented the check. They told me to get lost, because I didn't have an account there. After a period of fruitless whining, I knuckled under and opened an account with them, and they finally cashed the checks. Now how I was able to get any money to open the account, I am not sure. If I recall correctly, my wife already had an account with them, and I was able to sign the checks over to her, but only after there was enough money in her account to cover the paycheck in case it bounced. To me, what this indicates is a basic unconcern on the part of employers, who just don't want to go to the trouble to find ways to make this situation more helpful to their employees. The attitude seems to be "I gave you a legal pay check, how you get the money from it is your problem. GFY."
The US needs to join the 21st Century and implement a modern banking system.
Here in Australia I can log onto my internet banking and transfer money to any other bank account and it wont cost me a cent. All I need is the BSB number (which maps to a specific bank and possibly a specific branch or group of branches depending on the financial institution) and the account number.
I can also pay for things at most retail stores (and other businesses) with EFTPOS using my bank card and it also wont cost me a cent most of the time (although some businesses do charge fees for using EFTPOS). These days you can even order a pizza and pay for it with EFTPOS.
I pay all my bills straight from my bank account and dont pay a cent. My private health insurance, home insurance, rent, internet and mobile phone are all debited automatically. My home phone and power bills I still get as paper bills but I can pay those straight away with a direct transfer from my bank account to the companies involved.
This is my money, the state and its corporate partner shouldn't be making money off me when I try to get it.
I just wanted to interject this: conservative or liberal, I hope we can all agree that big business colluding with big government is often times a recipe for bad things to happen.
Isn't that Mussolini's definition of Fascism [1]?
" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
Other cute nicknames that sum up the state of our wonderful nation since the new millenium:
Crony Capitalism
Military Industrial Complex
Kleptocracy
[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/benitomuss388775.html
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
My first job after college I was exempt and was paid monthly, for twenty years. Non-exempt emplyees were paid semi-monthly.
Then I started with a dotcom and everyone was paid bi-weekly -- I started as non-exempt but became exempt part way through. The amounts of the checks changed during the changeover, but not the timing. 26 checks a year, which took some mental rearrangment in figuring out when to pay bills.
For the last ten years I've been exempt, and have been paid monthly. But all other employees, including the hourly employees, are also paid monthly.
I don't think there *is* a "norm."
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
I've long felt that schools have been doing a disservice to pupils since the 70's; preparing grade school kids for life should include basic money management, awareness of the state and federal tax code, family law, and the penal code.
Add to this the very dangerous fact that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" fact, and essentially, it's a tax on poor people to NOT provide basic finance and penal code instruction.
Is this catastrophically bad education policy mirrored in other countries? It's sad, but most US high-schoolers know more about driving safety than about basic money management.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
May be a regional issue.
Many years ago, when I signed up for my company's credit union, the credit union president told me that credit unions on the east coast were better for their members than credit unions on the west coast, because banks on the east coast were so hard to deal with that the credit unions *had* to be "nicer" to compensate. He claimed that it was a progression as you moved east to west or vice versa, for both banks and credit unions.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that there is any sort of realtionship between the two, but there's no question that the banks I've dealt with in the east were much more of a pain than banks in the west.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Biweekly at minimum in Massachusetts.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Which misses the point.
Yes, it is not "my" money until they pay it to me, but that just changes the wording. The reality is that the longer they hold the money, the longer I *don't* hold the money.
I really could care less about the negligible interest I would gain myself, still it should be pointed out that paying monthly, as opposed to twice a month or more only helps the companies, it does absolutely nothing for workers. Even if they make only 0.1% interest, that is 0.1% interest you are not making. So, yeah, they aren't making a killing at your expense, but they are completely on the positive side of this issue, and they get even more positive the less often they pay you. You, on the other hand, only gain inconvenience.
Point being, when you are telling people to "man up and budget", you aren't helping anyone any more than the guy who tells unemployed people, "go get a marketable skill, if you want to be employed". Both are absolutely reasonable positions, but both put the entire burden on the worker, while the companies reap the benefits of your responsible nature in either case. And that's a position that you don't see non-Americans take very often.
Can you manage to have an intelligent conversation without deviating from the subject with an ad-hominem?
In actuality, the one we have in hand (we have it for differing reasons than this BS...) works PRECISELY like a regular ATM/Debit card- and has a checking account with ABA/Account number associated with the account and is accessable by the bank in question. It depends on the issuing bank, etc. as to what all of what you're talking to is in effect. We know this because it's been used for a debit transaction booking a hotel, booking a rental vehicle, paying for fuel, getting money orders, etc. Again, it REALLY depends on which bank is actually backing the card (and there IS one there...).
Please inform yourself about all of it much better than you did here before you post...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So the problem really does seem to be the employee's fault. As for the minimum deposit, the CU my wife works at has a minimum of $5 and that gets waived on a regular basis.
I run a small business. Very small, only 3 people. Like virtually all small businesses, we use a payroll service. There are so many laws and regulations regarding payroll that it's crazy not to use a service. They add value by taking care of all those little details, so we're in full compliance with the many regulations. Of course, the service charges fees. There are several of these payroll processors out there, so they do have to keep the fees reasonable to compete, but they do incur real costs. If it were so easy, nobody would pay the fees, but indeed payroll processing is one of the main business functions that's outsourced. The fees are real.
The main fee is per pay period. If you pay weekly, the fees are twice as much as every 2 weeks, which in turns is roughly twice as much as monthly. It doesn't matter if you use direct deposit or live checks, the fees are the same either way. When it's an actual check, we write the physical check based on their calculations.
We pay every 2 weeks to our 1 hourly employee (and we would NEVER use bank card payment with hidden fees), and monthly for the 2 of us owners, because paying ourselves only every month saves on the fees.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
For a while, I worked as a substitute teacher in my school district. I had one longer-term engagement teaching the at-risk students - the ones that the district had pretty much given up on, but would not outright expel. That group of kids got basic financial management classes - balancing checkbooks, among other things. The "normal" students didn't have classes like that; I never asked, but I'm guessing the administration thought they'd just pick it up naturally.
This has nothing to do with the banks and everything to do with the employers. Banks cannot force an employer to issue debit cards. No, employers do it because it saves them money. If you are angry about this, don't take it out on the banks, blame your employer. They don't want to pay the ACH fee to direct deposit your check each month, so they have sought a cheaper, for them, alternative. Banks like this scheme because they collect a fee everythime the debit card is used, plus, any left over balance after a period of time is defaulted. So, since a bank will make more from a debit card paycheck than an ACH transaction, they will gladly make the switch and not charge your employer or charge very little to your employer. But ultimately, it is still your employer making the decision.
