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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I've never really understood how someone could "forget" they were paying for something. Like, doesn't everyone check their bank balances and purchase histories at least once a month? Or at least just skim their credit card bills? How do you even make sure you have enough money for things? I have Quicken open pretty much constantly, and refresh at least once a day. Of course not everyone is as anal as me, but you'd think at a bare minimum most people took a peek at their finances once a month? Once a year even? How do people just stay on autopilot for months/years and just wing it?

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Once you have enough money it doesn’t matter. You don’t spend time looking at bills. You know roughly that credit card X has a bill of $4-5k a month and as long as it’s close to that why bother. You set an autopay with an upper limit and just never think about it. You rely on things like email notifications to “catch” odd spending. Look at a bill maybe twice a year. You don’t go through line by line, you just look for things that are odd and if nothing stands out you’re done. Maybe you spend 30 minutes a year looking at bills.

Oddly, poor people make similar choices for almost opposite reasons. They don’t want to check because it causes anxiety and they feel like they don’t have control anyway.

Yea I briefly glance over and struggle to recall what I bought. I was going to dispute a charge that was 15 minutes apart and a few Pennies different for the same grocery store. Then I realized it was the gas station outside owned by the grocery store.

This has been an enlightening thread. I can see now why companies use every dark pattern in the book to get you to subscribe, because apparently, for many people, once a bill is on "autopay" then as long as it's a low enough charge, the company probably doesn't even have to provide any service for it. Just milk that forgetful customer forever. And multiply that customer by... at least everyone in this thread!

So wild, I guess I'm actually an outlier. I actually keep paper receipts and compare with what I was charged when it hits my balance. You'd be surprised how often restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and so on are off by a few cents or even a dollar or so. You'd think with everything computerized these errors wouldn't happen. I also never use autopay for bills.

I assume some, like myself, don't want to spend time on that

I do glance at my statements every few months though

Yeah. Put it like this: if you are paid $50/hr (which is a very low end for this audience on HN), and you see some $2 coupon not applied, you'd need to be able to resolve it in less than 3 minutes for it to make sense to dispute (in a purely holistic sense. ofc time is invaluable for many).

If this is on some normal $200 grocery receipt you probably won't be able to find the mistake in 3 minutes, let alone go back and take the time to flag a busy cashier, find a manager, and resolve the error. At best, it'd be a lesson learned to check at scan time extra hard.

So what if they are off by a few cents or dollars? Do you actually spend time to contest this? It seems like there is some minimum threshold just for the hassle… it's got to be at least $15-$20 by now. I you really going to go back and forth scanning paper receiptes for $5?

To some extent I just I figure law of averages should even it all out. You see the reverse wtih ecommerce on Amazon et al. If you buy something and get the wrong thing, or it's partially broken, or just late, or even if you are just unhappy—you can click the refund button and like 33% of a time you just get your money back as part of a returnless refund and get to keep the item.

> So what if they are off by a few cents or dollars? Do you actually spend time to contest this?

I have. It's not a hassle. Especially if I'm already there for some other reason. I clip coupons for the same reason. A $5 discount is a $5 discount.

A $5 coupon is also worth ~100x more than a few cents so it's worth ~100x the hassle. For a sense of scale imagine if the topic of grocery coupons came up and someone started mentioning they still make sure to take the time to enter their $500 off member code at checkout because a $500 discount is $500 discount - well duh, it'd be free groceries at that point!

I go through every transaction on our credit card every fortnight. It's less about keeping on top of sneaky companies and more about the discipline of sticking to a budget.

I look at every credit card transaction every time I pay the bill, so once a month.

I look at my bank transactions slightly less regularly, but at least every other month or so. I don't use a debit card so really the only things that directly hit my bank account are the credit card payments, a couple of auto-pay utilities, mortgage, and a few other things. It's not hard to spot something out of the ordinary.

> Once you have enough money it doesn’t matter.

That threshold must be VERY high!

Over half my income is disposable. My wife (who also works) and I end up eating out way too much and still manage to put 40% of my after-tax salary into savings each month.

I still log into my bank and credit card accounts every week to make sure nothing suspicious has appeared, and I manually pay off my credit card with every paycheck on the 1st and 15th of every month.

> Oddly, poor people make similar choices for almost opposite reasons. They don’t want to check because it causes anxiety and they feel like they don’t have control anyway.

An utterly dangerous action to take based on that mindset. I've been poor (though not really destitute, just could only budget ~$3 per meal), and I watched my finances like a HAWK. I even had a Post-It note stuck to the side of my monitor with the due dates of all my bills as well as the typical range (ie, Electric $30-100 depending on season), so I always knew what was coming.

Most places I go out to eat I just rely on the law of averages if I go there often enough. If I'm going to a place I go to once a week or more I won't even look at the bill. I just don't care. Why should I? I'm going to come back here 100 times. Sure, occsaionally I'll get someone else's bill or whatever but it also happens in reverse and you are on the receiving end. I only notice it when the notification hits and the difference is oddly large. If it's within $20-$30 I probably wouldn't even notice.

