errands and a bit of exercise

[redbird]

For reasons, I ran some errands today so Adrian and Cattitude could stay home.

The main goal was to take a bathrobe to the Zipper Hospital, and ask them to replace the damaged zipper. So I did that, and was surprised by the sign saying they took cash and checks. Cash only would have surprised me less; in practice, I doubt they're being given many checks these days. They want payment in advance, but I had enough cash to cover it, so I didn't need to ask them for the location of the nearest ATM.

I then went to LA Burdick's, for a cup of hot chocolate, and a bag of chocolate-covered orange and lemon peel. The hot chocolate was good, but I spilled some on myself when I opened the takeout cup. So, I drank the hot chocolate, carefully; went to Trader Joe's; and then took the trolley home.

The trip wasn't a huge amount of walking, but it's the most I've done in the last couple of weeks. I did a little PT this afternoon as well; I've been keeping up with that pretty well.

Comments

[joseph_teller]

Not surprised about cash or check requirement, a lot of businesses are moving away from credit cards right now due to excessive fees on the vendor level, government tracking of customers that don't want to be tracked on purchases, and
a boycott against the credit card companies going on due to their decisions and pushing against some businesses accept them on a pseudo-morality basis that is messing up other companies.

[redbird]

I wasn’t surprised that the Zipper Hospital doesn’t take cards—I was surprised that they _do_ take checks.

Checks have to be deposited in the bank, even if the business can pay most of its own bills in cash. The state government is probably set up to take cash for taxes, if only for the cannabis shops. When Washington was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, the state government had to set a tax office up with appropriate security for the large amount of cash it was now processing.

Since 2020, I’ve been noticing the relatively few transactions I have to do with cash instead of plastic. It happens just often enough that I still carry cash, but rarely enough that I do notice.

[joseph_teller]

I use cash for 90% of my purchases. I have a separate credit card for online use and one for use in stores (and a medical debit card via my wife's insurance set up for prescriptions).

Nearly all the weekly grocery shopping is done in cash.

I have used credit card in person maybe once every couple of months. I don't carry around a check book, checks we use for paying the mortgage and utilities, and the condo association bill payments are all done by checkbook as well (my wife is the treasurer for the association). I have used it for some local repair bills for us (plumber etc.) and for emergency large purchases (when I had to replace my laptop a year or so ago).

My online credit card gets used for our streaming subscriptions and software services, some charity donations and some specific purchases that happen a few times a year for things that are unavailable locally.

Same with my wife, she uses a card for travel and travel expenses (like her trip to seattle earlier this year, and her commuter pass for her prolonged jury duty service this year).

But by number of transactions, I use cash more than credit cards. That allows me better budgeting for household expenses (which I handle the bulk of) and identity safety (considering the number of credit card skimmer alerts we've seen in the state its the safe way to avoid getting caught by these things).