So people should quit blaming banks about this. The banks are just a means to an end. It is the employer that is behind this. I'm curious if the CEO of the business gets paid this way or is it just the rank and file employees?
They operate solely on cash because they are in the country illegally and can't have a bank account because they are in the country illegally and you pay them in cash because you know this and don't want to pay their FICA and withholdings.
It's not my intention to be judgmental about anyone's circumstance.
I come from modest beginnings. I'm not the best handler of money. I have a friend who's a good example of what I'm talking about.
He and I are from very close parts of town. We both come from divorced homes. He went to art school and I went to college. We're both pretty good in our respective fields. He is over 40 with no children. I am 37 with several children.
Despite the fact that we had similar educational backgrounds, he can rarely go an entire month without overdrawing his bank account. I own my own home and he does not.
He's my friend so I don't judge him. I don't look down on him. I don't think this makes me a better person than him. It does make me more fiscally astute. On several occasions I have asked him why he doesn't make certain changes and the answer usually ends up being that he prefers his system of financial management to one with more stringent rules. He has the freedom to pick up and move whenever he wants to, while I do not.
Basically, people choose their own lives. There are pros and cons to every decision. Choose yours widely.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Don't be ridiculous: why would Paypal not be considered acceptable? Ebay (which owns Paypal) is a huge, multibillion dollar company now, and Paypal already sends reports on you to the IRS if you exceed $20k in transactions per year.
Your post sounds idiotic, BTW? When have "liberals" ever restructured any system in recent memory, in a way that hurt that system? Why would Congress restructure the banking system, when the banking system OWNS Congress (what do you think that bail-out was?). If you're referring to ObamaCare, you're an even bigger idiot: ObamaCare was a giant boon to the insurance industry that did nothing to lower costs, and a lot to increase the profitability of the insurance companies.
You sound like one of those morons who thinks the Democrats are "liberals", rather than being in bed with large corporations.
And People cannot even budget that far into the future in the US.
That is why their are so many pawn shops.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Hey, Why not? I mean the state of Louisiana has been doing this for a while. ( http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/louisiana_will_begin_issuing_t.html ) I'm usually fairly pro-business, but this is just flat out abuse of the working and working poor. I am irate that one of my employers was listed as someone who does this.
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally wo
must depend on location/industry.
I have onyl encountered weekly myself.
And really with everything electronic and automated it should be daily, or they should be giving you interesting on your money that they are holding.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You don't withhold FICA and taxes for housekeepers and landscapers; they're private contractors according to the IRS, not employees.
Have anything else retarded to say?
That's called farming. One crop per year, one paycheck. Unless you lose money and can't pay back your loan. No paycheck this year for you. Too much of that and the bank seizes your assets. :(
Mortgage + car loan can be enough, especially if you're on low income.
Hell, my mortgage is 40% of my pre-tax salary at my first job. That makes it over 50% of net salary, and my mortgage isn't much more then renting a single room these days (I bought when houses were rather cheaper).
When I bought my first house my mortgage worked out at 18% of gross salary, or 23% of net salary, or (taking into account travel costs to work, bills, food, etc) around 120% of disposable income. I had to get a lodger.
Get a mortgage these days for the same property at the same loan-to-deposit ratio on the same salary and you're looking at the basic mortgage being over 50% of the gross salary.
- OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because you want to.
- Not OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because his condition somehow *entitles* him to your help.
- Definitely NOT OK with Rand: Some thug(s) using force or threat of force to take that 20 bucks from you and handing it to an arbitrary group of bums they feels deserves your help. Typically as a selfish political strategy to maintain and increase that ability to use force.
So, in regards to TFA, I presume the employers using this system are the thugs in example 3, and the 'banks' issuing the cards are the "arbitrary group of bums"...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I took a ten month holiday once, does that count?
Right now I can only cover around 9 months without calling on credit; using lines of credit available to me without asking I can go around three years (at 1.25% p.a. compound).
What, that's meant to be hard? When I was young, yes. But monthly payments back then? No trouble at all.
"i'm sorry for some costs shifted to the employees"
The problem is, to the employee it feels like "Thanks for all your hard work. Now, to get paid, please insert 5$"
Its pretty hard to not feel like your being deliberately screwed over by this process.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I've only ever seen that with "member-owned" credit unions, and in those situations the $25 is less of a fee and more a purchase of stock in the company.
FWIW, $25/share is a steal in a lot of these cases.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Ah, but you see many employees can't have a bank account. If your history with bounced checks is bad enough, no bank will ever open an account for you. Sad but true.
Excuse me if I sound like a troll, but checks are what my parents used in the early 1980s. How the hell are these still even present in the US today, let alone a dominant form of exchanging money?
Yea, and what's with this "cash" thing, anyway? My great-great-great gran-pappy used 'cash,' so it's obviously now a uselessly antiquated technology!
FYI, just because humanity develops a new method of doing something, doesn't mean the old methods are no longer valid or useful.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Why can't we replace the crack users in prison with these guys?
Because crack users can't afford their own Congresscritters.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
and the banks have fun with the float time. If they see a check come through for a high amount that can drain the account, it will go through fast. Instead of one bounced check, that big one magically finds its way to the front of the line so that all the little checks that had not cleared yet have insufficient balance.
This is why I no longer bank with Commerce.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
> nothing is free, handling cash is not free, writing checks is not free, setting up DD for employees not likely to stick around more than a year is not free.
Correct, these are called "costs of doing business" and should be treated as such by the employer, not clawed back from the employee. Auctioning off the employees to the card companies adds insult to injury.
Fuck those employers/slave-traders.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I just read how many low-wage workers are being paid with prepaid cards that require fees. Often these workers do not have a choice in how they are paid.
As a constituent, I urge you to pass legislation that would ban fees on prepaid cards that are used to pay wages with the possible exception of overdraft fees.
If you don't mind me asking how did you run up debts that take away 50% of your income?
Maybe his income just sucks; it does happen, especially in a society where it's common business practice to enact an employee-harming policy to save $21,000/yr while paying the lazy-ass CEO a $21,000,000 annual bonus.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
No, McDonalds doesn't own the Real Estate either. They do not buy the land for the restaurants, they do not own the buildings, they do not lease the restaurants to the franchise owners. (I don't know about the equipment... I expect they don't own that either.)
