When you use a debit card, the amount is immediately deducted from your checking account and you can check to see how much you have left by logging into your account.
That's true, but totally dismissive of what works and doesn't work for some people. A number in some app (that I annoyingly have to 2fa into) which I have to check on a debit card balance isn't at all helpful if you don't actually check it. For the obsessive smartphone app checker, I'm sure it works, but ask all your (close) friends what their current credit card balance is. I bet no one is closer than $100 and some probably aren't even within $500.
By the time the card fails a transaction and is getting denied because the card, I'm already at the whatever store and have to give up the purchase in a hugely embarrassing way. A physical bit of cash that you have in your wallet and at home is, well, physically present and simply feels light when you're running low. A debit or credit card with a number in some app does not do that.
2fa is a large blocker here, and while it's understandable from a security practice (so I'm not any to turn that off), it's enough friction to not be convenient, and that's assuming you configure the banking app on your phone because you're not scared of attacks to your phone SMS (which you should be).
Not enabling biometrics in the banking app means adding FaceID isn't enough.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> So the people who are too lazy to check their app are okay with going to an ATM?
If we're at the point we're calling people names I'm not sure further discussion will be productive. The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here. It also uses a different part of my brain because I physically walk past to jog my brain (and walking does it in a way that driving past the freeway exit does not).
Again, what's a number that's on a phone, even if it's being texted to you, going to do for physically altering the size and weight and feel of a debit/credit card? That's just another text that gets recieved and disappears from my brain until it's too late.
I'm glad you've got a system that works for you, but the only thing that works about debit/credit card money is I end up spending more money than I would with cash. Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card. (There are some places that don't take cash so I need to use debit/credit, but, for now at least, that's not the norm.)
> The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here.
And my phone is always on my person. You don’t need “reception” to use your debit card.
> Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card
And yet my 80 year old mom can as far as debit cards and my 82 year old dad just started using Apple Pay. He had a really old Android before that couldn’t use Google Pay
I do this before most purchases. I have most of my money in a savings account, and only what I want to spend on the card itself – mostly so that if it’s stolen, I don’t lose a lot of money. Not sure if this helps me spend less, though!
I do this once per day. I have been doing it since the mid 90s before my bank had a website and you used a propriety money management program (forgot the name of it) that would dial into the bank and download posted transactions.
