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Miami people?

Started by Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers, Sat, 20 Nov 2010 12:19

Hardy Heinlin

#40
You fill a small form (online or on paper at the bank) with the account data. Within Germany this method has been used for many decades, perhaps even for  centuries(?) International transfers were less comfortable, but a couple of years ago they simplified it for the EU as well. Now there's actually no difference anymore between national and European wire transfers.

"Wire transfer" is the English term. In German this is literally just "transfer". It has nothing to do with wires or cables. It's simply a direct transfer from bank to bank without a third party in between.


|-|

Will

I feel like I'm hijacking this thread (apologies to Hoppie), but how is a wire transfer different than a check?  If I write you a check, you take it to your bank, and "cash" it, meaning that my bank transfers the money to your bank.  I guess the difference is that I hand the wire transfer form to you, instead of to your bank, and you could take it to my bank (for cash) or to your bank (for a transfer to your account).  Right?

Also, can you pay for groceries with one of these transfers?
Will /Chicago /USA

Jeroen D

In the Netherlands, UK and most European countries you can do just about all bank transactions on line. In the Netherlands all you need to know is the other persons name, bank number and place of residence. (and even without the place of residence it'll work)

For international transfers you need another number, so called IBAN. These days all these numbers are printed on your statements or you can get them through look up tables when you're online.

You don't need a computer to receive money coming into your account sent by someone else, but you do need a computer, obviously, to sent on line to someone else. Most Dutch banks have computers set up for customers, so you can just walk in.

Very different and much simpler and convenient then what I have here in the US. Credit cards are much more widely accepted in the US then in some European countries. Even for small purchases, say a cup of coffee.

Hadn't owned a cheque book for many, many years in the Netherlands. Now most of my bills get paid by check/cheque. I have a monthly standing order for paying the rent. What happens is, mybank prints out a cheque with the correct adressee, amount and sents it off to my landlady.

Jeroen

Hardy Heinlin

#43
Will,

no mail, no walk, no drive. Just words.

You tell your bank to transfer 5 bucks to Hoppie's bank. That's all.

Do you receive a Kontoauszug from time to time?

How do you call it? "Account statement"?

On your monthly or weekly "account statement" there will be a -5 buck for Hoppie, and on Hoppie's monthly or weekly "account statement" there will be a +5 from Will.

No coins, no notes. Just prints from the printer. Like any print from a credit card firm. Or PDF online.

Will

But what if I go to Wertkauf or Aldi or my local Biergarten?  How do I transfer funds to the shopkeeper or the waiter?
Will /Chicago /USA

Jeroen D

Not 100% sure on Germany, but in the Netherlands you would have what is known as a bank pass. Looks like a credit card, but it's issued trough your own bank. Works like a debit card. Slide it through the machine, punch in the pin, confirm the amount and the money goes straight from your account to Aldi or your local Biergarten.

Jeroen

Hardy Heinlin

At the Biergarten probably not, but at Aldi you can use what Jeroen just said, it looks like a credit card. In Germany we use an English name for it: bankcard.

Not all pubs have bankcard readers yet. I don't mind, in shops and pubs I always pay cash. I see no advantage in using plastic cards and typing a PIN into a keyboard while I have the money that I want to spend in my pocket anyway.

I use wire transfer only when the money has to travel more than 3 meters.

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

#47
In the Netherlands, a big campaign was held to move as much cash (notes, coins) transactions to digital as possible. This included, explicitly, biergarten and farmer's market. Portable wireless machines are carried by the waiters and you put in your card, punch in the secret code, and say YES to the amount showed on the display.

The cost of handling cash money by now exceeds the cost of an online instant transaction, so this is why there is so much commercial pressure to go digital.

Since swipe cards have turned out to be extremely easy to copy and abuse, it is all moving towards chip card very rapidly now. Most machines are both swipe and chip, with the swipe slot now being blocked off.

Using your phone and some near field system will inevitably replace all of this in a few years. "Mobile transactions" are taking off big, and most banks have an app in addition to their www bank system.

Even the people that bring you the mail carry chip card readers with online instant verification. You can as easily pay for the delivery of a laundry machine on your doorstep as for a new car at the dealer, groceries in the supermarket, coffee at Starbucks, etc. And yes I bet you can pay for grass, weed & other interesting substances this way as well   :mrgreen:


Jeroen

Phil Bunch

Chip cards and using cell phones to make purchases just haven't caught on much here in the US.  Not sure why, but that's the general reality.

I almost never use cash, preferring to use my credit card so I can keep track of expenses and keep my finances under some semblance of control.
--------------------------

With interest rates being artificially forced low by the US central bank (aka the Federal Reserve), retail banks are starting to charge customers to accept money for deposit into a checking or savings account.  So far, this is only one big bank (JP Morgan, I think) and only for some commercial customers.    The whole banking scene is badly messed up by the 2008 financial crisis.  Individuals should be able to save money in a secured bank of some sort and earn some sort of fixed interest at least approximating the inflation rate.   As it is, the last time I looked, my checking account interest rate was about 0.1 percent per year.  Fixed savings accounts were about 1% or so per year, at least as far as routinely available accounts go.