They don't provide payroll processing, they have nothing to do with hiring, they don't even provide POS systems to the restaurants.
The hand to mouth workers aren't complaining about 0.1% interest from a savings/MM account.
However the AC I replied to was, explicitly, and that's what I was addressing.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Savings accounts, by Federal banking regulations, are restricted in how many withdrawals you can make in a 30-day period. I believe the number is less than 10.
I really could care less about the negligible interest I would gain myself, still it should be pointed out that paying monthly, as opposed to twice a month or more only helps the companies, it does absolutely nothing for workers.
This is an attitude I struggle to understand. If an employer has reduced overheads, that is good for their business, and makes it more likely that they'll be around to pay the staff next month as well.
Maybe for big businesses with vast war chests you could make an argument that the staff don't see the benefit. However, in the economic climate we've had for the last few years, with even well-established small (and sometimes not so small) companies with reasonable business models going to the wall all over the place for little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, dumping a load of extra administrative overhead (running payroll, filing tax returns) and additional costs (bank charges for making the additional payments) on those employers doesn't seem to help anyone.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The laws say the company has to pay you minimum wages, it doesn't say that is how much you will actually receive. Next step is for the company that is paying you to get part of the money you are being charged as a kick-back. Or just issuing their own cards then charging outrageous fees to recoup some of what they are paying you.
But of course that will never happen here in the good old USA because all of our companies are honest and follow the highest moral standards.
They want to lower cost, so they pass the charges to have accounting payment etc on to the employee. My ex-wife got a minimum wage job once, that paid on one of these cards. Cash withdrawl $3. You could only withdrawl half of your check at a time up to a certain amount, so you got charged about $6 no matter how much you made. Then you also had charges to move the money to a REAL account etc. She quit the same day, because we calculated it up and found that for her $140 / week she only made about $100 with all the fees etc.
Scott Carr
I once bought a house in a subdivision that had a HOA. I never received any kind of information about the HOA and the rules at all. I wasn't aware there was a HOA until the day of closing. I received a HORRIBLY scanned (like black on dark grey) copy of the HOA rules and regulations which contained many items which would have made me not put an offer on the house had I known about them.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Landlords tend to require standing orders to be set up.
If I see an old lady who tripped and fell, I just leave her there too. If she's too weak to walk, too weak to get up, what's she doing in the street anyway? I used to help old ladies up, but sooner or later they'd just fall down again.
So... as a result, call me a terrible person, but I leave people to their own problems, no matter how basic, I have my own to deal with.
If you are poor, then you probably shouldn't bother with a car. A monthly bus pass will cost, perhaps $80 to $100... which is going to be far less than a taxi, and is probably even less than what you'd be spending on gasoline and insurance.
You must live somewhere that has decent public transit - in my town, the buses stick to an archaic hub-and-spoke system, meaning every single bus has to run through the central station at least twice a day. This is in a city that covers almost 80 square miles. In practical terms, that means if I were to take the bus to work (I live on the southwest end, and my office is on the far northwest side), I'd have to be at the bus stop by 6:30 AM in order to arrive on time by 8, wouldn't be able to catch another busy home until 6 PM (and ride it for a friggin' hour), plus having to walk at least a half-mile to each bus stop; in other words, unless the hours I'm not on someone else's dime are worthless, it's just not feasible.
don't be late with payments, and then you don't get hit with late fees or disconnection issues.
Easier said then done when your income barely meets with your expenses, many of which cannot be controlled (I don't get to set my utility rates, or the payments for my wife's student loans) and quite often rise as a result of being poor, or rather, having a low credit score.
Your post exemplifies one of the major problem with being poor in America today: instead of feeling compassion and wanting to help, many people who are better off than you just sneer and make smart-ass remarks like, "Well, it's your own fault for not budgeting better." Gee, thanks Captain Asshole, that really helps me feed my family.
To that end, a famous axiom: Do not judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. I have, and I can tell you from experience that poor shoes suck, and thanks to the royally fucked concept of modern American economics, are really hard to trade in for middle class ones.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You can learn helplessness. The only way to get out of that is by proactively working at it, WITH THE HELP OF OTHERS.
You're not helping.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/30/1220189/-Employers-Pay-Workers-with-Costly-Debit-Cards
One case where an employee sued over this type of payment. She wanted an actual check or cash due to the fees associated with the card.
Every job I've had save two were paid fortnightly; those exceptions being when I worked as a network tech at a university (paid monthly) and the 3 years I labored in a glass factory (paid weekly).
Never been on salary.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I find vegetables and fruit from the local market...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
Stop talking like everyone shares your privileges.
I honestly had no idea that there were inhabited places on this planet that don't have a market selling vegetables or an equivalent shop within the reach of a long walk. Everywhere I ever lived or visited had either markets, shops, supermarkets, home delivery service, street vendors, or some combination of those. I can understand there being no shops in the wilderness but in an inhabited area it sounds unbelievable.
Just having an hoa is enough to make me walk away; having to deal with someone else's opinion on your house sounds like a rental.
Not everyone knows just how much authority HOAs have and are willing to use.
My first house had a HOA that ignored my request to plant roses in my yard, then threatened me when I did it anyway, not even realizing that inaction on their part gave me permission to act on my part(according to the bylaws that I had read but apparently the board had not).
I eventually sold the house at a loss(the value was supposedly up but I had to sell it fast to avoid committing regicide on the board because of the level of harassment I was getting for my roses).
(Now I live in a MUD and the rules explicitly say that anything that is completed before they they get an injunction is automatically authorized, and their only means of action is via court order)
Actually, the proper procedure is to make sure they're comfortable and call an ambulance. If it was you on the other hand, I'd probably just laugh and kick you a couple of times for good measure fucktard.
Your problem is you're looking at history with today's rules.
Reasonable is not the same thing as customary and sometimes people mistake what has always been done for what always should be done. Unions won a set of work rules and benefits that generally strike a pretty good balance between the company needs and those of the workers. At the time unions were much more forward thinking about what might constitute a reasonable work place. Given some of the excesses of the time it wasn't hard to see problems. Things are better now so unions need to think harder about what to focus on next.
A 40-hour work week was "not reasonable" when unions were fighting for it.
Sure it was. It just wasn't customary nor was it mandated. It clearly has proven to be a reasonable balance between economics and lifestyle. The exact number wasn't the important bit. It could have been 44 hours or 36 hours and the same basic goal would have been accomplished which was to allow workers to have some form of life outside of work and to compensate them more if they work what could be considered lengthy hours. The number 40 has no special significance other than the fact it is a round number.
