And more brittle, in at least some ways, as well. When I travel, especially internationally, I try to be prepared so that I wouldn't be completely screwed if my phone decided to die on me. Of course, stuff can always happen like your bag being snatched but I try to be in a position at least to deal with an electronic device just crapping out.

My credit card had a fraud block put on it because I tried to make a large payment while out of the country (Thanks for nothing Capital One). Even after they accepted the payment a few days later I still had to jump through many hoops to get the card unblocked. I now think 3 credit cards plus a bunch of cash is the minimum when traveling out of the country.

Agree.

There is a sufficient hair trigger on fraud alerts these days that you really need a diversified set of cards when traveling--especially internationally. And, yes, get some cash though in post-COVID travel world I'm probably now stuck with a bunch of random foreign cash I'm never going to spend. (Pounds/Euros I can deal with but a bunch of other smaller currencies I doubt I can easily exchange.)

Travel notifications can help. But I've even had random declines for $20 purchases at US gas stations.

Pounds and euros you can dump at the bigger banks, and the rest you could sell on eBay probably hah!

Pounds and euros I'll almost certainly use at some point. Never thought of Ebay. I should probably do an inventory one of these days.

Some credit cards let you put a travel itinerary in their records, to reduce the chance of this happening (if I recall correctly, American Express will do it for you automatically, so if you buy a plane ticket to Rome, they'll know charges from Italy are probably good).

But yes, multiple SEPARATE funding sources and cash are a minimum when traveling, even within the US imo.

Multiple bank accounts, even if you operate primarily with cash, are a requirement for normal living. You always want a backup, preferably isolated from the original.

A good way to always have cash while travelling is to get a belt wallet. You will get mugged for your phone and your bag and what they presume to be your actual wallet, but they aren't going to ask for your belt or even whatever you might have shoved into your sock.

Yeah. Most places I wouldn't bother but there are circumstances where that's good advice--though I'd probably actually use something where I could tuck in a spare credit card.

They might make you remove your belt but they won't open the belt up or anything like that. Plus you probably won't be mugged at the airport itself or make yourself much of a target beyond everyone else putting a $2000 laptop on the conveyer belt.

I sometimes have removed my ID or credit card from my wallet while going through TSA and I just kept it in my fingers (visible to them) while getting Terahertz scanned or going through metal detectors, so it never left my person. Protecting against the small risk of it being stolen during the process of X-raying my belongings and recovering them.

Especially when tired and/or jet-lagged you're probably a lot better off leaving as much as possible in a bag than handling it through security screening. After losing a drivers license at the airport a few years ago--which caused less of a hassle with TSA than I expected but was a real issue with hotel check-in--I only use my Global Entry card for domestic check-in because I don't really need that card for anything.

The more I have to unpack my person and splay my things out for inspections, the less secure I am. Even against basic stuff like accidentally leaving something. The main goal when traveling is to keep your shit together, and the TSA forces you to the exact opposite for theater. So I gave up wearing the money belt through airports, and just leave it in my bag.

I'm certainly not arguing against the device overall - they're still useful when you get to your destination. It just seems the destruction of individual safety by technocratic authoritarianism is right at home in a thread about "cashless society".

[X] doubt

Inasmuch as they can understand a payment card equally well. They don't understand acquisition of [cash] money, but equally don't understand why the magic plastic rounded-rectangle works. They can use a payment card more easily than cash in my limited experience (as a parent and uncle).

My kids at least understand that "a dollar" can be exchanged for "good or services" and that if they want more they have to find another dollar. They haven't quite grasped that a coin isn't as good as a dollar, or that a 1 and a 10 are different.

A payment card would seem to either be magic (it always works!) or confusingly not consumed in its use but still not work again later (gift card).

Yeah, my kids understand physical money and use it to buy ice cream from the ice cream man (the primary use of physical money for allowance).

My nine year old had a debit card attached a joint bank account. He could log in and see how much money he had. I gave him his allowance via a bank transfer.