I continue to have the uneasy feeling that we've not fundamentally solved or repaired the financial crisis of 2008 but have only pushed it "under the rug".  The major banks are currently  being trashed in the stock markets, consistent with this ad-hoc theory.

Unfortunately (?), the governments don't have the ability to perform another large-scale bailout of these financial institutions.  Yet they continue to fail to have enough stable assets to support their huge "financial engineering" system, set up like a house of cards in recent years.  When do we get to the part of this story where the world's governments effectively reform the financial system?  I fear that no one knows how to do it, and it's clear in the US that the  politicians  are more or less owned through the campaign contributions of the banks and others.  No obvious way out...
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

The number of law and economics students just went up about 25% over here. We need more lawyers and economists, clearly.

As long as "the industry" pays more for law & economics than for basically anything else, nothing will change.


Jeroen

Hardy Heinlin

Hi Phil.

Quote from: Phil BunchI almost never use cash, preferring to use my credit card so I can keep track of expenses and keep my finances under some semblance of control.
Some people think it's the other way round :-) When they use credit cards they can't keep track.

Do you see the expenses immediately on your iPhone? When I was a credit card user (stopped using it many years ago) I got a paper mail a couple of weeks later.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

the mad hatter

#51
oh boy now you got me started about credit-cards and the US , get this if you pay the total balance off in full each month they do not apply it directly even though it was a wire transfer (10-14 days before its applied), then if you call them and want to pay by phone i.e. a chq they charge your 14 bucks then there are management fees etc etc: Also if you make more than two payments in any one month they put a hold (freeze) on your account ( they dont tell you this) you find this out when it does not work. its getting to the stage I just use cash and will be down to two cards AMEX and VISA you can wire transfer with amex and ask your local bank to do a international wire transfer via swift(bank to bank) etc they look at you like you have six heads:

And no you do not see your expenses immediately: The object of a using plastic all the time is "big brother" so they can track now wheres the tin foil to stop the buggers reading what little remains of my brain :-)

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

#52
The whole concept of 'credit score' sets off all alarms with Europeans. Three central commercial companies tracking all bills you pay and the whole commercial world living off these three integers to judge you instantly and, in most cases, without any form of appeal.

"There are some drawbacks when moving to the States".

Luckily I was aware of these, thanks to some helpful people, but it does not make it any more fun. Currently I am trying to beat the infinite loop that to get document A, you need document B, for which you need C, which you get with A.


Jeroen

the mad hatter

Hi Hoppie

 and one last thing get your degree qualified I failed to do and it cost 1100 bucks to say that I can read and writer english to level 4 the INS will want this and did I tell you that you will finger printed by four different gov agency's  none of which share the info with each other... and learn spanish!

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

In order to get any visa at all I have had to have every possible qualification inspected, luckily this has all been done properly now. Finger prints have also been taken repeatedly, but I think by now this has more or less been unified thanks to the terrorists. Spanish? Tell that to my Portuguese wife!


Jeroen

Shiv Mathur

#55
Quote from: the mad hatterHi Hoppie

 and one last thing get your degree qualified I failed to do and it cost 1100 bucks to say that I can read and writer english to level 4 the INS will want this and did I tell you that you will finger printed by four different gov agency's  none of which share the info with each other... and learn spanish!

I guess punctuation and plurals are level 5!   :D

Sorry ... just being silly!

Phil Bunch

#56
Quote from: Hardy HeinlinHi Phil.

Quote from: Phil BunchI almost never use cash, preferring to use my credit card so I can keep track of expenses and keep my finances under some semblance of control.
Some people think it's the other way round :-) When they use credit cards they can't keep track.

Do you see the expenses immediately on your iPhone? When I was a credit card user (stopped using it many years ago) I got a paper mail a couple of weeks later.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

Hardy,

My typical pattern of charge card monitoring is to login to my bank's charge card page and review the listed purchases each day.   Posts are 1-2 days old.  My theory is that this will catch any fraudulent charges in time to stop the problem quickly.  I have only found a problem one time, and the bank's fraud department was very responsive.  After some discussion and verification of my real recent charges they simply issued me a new credit card, which arrived in a day or two.

Also, by charging almost everything, each month when my partner and I go through the month's shared expense items, we see how our budget is working out. Also, we've decided that each of us will separately pay for their personal hobbies (e.g., my macro photography hobby, flight sims, etc), and charging everything makes this easy.
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

the mad hatter

@ Shiv, yes that is level five maybe even level  seven! I type that way because my fingers are accented :-)

@ Hoppie, Well then you are all set and good to go fine sir :-)

Will

Quote from: Jeroen HoppenbrouwersThree central commercial companies tracking all bills you pay and the whole commercial world living off these three integers to judge you instantly and, in most cases, without any form of appeal.

Well, it's not quite that bad.  No transactions are reported routinely to the credit rating agencies except money you borrow.  For example, if you use a debit card for all purchases, none of them will ever be reported to the ratings bureaus.

And having a good credit score is really not that difficult at all, as long as you live within your means and pay your bills on time.  The ratings themselves are neither arbitrary or unpredictable.  And there is a decent appeal mechanism... you hear horror stories, but then again you hear horror stories about aviation, too. :-)
Will /Chicago /USA

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

#59
I thought that paying the monthly rent also went into the credit score? And the monthly utilities?


Jeroen