Doing something to avoid "1 worker death per $1M spent on a construction project" was "not reasonable". Health insurances was "not reasonable" for rank-and-file employees.
Same argument. It was reasonable to ask for those things. It wasn't however customary at the time. If you have an argument for something that unions should be fighting for now then by all means lets hear it. You mentioned excessive management pay which is a pretty good start. What else you got? Or are you just defending unions as flawless organizations who never do anything wrong?
Yes, when executives demand worker concessions, and then give themselves millions more in pay, it's the unions that are being unreasonable. Suuuure.
No that would be management being unreasonable and that obviously happens quite a bit. In theory the shareholders or the board should take care of excessive management pay but if they don't the union certainly could take a stand. However I don't recall ever hearing about a union seriously demanding cuts to management pay or striking because of it. Sure they gripe about it a lot but when push comes to shove the unions generally are only concerned about their own paychecks. If you know of an example to the contrary I'd love to hear it. I'd love to see a union being the one that seriously looks out for the interests of the shareholders and the interests of the company. It shouldn't be hard to a union to work with shareholders to cap excessive management pay but you never see unions even try.
Executive compensation is about 300 times worker compensation. That is not reasonable.
You'll get no argument from me on that. Only way that makes sense is if the executive can somehow prove they bring in 300 times the value which is a pretty tough argument to make.
I'm not sure what bank you deal with, but at my bank funds are available the next business day after I deposit, and the first $100 is available immediately. Maybe that's "float", but not enough that I'm going to squawk.
Many banks use a formula to determine the length of funds hold. Usually that formula is based on length of time an account is opened and the average (daily) balance, but there are statutory limits on this (aka Reg CC). Of course for their best customers, deposits are often available immediatly (or at least some of it).
Historically some banks had also taken into consideration if overdraft or other account fees can be generated in the case of a dishonored check (e.g, if you deposit the check and then write against that before it clears, you can get a transfer from savings overdraft fee or minimum balance fees if the hold amount is tweaked), but much of that shady practice was eliminated by the feds. Unfortunatly for those folks that have a habit of bouncing checks (and perhaps fortunatly for the rest of us that suffer from them), banks are allowed to place a hold on the check for a week (and most banks do).
Unless you are being paid pennies you should not be living hand to mouth.
It's not a money management issue. Many of us were just fine 10 years ago, and could maybe even sock some money away. But now, 10 years later, we make the same salary, everything costs 3 times as much, we've spent whatever we socked away before, sold everything we could, downgraded our lifestyle as much as possible, and are living hand to mouth.
If wages kept up with inflation, this wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately, most companies don't even give you a COLA that keeps up with the CPI lie, let alone keeps up with the actual increases in the cost of living.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
all the little checks that had not cleared yet have insufficient balance.
Not possible, as long as you have sufficient money in the account to cover the checks you write.
Oh, you don't? Then that's the problem, not the order they process the checks.
That depends on if they process all checks and debits before all deposits.
If they do all deposits first, then there should be no bounces/overdrafts. If checks and debits get processed first, then it is possible for the account to show as overdrawn, even if a few seconds later when the deposits are processed, there would have been enough to cover the checks. However, it seems that for each check that shows insufficient funds at the moment of processing would generate a bounce fee. And those could add up to where the deposits, when processed, would no longer be adequate to bring the account back into the positive.
Really, the ethical way to process would be deposits first, then checks and debits. Then if the balance shows negative, penalize the account holder for their carelessness. Otherwise, the account should be considered in good standing.
Or a "compromise" would be to process transactions in the order in which they happened. Then if a debit or check causes a negative balance, keep a tally of the fees incurred, but don't subtract it from the actual balance until all transactions are processed. And if the final balance is still positive, then call it a day. If negative, then take whatever actions are needed to get the account holder to bring it back up.
This space unintentionally left blank.
I'll have to ask my accountant. Really. First time I ever saw it. w00t!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Really? My experience has been the opposite. I've had a number of salaried jobs in the U.S. over the last 25 years and the only ones that paid monthly were public service (i.e. government) jobs.
All of the provide sector jobs paid twice monthly.
Oh? What exactly did that comment have to do with the discussion at hand?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I'm in Australia, so our banking system is probably different. My mortgage here is just like another bank account; it can be direct-deposited into just like any other account. It has a web interface that lets me setup regular payments, which is what I use to transfer my weekly "allowance" into my general transaction account - my mortgage has far more limits on transfers and payments than my normal account, which is why I don't just use if for transactions.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
It's the same on the west coast. There are some decent banks (usually local banks) but credit unions are the way to go out here too. The funny thing is that a bank that started out local in my town is now starting to expand all over the Bay Area and beyond, but then again they are known to be consumer friendly.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Have a national, obligatory system designating an account for salary payments and make legislation preventing the charging of any fees or the like on the salary transaction. http://www.nemkonto.dk/da/Servicemenu/Engelsk/NemKonto-Easy-Account-for-companies
That is not my experience at all. I have transferred large sums between my brokerage and personal accounts numerous times in recent history in excess of 5K and there was never any delay as to when I could start purchasing stock.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Solidly? Were my schoolbooks in error when they made claim of an American victory during that war?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Then most people are being dumb with their money. Weekly or monthly, you're still getting paid the same amount. If you can't manage on monthly, it means either:
1) You have no self-control, and spend all your money when you earn it, leaving the last few weeks bare
2) You have no self-control, and can't save any of your money to keep back as a buffer
Now, there are some people who earn so little that they legitimately cannot save. But that's not "most", or even "many" - it's the people living just this side of the poverty line. For most people who say they can't save, it's more that they won't - either they've over-extended themselves with commitments (think, bigger mortgage than they can afford) or they're unwilling to sacrifice some luxuries in the short term.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Right-o. Enjoy your Randian worldview, if that is even possible. Have a very nice day.
It has to do with the "they don't listen, they don't want to learn" line. If you had tried (poorly) to get out of it in the past, and obviously failed, what's the point of wasting energy and trying again?
Well, I know what the point is, presumably people reading this do too. Sometimes others need reminding.
I distinctly recall the positive characters of "Atlas Shrugged" being extremely offended at the notion of anyone giving them anything, so long as it was perceived as an act of altruism (rather than self-gratification on behalf of the giver).
