New Hometree

An interesting article...

http://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-ca ... verything/

Old-fashioned, but proven and, I dare to say, wise!

Mmmmhm. Seems I'm not the average German then... I'm usually paying with either my banking card or my credit card, but rarely with real cash. Only thing I really need cash for is loading my cafeteria card

If I pay with cash, I can never spend more than I actually have

I also try to pay cash whenever possible for just the named reasons: better control over how much I spent and trying to avoid tracking of my 'consume habits'.

What was annoying though: "As such, the deutsche mark became a point of pride, first for West Germany, and in 1990 for those who lived in the former Communist east as well. (They were able to exchange their worthless ostmarks for deutsche marks at a generous rate of one-for-one.)"

Uhm - at least for me and all people I know who experienced this currency change it was just that - a currency change. Nothing seen with 'pride'. That's ridiculous - as if it's something to be worshipped (although money is the new object of modern worshipping nowadays ... making the whole world nuts and stupid more than ever before).
And even more important: The 'ostmark' (which is a wrong term, as it was named Mark and nothing more) wasn't worthless. It was simply seen and defined as worthless by other countries - just as the work done by the people. But both is not only worng but also devious as it implies that the work and the money one got for it was both not worth the dirt under the nail. Up until today people in the eastern parts of germany have to live with it that they are seen as somewhat retarded when it comes to work. People saying that they never learned how to work peoperly as everyone was able to get a job at any time, taking away the competition between the people, thus leading them to a 'lazy' (therefore amoralic) way of life. (I always tend to think when someone goes down that path how interesting it would be to link this competition to actual swordfights again - it would be slaughter every day. Humans lost the ability to think further than what they have been told.)
Unbelievable how insane and massively destructive the thinking of people have become.

Sorry, but it always makes me angry.

Agreed.
Having "pride" in a currency... that's a rather weird concept. Actually I am still very happy about the whole Euro-concept. There's been a time when I was living close to the dutch border and all that mess with two currency was a major pain in the txim.

Agreed also to what you say about how things went when Germany re-merged. Personally I think there were a lot of things we (West) could have learned from East. It should have been a two-sided thing, recognizing and respecting the achievements the people had there. And I'm still ashamed of how some West-Germans headed East like some adventurer in the Wild West towards the next Gold Rush City.

About competition resulting into swordfight - hey, I like that idea. Would help us get rid of a lot of annoying people. The biggest skxawng in my company I know would epically fail if they had to actually "fight" with cold steel

Now that's producing all kinds of pictures in my head.

Hey, a thread about spending money. I'm an expert at spending money. Just not in a good way.

Also I always use to say that a currency means nothing as it doesn't matter how it's named if you simply always got too little on your bank account.

Now, ain't that the dark and bitter truth!

That is why I don't have any credit cards. I can only spend until I have no money left. There's no paying back later with interest.