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Comment by nlawalker | Hacker News Reader

I got a great tip here on HN: if your credit card supports email notifications for transactions, set it to alert you on every transaction. On my Citi card the notification is called “Transaction amount exceeds” and is configurable with a dollar amount, which I set to zero. Now I get an email within a minute or two of every charge that includes the amount and payee in the email. It’s a great way to put recurring charges you might have forgotten about “in your face” and lets you skip reviewing your whole statement at the end of the month (and gives you a searchable “database” of charge history).

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This sounds like it can get a bit overwhelming. I absolutely abhor notifications on my phone unless they are things that need my immediate attention. Email is a particular pain where it is difficult to impossible to differentiate spam from legitimate communications.

I really do wish banks or visa/mastercard would offer virtual card functionality. It really would empower users to have more control over their money and improve security and privacy.

I'm like you in that I hate notifications, but I love this idea at the same time, so I think I'll set up an email filter that sends them all past the inbox, right to a dedicated folder, where I can periodically review them all together. Sounds much better than logging into each CC provider separately, finding the statement area, downloading a clunky PDF, after probably having to change a password and confirm contact info is still the same, etc etc etc.

A CLI to parse all the emails and roll them up into a nice summary would be a neat little project as well!

Actually this is not a bad idea. I was thinking phone notifications, but emails are much easier to control. Though I find filtering often not that great. I've been using Thunderbird, but if you have a suggested CLI email client that can "easily" (I live in the terminal, so that's the bar) integrate gmail and my work/school emails, allow me to hack on it, and __most importantly__ has decent documentation, then I'd love to hear about it. I tried Mutt many years ago but experienced too much friction, but things change and I haven't revisited the topic.

I use the stock macOS Mail app to pull down Gmail etc, and its backing data store should be hackable, it’s all in sqlite3 DBs (although I just tried and I get authorization errors trying to work with them! Bet it’s SIP). I was thinking either a standalone CLI or something in emacs.

That's the point. Try it out for a month, get overwhelmed by your expenses, then cut back as you learn about them. After that month, turn the email notifications off and make a habit of checking the website every day or every so often.

This sounds better in theory than practice. When it comes to apps, I'm a privacy maximalist, turning off all the ad tracking and that I can, and a notification minimalist, turning off every notification that is not something that needs immediate attention or at least action within a short timeframe.

But my settings are changed out from under me constantly. So I wouldn't trust being reliant upon them. Which in that case I'd rather have no signal, as this gets categorized differently in my brain where I think we are naturally inclined to believe any signal is stronger than it actually is. So it's harder to lull myself into a false sense of security and the friction is sometimes purposefully self inflicted. I can totally understand how the same explanation and justification can be used in the opposite direction though, to I guess this is a personal thing.

I do still believe that there should be a __legal__ requirement that users must verify and approve any price change to a reoccurring fixed rate subscription. I'm open to not being aware of nuance that needs to be considered or how it can/will be trivially abused, but I have a hard time seeing how this would not be simple basic consumer protection. I do not think it is in the public interest for companies to be able to employ strategies which are intentionally designed to trick the public and/or customers. While I appreciate you laying our your strategy (I just don't think it'll work for me but I'm sure it'll be beneficial to others) I want to make sure that we also do not codify coping mechanisms as solutions to problematic behaviors.

Alarm fatigue [0] is a very real phenomenon that I am sure (potentially, depending) translates to people in their everyday lives somehow, too. I personally disable notifications for practically everything except messages and weather on my phone. Anything else, I have to check it manually. I do get email notifications about charges to my CC, though, and I tend to review them fairly quickly because I check my email a few times a day.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

> This sounds like it can get a bit overwhelming.

Indeed, I wouldn't want that but glad it's an option.

There's no need to review transactions the moment they happen to catch any fraud. It is fine to wait for the statement and review it once a month. You're still not liable, so there's no rush to do it immediately.

> I really do wish banks or visa/mastercard would offer virtual card functionality.

Some do, although for some reason it has never worked for me (but also have not tried debugging the process too much).

That would mean I would have to turn email notifications on or get in the habit of checking my email every day.

The searchable database of charge history would be nice though. My card number has changed a few times due to data breaches at places I’ve used the card and I don’t think my credit card company’s search is smart enough to follow branches.

Well, you don't have to check it _immediately_. I think as long as it's visible and you see in O(days) it would serve its purpose.

My phone goes ping every time any money goes out of my account. Yes, at the beginning of the month I get a slew of pings for mortgage, power, water, etc, but it's worth it. A while back my phone went ping twice and I was phoning the bank within minutes of a couple of fraudulent payments being made - ironically just before the bank sent me a text asking me if I was making the third one.

Having it go ping every time like that is definitely a way to have good knowledge of what recurring payments you are making.

I do this as well, but with Chase, and use a filter to stick them into their own folder so they don't hit my INBOX. I use maildir for my local email and have shell scripts built on top of easy filesystem access to my credit card purchases.

Oddly, I get emails for everything except gasoline purchases. I'm afraid to contact support because in the extremely unlikely event that it gets forwarded to the correct people, the attempted fix would break something in my workflow.

I do this too for all our cards. I still go in everyday to check but the email notifications are great. Every couple years we get a charge that is fraudulent and I always catch it before the bank starts calling (if they even do that).

On topic, its a great reminder to see say the Netflix charge happened and how much. An example is we subscribed to Viki for a couple months and forgot to cancel. Seeing that charge was a great reminder to poll the house if anyone was still using it.

I love getting charge alerts. In restaurants I'll normally get the alert on my watch before the waiter gets back to the table. Though the SO sometimes gets annoyed when I text her about buying something before she's even left the store :D

I have this set up with push notifications on my phone and that's very helpful as well.

I've been doing this for several years. Once, I caught someone trying to make a fraudulent ACH withdrawal from my account and was able to stop it basically instantly.

Apple Card (and some but not all cards you add to Apple Wallet) pop up a little notification every time they're charged.

It can be nice, but you might miss the nighttime ones.

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