I hate the mandatory direct deposit myself. It's very convenient if you're not like me and do the biweekly login to the web site to verify your payments and such. It's annoying to me in that I'm a bit of a procrastinator, I don't keep on top of financials, the paycheck websites are always extremely difficult to use, and the paycheck was my reminder to update my checkbook or quicken, check to see how much I'm getting paid, see how much vacation has accrued, etc. Yes, maybe I'm an evil person for hating to deal with finance, but the mandatory direct deposit is really encouraging me to stop paying attention.
As for people without bank accounts being charged money to use the card, this is really not too much different from the current method. Ie, employers get a check, and they go out that night to a check cashing store to convert it to cash to pay the bills, and they have to pay a very large fee to do this. Yes it seems illogical to do, because the fee is often larger than the cost of of opening a checking account and yet one report said 28% of Americans use these check cashing centers rather than having a traditional bank account.
That explains. it. Thanks for clarifying. A friend of mine here in the US has his set up similar, but what he and his wife did with their first home is that their Dad mortgaged it (tax deduction) and my friend and his wife pay their dad every month the mortgage, the average for the utilities/etc, and a little extra to cushion the account. Their credit looks pretty good after several years of student loans, they have a nice but adequate house, and all their normal bill expenses are paid in one payment. No regular mortgage will operate that way here, though, unfortunately. Basically they 'rent' their home to 'own' from their dad. I thought your approach sounded so simple I wondered how you did it. Cheers! CAS
If it's not broken, let's fix it till it is.
ATM cash withdrawals and in-person bank withdrawals do not impact that limit, however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It comes up every time in this situation, but it bears repeating. Living hand-to-mouth costs a bloody fortune.
=======
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
No, I am just terrible with money. :-}
And the first thing you need to get in your head is: The "State" is not the only damn system to take care of the needy. The free market may or may not be better at taking care of the needy, but it sure frees up the rest of us to have a choice in the matter. That's the rub that most statists don't like to hear. They claim people are good, but then they for some odd reason need enforce this goodness.
You can't have it both ways. You claim taxation is voluntary then prove it. Give people the freedom to choose.
BoA charges $6.00 if you don't have an account on a check issued by them.
Ah, you did mention scumbags. Never mind.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
or on the 15th and the 30th.
The term for that is "semi-monthly".
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Actually, you usually get paid before the end of the month: in Italy, e.g., payday is on the 27 for private employees and on the 24 for public ones. So it's not that bad.
But self-gratification does not need to be material, which is the more common misconception I was trying to correct. The key point is a clear understanding of mutual benefit. The nature of that benefit is for the giver to decide. Giving selflessly is a 'sin' in Atlas Shrugged because it is perceived as self-destructive and offencive (even from the receiving end) or as Dagny puts it: "A trade where someone gains and someone loses is called a fraud."
To go back to my previous example, you don't actually give the homeless guy 20 bucks, you trade him that 20 bucks for how it makes you feel to do so.
On a personal note, I became a lot more generous once understood that. I'm not offended by the fact that I'm selfishly investing in my social environment: People who need my help still get my help but I also take my own benefit into account. For me, there is genuine value to a smile and a thank you. There's also the fact that people I help would be keener to help me which is potential return on the investment. Treating it as an investment also helps me spot leeches and allows me to be smarter about where I put in my resources.
The principles are the same as in finance: If you keep investing your resources in things that make no profit, you won't be spending them in the economy very long. If you make smart investments, you can keep investing a lot longer and also empower others to do the same.
Mind the frickin' laser...
And what would you suggest as an alternative? So much for your "welfare of his fellow-men" when you have to force people to give to charity via socialism, because that is eventually what happens when you and the rest of the collectivists decide on things.
The fact that you can't see the moral implications and the moral hypocrisy of what you preach staring you in the face is quite disturbing.
What you'll find though is pride gets in the way,
If pride is in the way... then why the heck are there so many people getting food stamps and welfare checks, paid for by us taxpayers?
Does forcible offering of assistance imposed by the government circumvent the pride problem?
the kids aren't there in school to learn the material. Their parents aren't doing their job as they should.
Around here... truancy laws are vigorously enforced; non-compliant parents get fines imposed on them, threats of jail time and loss of custody of their kids, if their child is not sufficiently in attendance.
You can cash a check at a branch from the account holder's bank. Until fairly recently there weren't any fees to cash it, but now a some banks (notably Bank of America) are charging. These fees are a small part of everything dishonest the banks have done. The United States has given illegal amounts of power to the banks.
Does America not have any equivalent to the Truck acts than ban company stores?
have zero financial management ability whatsoever.
I think this is the critical part for that little bit, plus they might not stick around for the requisite 5 months either.
I'm reminded of a saying: It's expensive to be poor.
I'm going to expand on that a bit. "Rich" and "Poor" are more statements of assets than income. My mother is a personal accountant. She's known of people with more or less identical incomes and family situations, but one's a multimillionaire who lives in a modest house, and one's broke every month that lives in a slightly less modest house. And no, the difference in houses doesn't come anywhere NEAR explaining the difference in assets. In addition, every so often you hear about some janitor dying of old age and his will donates his estate to the University or whatever, and it's several million dollars.
I thus present my theory: Being 'rich' or 'poor' is less about income than it is about spending. Poor people tend to get horrible effectiveness with their money - they end up paying lots of non-productive fees just for using money(NSF, check cashing), high interest rates(credit cards if they're lucky, payday loans, 'buy here pay here', etc... if they're not), and any cash they do manage to save ends up in a mattress losing value due to inflation as opposed to invested making a return.
Middle class and rich are far more effective. Please note that buying a $100k pizza that comes in a diamond encrusted box isn't a move of the 'rich', it's a move of a poor person who managed to become rich temporarily due to income managing to exceed their expenses, and is a sign that they're on their way back down.
One example from Pratchett's Diskworld was boots - the poor man would buy cheap ones with cardboard soles, the rich man would buy good leather ones. The good ones cost 10X as much as the cheap - but the cheap boots only lasted a few months, the good ones would last decades. But because the poor man could never scrape up that 10X, he was actually stuck paying more for footwear... I remember reading a real world example where a poor person would buy the smallest ketchup bottle(for example), even though the economy size with double the amount was only like $.25 more because it was the cheapest unit, not because it was the cheapest per unit of Ketchup... Many poor people have economic blinders on.
That being said, I think regulation is needed to keep employees from being raped too badly by these debit cards. I also have the fear that where a poor person might be able to understand cash, they might not understand their card's balance, especially when it costs money to so much as check.
I don't read AC A human right
He has the freedom to pick up and move whenever he wants to, while I do not.