I think many people start to internalize the cost of their time as their income rises. You don't think about it expliclity, but if you are making $100/hr, is spending 20+ minutes to save $20 really worth both the time AND hassle? I mean maybe. At $200/hr is it still worth it? Probably not.

> I think many people start to internalize the cost of their time as their income rises. You don't think about it expliclity, but if you are making $100/hr, is spending 20+ minutes to save $20 really worth both the time AND hassle? I mean maybe. At $200/hr is it still worth it? Probably not.

I think this is only true if you'd otherwise be working and making that $200/hr. For most of us, the opportunity cost of our time is nowhere near our working wage. If I would otherwise be horsing around watching TV or playing video games, then the opportunity cost of my time is zero and it's worth it to spend time on these things.

If I can show that my credit card was charged $1.50 more than the check said (maybe they transposed some number on the tip or whatever), I lose nothing by bringing it up with the restaurant and getting it corrected. Especially if I was already planning on eating there again--just bring the previous bill along next time I go--I'm not even wasting gas because I'm already going there. I mean, sure, I could just ignore it but $1.50 is $1.50.

Not a good habit but I rarely check my credit card statements, I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where money isn't a stressor for me so I just wait for the email that my next statement is ready and pay it off.

To be fair, itemized credit card charges are always formatted so badly and it usually just ends up stressing me out because I see some $83 charge on there for something in all-caps that doesn't look familiar, then I search my emails and figure out what it was and I don't know why they're named like that when the charge is put through.

But man, thank god for this thread because I thought to check just now and I realized my bank didn't email me when my last statement was ready, and I would have been late to pay if I didn't by tomorrow.

It's absolutely easy to forget, though it's especially the case for annual billing. I found out today (from my bank app sending me a spending notification) that I've been paying for a basic Curiosity Stream plan for the past 4 years, with the price slowly rising. Looking back through my emails, I can only find one mentioning a change in my subscription price.

It's fortunately not a huge amount of money in this case (it was the cheapest plan), and they did refund me for this year's renewal, but I was annoyed that a service that I never log into would keep renewing with no notification. Digging through emails, I found two. One from a while back, talking about a change in my subscription, and another talking about changes to their terms of service, which I would expect to get even if I wasn't subscribed.

For as evil as Amazon is, at least you can easily cancel Prime after it auto-renews and get your money back.

I used to. Then at a certain point in my life it was no longer a top priority in my life to run a tight financial ship. This usually happens around the time you invite a partner and children into your life. There’s just too many expenses to question.

I’ll do maybe a yearly audit but apart from that, if nothing seems out of the ordinary, I don’t check.

The elderly forget. My dad forgets his login password every single time. He does a password reset to login to anything.

I only look at the details every few months and rank by descending amount to focus on high ticket items. I have certainly missed some of these subscriptions that only happen once a year. If you have enough savings, small expenses are not always worth chasing down.

I find going through monthly statements quite cumbersome, so instead what works better is to enable notifications for each transaction. That way I just get an email when something is charged to the card, makes it easier to notice unused subscriptions.

Some people are rich.

Let's say most Americans wouldn't question a $5 unrecognized charge showing up every month because the statement delta isn't enough to peek their suspicion. Especially true if they're not paying statement balance every month. In the consumer's mind, they treat their credit card balance like casino chips. Fostering mental fiscal compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance is your best bet in screwing over the American consumer for that $$$.

Meanwhile, an Eastern European grandma would show up at the branch office of the company with a pitchfork.

> Fostering mental fiscal compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance is your best bet in screwing over the American consumer for that $$$.

Yeah, pretty much. Especially when customer service is one of the most painful, drawling experinces imaginable for someone already working 60 hours a week and taking care of family. Or spending an hour+ on the line with excuciating elevator music hoping you don't disconnect and need to repeat that process. It's financially and mentally not worth the hassle unless it's over a certain delta. Maybe that's where some of this cultural difference lies.

But I think it's more an age thing than a country thing though. Look at who's in a phone store or grocery or any other establishment with a streamlined complaint pipeline on your next off day.

>doesn't everyone check their bank balances and purchase histories at least once a month?

Nope. I can be guilty of it as well and I make a habit to cancel reoccurring subscriptions. But if it's not some hundred dollar charge, I don't look too closely in the "good times".

I even use budgeting software and I can fall for this on rare occasions. I have (had) maybe $100 reserved for reocurring subscriptions, so if I see that budget met and don't see any crazy $50/month charges, it just slips through. I overall just see a ballpark expected budget and my savings go up. Small fry slip through.

I can only imagine those unknowingly paying some small amount every month. It's a more realistic version of the whole "steal a penny from every citizen and become a millionaire!" scheme. But now times are harder and I'm calculating finances by the dollar.

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