Is A Cash Diet The Key To A Stress-Free Retirement?
When you were banking on your old junk coming back into style, you made a wise investment. Those vinyl records that your ex-spouse always wanted to get rid of, since you already had the same albums on CD, are now worth a fortune, and your grandchildren even want to listen to them sometimes. The faded jeans that you wore at the dawn of the 90s, before grunge rock swept its dark color palette across the denim landscape, are now back in fashion, too, not that you can fit into them anymore. Young people are even starting to appreciate flip phones, because they don’t constantly send you notifications about impending global disasters and about your friends’ Schadenfreude, but you are so smart that you have held onto your flip phone for all these years and have never owned a smartphone. One old habit you have ditched, however, is paying in cash. You are not so old that you count out pennies and dollar bills in front of the cashier; that is what your grandparents did. Boomers swipe the plastic. Maybe you should go back to cash, though, if not for its retro cool than for the financial soundness of paying for purchases with physical coins and banknotes. To find out more about how an all cash or mostly cash diet fits into your retirement plans, contact an Orlando estate planning lawyer.
Scammers Don’t Ask for Payment in Cash
You’re right that you can’t pay for everything in cash, but using cash for your daily expenses is a wise move. The variety of online scams that target seniors is endless, but whether the scammers claim to be your soulmate or the only person who can save your house from foreclosure, one thing they have in common is that they want you to send them money through PayPal, Zelle, or some other electronic means. Before you give cash to a scammer, you have to look a bank teller in the eye and tell her how much money you want to withdraw, and she is likely to notify the police that you are being scammed. Likewise, banks sometimes block your account because of a transaction that seems fraudulent, even if it’s a false alarm, but that doesn’t happen with cash payments.
If You Like Senior Discounts, You’ll Love Cash Discounts
Small businesses love cash, too. Vendors have to pay the credit card companies two to four percent of every transaction customers make using the card, so businesses often set their prices to reflect this. Some of them offer discounts to customers who pay in cash; in other words, it’s the true price of the item, minus the credit card company’s share. You can save a bundle if you go to Denny’s for a senior breakfast and then, on the way home, stop at the corner store to buy bread and milk with your cash discount.
Contact Gierach and Gierach About Estate Planning for Frugal Seniors
An estate planning lawyer can help you make your modest retirement income stretch farther. Contact Gierach and Gierach, P.A. in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
cnbc.com/2024/05/26/when-paying-with-cash-can-be-better-than-credit-card.html