While at some point having a stable home is cheaper than the alternatives, his constantly overdrawing his checking account is, I feel, a separate issue from mobility, though I can understand why you/he has them conflated.
There have been a number of actors who essentially declared hotel rooms their homes for extended periods of time. Heck, I've lived in tents for well over a year at this point for my job. My job means that 10% of the time I'm sleeping in a tent. Oh well.
Take your friend, for example. I figure each overdraft costs him $50. That's $600/year. Over a decade that's a very good start on an emergency fund. If he decides that living in long term motels is his gig, that's his gig. Apartments he can move out of in a month if he wants? Sure, why not? He can be mobile if he wants to and is willing to sacrifice the benefits of a stable living area, but that's his choice, and is actually separate from overdrawing his accounts.
I don't read AC A human right
It seems the cocky fuckers blathering on about how their school taught these basic concepts
I'll admit to being warped - both my parents are accountants, so I practically grew up with this stuff. Double entry bookkeeping in college? My first reaction was "This is how mom taught me how to balance my checkbook!".
But until I got to college and that class from what I remember my lower-middle class primary school system barely covered 'practical financial management'.
I don't read AC A human right
It only takes a summer to walk 2000 miles.
And be arrested for sleeping on the street.
This is the 21st century version of company scrip. You dig 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deper in debt.
If your internet + cell phone bill is higher than 2% of your AGI, you've got a problem.
and if you brought your own internet you were not allowed to use it they would have people checking if there were any signals floating around that were not theirs.
I don't know what country you live in, but in the United States, the FCC would have shut down that practice. See this story from nine years ago.
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
Same in Australia, direct debit (straight into my bank account).
Monthly is preferred, but not always the case. Some jobs I've been paid fortnightly, my current job is weekly. Businesses prefer monthly because doing 12 payruns a year is cheaper than doing 26 or 52 payruns, for many small businesses it means hiring one book keeper instead of two.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
You know, for as much as I see people from European countries bash on big corporations, you guys sure seem fine with letting them earn interest on your money for an extra 6 months a year.
The benefits to monthly payroll are purely for the employer- they don't have to spend as much processing payroll since it happens half as often, and they can earn more interest on the money before giving it to you.
What utter bollocks.
Bollocks spoken by someone who knows nothing about accounting. The costs of hiring extra accountants and bookkeepers to do weekly pay runs will take more out of your pay than the alleged 6 months of interest (which again is bollocks) would add in. And yes, your delusional if you think that cost wont come out of your salary.
As ABG points out, bills are issued in arrears, the same as your salary so it all balances out. If you're smart, you stay ahead of your regular bills (rents, repayments) by a few weeks or a month.
I'm willing to bet you're the same kind of idiot who thinks putting everything on the card is making them money when it is costing them money via merchant fees (banks charge merchants for accepting your card, merchants raise prices and pass this on to you). If you cant effectively budget for monthly salaries, you completely fail at money management.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No, nothing is free. It's not free to pay your employees, but those costs are part of the cost of doing business.
If you're going to make your employees pay your costs, then be honest and pay them less.
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I didn't word my statement clearly.
No, I wasn't "charged" to be a member but I had to agree to sequester $10.00 in my account as my membership stake or some such.
If and when I decide to close the account, I get my $10.00 back.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I don't recall anyone sitting down with me and explaining taxes, the penal code, family law (with regard to chihldren out of wedlock), and how to manage my checkbook. Other than only cursory explanations from my parents and some half-assed sex ed in school I had to figure out on my own what the implecations are of handling any of that stuff incorrectly.
One of the reasons I remember the teachers and administrators at my public elementary school fondly. Our school had a special program that met once a week, outside of normal school hours; during these classes we would learn about things that didn't fit neatly into the required curricula. Balancing your checkbook was one of those topics. Along with writing checks, we had a basic primer on the fractional reserve lending system, and the power of compounded interest (and which side of the compounding you wanted to be on).
The basics of investing were also covered, with an eye on practical application that went further than what might be covered in the regular economics class. For instance, while the economics class might tell you the basics of how stocks function as part of a capitalist economic system, but our special classes would explain things like broker commissions (and how they might give rise to conflict of interest), all the while running a fantasy investment simulation that provided some hard lessons to the students who chased after penny stocks and day-trading quick bucks.
If your employer pays you directly into your bank account or gives you a check that you can pay directly into that account, then whatever the various fees your bank may charge you for transactions, you can presumably offset them against the interest that you earn by having the funds in your account.
When they are on these cards, presumably they are in someone else's account. And that person is earning interest on your money.
If someone ever tried to do this to me, there's no way I would let the money stay in the card account. I would take it all out immediately and put it in my own account. One transaction, which adds up to a lot of interest that I get to keep.
It appears that is frequently in the case in the UK. I have yet to encounter that requirement in this particular location in North America. Admittedly, I prefer to avoid moving and have only done so 4 times in 20 years.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Word to the wise, real estate agents need to be carefully monitored, and you need to make sure you are getting all your paperwork and READING all your paperwork
Word to the wiser: if said paperwork includes an HOA, keep walking. For every legitimate repair and upkeep issue that they can enforce, there's at least two nitpicks they'll bring to bear on you that you'd never have imagined, and there's bound to be another house out there which won't subject your painting scheme and holiday decorations to the sensibilities of a panel of self-styled suburban martinets.
Okay, that makes much more sense, but does alter my perception.
He's not mobile, he's living with mom. He's actually LESS mobile than you or I. I could move out and put my house up for rent in a couple weeks, for example.
It would cost him as much to live somewhere else as it would for me to gain an additional residence, at most, depending on relative costs and how quickly I could rent out/sell my current place.
I don't read AC A human right
Then perhaps the most honest way to say it is "Natalie Gunshannon v. McDonald's of Shavertown", where "McDonald's of Shavertown" refers to whatever entity has the right to trade as McDonald's in Shavertown, namely franchisee Albert Mueller.
Mostly because of double digit inflation that they will not admit to.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There isn't a single convicted Felon in prison somewhere, who doesn't agree with you.
tt77
The point isn't that we don't figure these things out for ourselves.
The point is; that employers and banks aren't giving us a choice.
tt77
The point isn't that we don't figure these things out for ourselves.
The point is; that employers and banks aren't giving us a choice.
Look, I'm as anti-establishment as the next guy, but when you make blacket statements like that you just look stupid. In THIS particular argument you're out of line. The Gov and big business don't want me to be able to balance my checkbook? You're rediculous. The reason schools (by the way, THAT is the topic at hand, just trying to keep you centered) don't teach essential life skills such as check books and the other topics I've mentioned is becuase for the last 40 years the emphasis by liberal educators has been to teach "tolerance", "winning isn't everything", and other bleeding heart nonsense. Do you really believe that such feelgoodism crap is emphasized in Asian schools?
