Our grandparents might not have believed it, but cash is becoming less and less a part of our daily lives, replaced by all kinds of credit cards. But in addition to taking the place of dollars and cents, these pieces of plastic come with advantages that old-fashioned money could never provide, REMEMBER money? That was the stuff that made your wallet bulge on payday and weighed your pockets down.
Over the past two decades there has been a distinct move away from real money to plastic, so that now you can get credit cards for just about anything.
Companies, not wanting to have large sums of money on their premises, prefer to pay salaries directly into employees' bank accounts, while hotels and hire car firms, in particular, prefer credit cards to cash. Try hiring a car in the United States, for example, with cash and see how far you get.
Today, on the plastic, you have 30 days, or more in some cases, of free credit, so the temptation to go for broke is always there.
Even if you have reached your credit limit on one card, you can always dive into your wallet and drag out another and continue spending.
At least with real money your buying power stopped when the money ran out. With plastic you have the flexibility to extend lines of credit. But you have to pay for it, and interest charged on credit cards is not cheap.