As far as banks and employers not "giving us a choice", I'm curious to know what choices my employers aren't giving me? They make me unable to balance a checkbook (I can), or understand the implecations of choosing not to follow certain rules of civil conduct (I do, by the way), or what an happen if I refuse to pay back a loan or not maintain my credit? I'm not saying the system is perfect, it isn't, but choosing to live a life that's out of control and devoid of thrift or legal hassle is a choice denied me by the man? You're off your rocker.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The last time i paid employees (admittedly years ago) it was illegal in California to pay by any means except cash unless you offered your employees a way to to get cash at no cost, on company time.
We were in the garment manufacturing business (yeah, I know), and we paid a check cashing truck to come and park by our back dock area and cash checks for our employees.
Cooking is not an option if you can't afford to live in a place with a kitchen.
When I read the NYtimes article about this, I was disgusted. I shuttered my Chase/JPMorgan checking account about a year ago now and Im glad I did. I knew the bank was slimey but they dont seem to know what being low is. Its been one thing after another to show that they care 0% for their customers, I remember when I closed my account they didnt even try to keep me, not that it would have done any good. Congress shuts down one avenue for easy profits and they turn around and start nickel and dimeing(sp?) us even more and giving bigger bonuses to executives for screwing up and pissing away peoples pensions. Since when did anyone say that people who work on wall street as execs should live like gods with no accountability until someone with an even bigger stick is annoyed enough by the little people to whack the greedy/lying/s.o.s*** exec and put them in jail for a pathetically short amount of time in a federal resort? Move your Money! Message your representatives to amend the Dodd/Frank Act and make bankers work for their bonuses and profits instead of collecting them like drug dealers hand over fist....
I am not a fan of big banks and I do most of my banking with a CU, but chase has an excellent prepaid debit card they call "chase liquid".
It's similar to a fee based checking account. You pay a monthly fee and that's it. You can use it as a debit or ATM card. You can add money at the branch or at an ATM. You can have direct deposit. You can't write checks and there is no overdraft. It's worth looking at. I think PNC also has a similar product that is geared more toward transitioning you to a regular checking account.
Cheap storage VM.
The problem is when there is no other option. You should be able to get paid your full pay without fees. I also think you should be able to cash checks for the full face value by taking them to the issuing bank. Unfortunately that is not currently the case. I would love to see this fixed by legislation.
It's not fair to pass these costs on to the employee. The employer know exactly what their banking products is and what it costs and they take that into consideration when they negotiate a pay rate. The employee doesn't know that when they are agreeing to a pay rate they will be dinged on a portion of that due to the banking choices made by the employer.
Cheap storage VM.
How about giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy to keep him and his friends hopeful enough to stay in society instead of forming a mob that takes what it wants until it is crushed by an expensive war effort and everyone is left worse off after they are forced to spend most of their money on security.
See most feudal societies with weak kings for a reference.
Cheap storage VM.
Sorry I commented up thread so no mod points, but I like the cut of your jib.
Cheap storage VM.
Holy CRAP, the Canucks have mind meld!
Cheap storage VM.
I am pretty sure that had little to do with Unions. It had to do with US healthcare and an aging population. When over half your workers are retired, and the healthcare benefits are more than half of all your salary costs, well you get the picture.
It has little to do with Unions, and more to do with the inflated cost of health care in the US along with the insurance companies that feed off of it.
Trucking firms in the U.S., especially the larger companies, have handled payroll in this fashion for years. You get a card issued from ComData, TCH or some similar company. Not only does the card hold your paycheck (similar to a bank card with direct deposit but without the account), it's also necessary for refueling at most major truck stops (don't worry; the diesel doesn't come out of your paycheck, the card's just for authorization and tracking purposes). You can also get an advance of a limited amount toward your next paycheck. It sort of works like a combination fuel card/debit card and can be quite convenient.
The big problem with all this, of course, is that the fees for checking your balance or withdrawing money from an ATM can be ridiculously high; I've personally seen some people spend up to a quarter of their checks on transaction fees alone (I'm truly not making that up). That's why a smart driver will immediately opt for direct deposit into his own bank account; you have no choice as far as accepting the company's card (you need it for refueling) but you don't have to volunteer for the repeated ass-raping you receive for actually using it for your own finances. Shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but some of these drivers "need help". Seriously.
This space for rent!
When the employer plays Unions against one another.
Recently had a couple of instances where I thought the hiring practices weren't exactly fair.
Problem: Positions were with a different union. Your union doesn't care, won't help as they don't want to lose a member to another union, the position union doesn't care as you are not a member. Result: Employer does whatever they want with no recourse (short of just ditching career and looking for employment elsewhere, or just sucking it up bitterly).
Cooking is not an option if you can't afford to live in a place with a kitchen.
I'm not sure if you mean living somewhere that has no kitchen or living on the street.
Actually I could cook quite a lot in a single saucepan on a camping stove that runs off just about any liquid fuel. I would need the stove, a saucepan, a knife, and a chopping board at a minimum plus ingredients. Also somewhere with good ventilation to put the camping stove, ideally outdoors.
I understand actually having a knife on the street might get you shot by police and if you mean homeless I guess everything you own will get robbed regularly.
You totally reminded me of this story about a guy who desposited a fake check for $95,000 and due to a bunch of banking screwups ended up legally entitled to the money. Check it out... http://patrickcombs.com/95g/
Corporate scrip? That dystopian Cyberpunk future is sounding that much closer...
On the surface the payroll company and the company are using the employee wages (earning interest) without paying interest. The transaction fees are part of this "skimming" plan.
Since most landlords are not happy to have anyone pay via credit card because there is a 1-5% service cost there are other issues because the funds cannot be electronically transferred to pay for rent, insurance or other credit debt.
Individuals need to go on record (write a letter) and complain that this is not a fair and equitable arrangement and that they are unhappy with it. No threat to quit, no consequences just a simple registration of dislike.
A copy of the letter should be filed perhaps with a cover letter with state and federal regulators. And yes Spanish and other languages are fine.
Homework assignment: Research the historical context behind the lyrics http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/classic-country/sixteen-tons---tennessee-ernie-ford-14930.html
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I'm Canadian, so we don't really have that sort of thing up here.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It isn't about unions.
It's about banks charging fees to their customers - who happen to be mass enrolled daily wage employees - with the connivance or at least knowledge of their employers.
Banks should introduce a zero balance, no frills (and no charges) category for these accounts.
It isn't about unions. Should it be about class action?
OK
I guess you are a liberal then because a bunch of conservative politicians got into trouble for not paying those things back in the 1990s. Of course, liberals got a pass when caught doing the same thing.
I have searched high and low on where to find a bank without ATM fees but without success. Am I missing something obvious?
So everyone that hires Merry Maids is liable to get in trouble for not withholding taxes? You're a complete moron.
It's not the lack of a kitchen, it's lack of available/affordable/reliable transportation to get to market that has the inexpensive fresh fruit and vegetables. A lot of people will take for granted a car and the ability to shop around to find the best prices and food. For poor people, the options can be a lot more limited and they may have to rely on a small corner grocer instead of being about to drive to a warehouse store or to the farmers' market.
There, FTFY.
A contract about the terms of hiring workers is NOT negotiated by the one hired, if it's negotiated by a union. So why should I be bound by a contract that I had no say in to participate in an organization even if it promotes positions that I disagree with?
Freedom of association is an important right, and it's a good reason to allow unions. Similarly, the right of petition is important.
But does that mean that a union should be able to effectively block the right of all employees to be unassociated (without which freedom of association is meaningless), or to force them to petition in favor of a cause which they don't support?
And don't say "You're free to go work elsewhere, so your freedoms aren't infringed."
Would you say that if someone were fired or not hired for being an atheist? What the immediate cause was that the other employees didn't like that attribute?
Because employer can avoid paying employee insurance, contributions to govt.
Casteism
Quoting Gandhi as a pseudo religious or sociological reference is equal to quoting Ayn Rand. Both had some good ideas, and some really bad ideas. If you read closely, you'll notice he said "at some point" which implied (IMHO, accurately) that situations vary. And I've seen enough cases were it is true. You can only help folks so much before you give up. It's a bit different if they have a chronic illness, beyond their control. But it definitely applies to anyone that can but won't.
You should really make an account if you want to have a serious discussion. Goodness knows /. needs more of that.
Making the basic wise choices with money doesn't require a high IQ, it merely requires copying the behaviors of those who are doing well instead of those who are doing poorly.
Yes such wisdom - like all wisdom - can be hard won, but that's what you work towards if you want a good life: wisdom. Laziness is orthogonal to what's important, and IQ barely relates. And it is a good an just world where the wise prosper and the fools suffer - that's what those words mean.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm not sure... Your example implies threat of force. It's in your self-interest to prevent it of course but using force (or threat of it) to take what you want from someone else is not okay with Rand at all to begin with. I guess it falls back to the thugs example I gave earlier, only this time they'd be keeping the money for themselves.
It makes no difference if the thug wears a suit and hands you forms explaining how your assets are being commandeered or if he's holding a gun to your head or as per your example a pitchfork: You cannot take property from someone by force, threat or fraud, it has to be a willing exchange.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Oh, you're talking about the backbone of the U>S>education system that has allowed American children to slip behind their Worldly peers in nearly all measurable categories. Ask yourself this: Do the unions make it more difficult to get rid of someone not doing their job?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Well, it's your society's threat of force that keeps squatters from moving onto fallow land, gives you free access to interstate trade, and basically underlines all contract law and property ownership.
I for one am grateful.
Cheap storage VM.
We have "food desert light" in Cleveland, Ohio and it is what most people in the city experience. Many have known nothing better. Things are fine in the relatively better neighborhoods (maybe 10-15% of the city proper) and there are excellent urban and farmers' markets in some of these, such as the famous West Side Market. The poorest live in places where the only accessible "food" is a corner bodega which mostly sells booze and lottery tickets, and where venturing far enough from home to catch a bus or train is very dangerous. But for the 80% who are neither destitute, nor wealthy by Cleveland standards, the typical "shopping experience" is a supermarket that is poorly lit, poorly cleaned, and offers mostly the same choices as the corner bodega, just more of them. Lots of off-brand, frozen, highly processed junk of every conceivable kind, but VERY few fruits and vegetables, very poor selection, none of them fresh, most barely edible, and at prices at least double or triple what I pay in my lower-middle-class suburb for vastly higher quality of the same thing. People who drive do of course have access to the much better stores in the suburbs, but many within the inner city do not drive, and are limited to the "selection" at the local Sav-a-Lot. It is not a true food desert, but it probably is representative of many of the less prosperous places in the U.S., which probably explains a lot of why we are among the sickest and fattest people in the developed world in spite of also being among the poorest at the median (not the average), by any meaningful measure of true wealth or human development.
Nonaggression works!
So tell me, if we all have to "claw our way up to the upper echelons of society" and "need to pay our fair share," how did people like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, "Panama" John McCain, and Mitt Romney claw their way up to the top, and what fair share have they paid? I think that these debit cards are crap, and that people should once again have the option to be paid cash, or given the time off to go to the issuing bank, and cash their payroll check. Things used to work well this way. The only thing that is different today, is that there are too many greedy bass turds any more, who want EVERYTHING for themselves, and don't want to contribute to the common good of society after they have "paid their dues," and "clawed their way" up to the top. Too many people these days are saying, "I got mine, to hell with everyone else." This will not only kill us all, but make many of us suffer.
It's not helping that ALEC is killing off any ability for a decent one to form given that it rammed through a law that was designed to avoid an Ohio-style referendum failure.
So much for their confidence in We The People.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So you're a social darwinist. So I guess you'd be OK with the poor ganging up on the rich in huge numbers and tearing them to pieces. After all, it's the law of the jungle and there is strength in numbers.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
My Credit Union is a $25 deposit to open, and a minimum of $5 in either checking or savings.
:)
The don't charge for transactions at Credit Union ATMs (Any credit union).
Actually they don't charge for ATM at all, but they have no control over what the ATMs owner might charge if it's a bank instead of a Credit Union.
I also get one counter check / money order per month no fee. (Yeah, it's just one, and that's all I've needed, so I don't know what it costs for more.)
Heck, right now they are doing a membership drive, and are paying for referrals that open accounts.
It is being done for illegals, not legals.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd agree some with that. Some. It still doesn't make it right though: You should try to teach rationality to everyone, and at some point people need to take responsibility for their own actions, and face the consequences of that. Otherwise you sit around all day giving free rides to idiots ( who have no encouragement to change), and making the responsible feel like fools for being responsible.