I don't trust any company to have automatic deductions feom my bank account.

LOL.

Set up your cards to autopay the min so if you forget you don't get screwed. If you are super paranoid set up a separate bank account for this purpose and keep enough money in it to protect yourself from forgetting to transfer money into it each month.

It only takes getting a few treble charges and other mistakes (too early, too late, unable to close the account in question, etc) to be out an extra grand for the month. If you're unlucky, you can tack on an extra $500 in overdraft fees that the companies won't cover despite being their mistake.

Autopay makes sense if you are saving 2x whatever is autopay for each month. Outside that, it's best to write the Calculus on the wall and manage that money manually.

Add me to the list of people surprised at not auto-paying full CC bill every month

I auto pay the minimum and then manually pay the rest.

I'm not organized enough to ensure I have enough money in my account on a specific date and time. I am organized enough to pay it at some point over the course of a month.

I also keep a low running balance in my accounts, so don't have a lot of cushion if I'm not actively planning for it.

Not sure how it works for you guys, but I set it up from my bank and not from my credit card. So its the bank that initiates the payment and I've told it to do it. The CC company doesn't have the ability to initiate payments from me.

I was burned once with an automatic bill pay (from the company side) where the company took out a large 'penalty' as a result of their screw up. It took me months to get the money back. I'll never do that again.

This isn't impossible but websites change frequently enough and required payments infrequent enough that I don't see how you could come out ahead unless your time is of very little value. I suspect that whatever works now will break within a couple of months and so on. And yeah this can easily get your ip address flagged and account locked. If this is something you would do for fun, writing e2e tests pays fairly well and is essentially the exact same type of work.

lol +1 auto pay, i guess that is available if you open the page on your desktop instead of mobile.

I used to have a data entry job and that was mind numbing. I rarely talked to anyone, and all I did was look at one screen, just to type what I read onto another screen. Basically a ZOMBIE. There are still days when I reflect about my time there and I cringe every time. Not only was the job horrifically boring but I was surrounded by bozo co-workers getting paid $12/hour. Everyday, I would look at the clock and each time there was a crushing feeling of dismay when it wasn't 5pm yet. A little part of me died each day while I was at that job. I was grateful that someone from the IT department personally recruited me to join their help-desk team. The new job was a slightly bit better, but even with the improvement in pay and responsibility, it was just not technically challenging enough.

So yea, I'm happy doing this for a living now. It has been 8 months and I don't feel any dread coming into Mondays. Will I stay happy forever? Probably not. I believe that if you stay at one job long enough, you'll eventually hate it. On the bright side, it's easy to switch jobs and choose the ones that fit my pace.

Does anyone else not even own a credit card?

I pay bills manually and buy things online with a debit card.

I lose out on 1.5% cash back bonuses but there's a 0% chance of ever getting burned by absurd interest rates so I think it's a fair trade off.

I think if you consider travel/dining/grocery benefits and the fact that you can get 2% cash back pretty easily, you're probably averaging closer to 2.5-3% savings in opportunity cost. BUT... I think the bigger deal is building credit, no? Still a young dude who isn't in the market for a house yet so I don't really have any experience, but that's one thing that came to mind.

(There also may be a safety/protection benefit as well, where you can get fraudulent charges taken off the credit card far more easily than get money paid back to your bank account?)

ETA: also probably googling benefits of a credit card would solve this pretty quick

I think there are lots of really good reasons to have a credit card:

* Builds credit
* I think its easier to rent cars / get hotel rooms / etc.
* I think it makes some transactions safer (maybe?, but every time I had to dispute a CC transaction in the States I had the charge reversed w/o issue. If I had paid cash the money would have been gone).
* I get 1-3% back in rewards / cash back
* It lets me keep my bank balance lower and invest money sooner. It lets me keep a lower "emergency fund" of cash then I would otherwise.

This is easily my favorite thing to do in software development. I got a secondhand buzz just from reading your post.

Unless you're a Stallman level luddite not having credit cards is a terrible idea.

Last Friday at 4pm youtube and all streaming audio sites get blocked on the company network, monday 9am they're back! Oh enterprise never change.

Yeah my absolute favorite thing is to delete code. Every job I start, I familiarize myself with the codebase by deleting large portions of it.

Might be worth pointing out that a large chunk of the world has jobs like this. The whole idea of a *fulfilling* job is a relatively new concept that you might even have a tough time explaining to people in some parts of the world. Even in the US - presidential campaigns are run on the idea of bringing back mind-numbing zombie manufacturing jobs.

So just another thing to try not to take for granted and every now and then be thankful that we get paid to do what we do imo.

I never owned a credit card. Basically, my credit was ****ed on my 18th birthday, so always got declined no matter my income. I also have the luxury of paying shush money when renting apartments, have difficulty buying cars, furniture, etc.

Not sure how credit works obviously, but my max credit score was something like 605, and it makes many other things more expensive and / or impossible without credit. With all that said, when you reach 75k+ / year, that credit score becomes virtually meaningless. Getting approved to buy a $5,000 couch is easy game, though you have to fade penalties.

There's a show called "How its made" that is really interesting and also really enlightening on how many truly mind-numbing jobs there exist in the world.

You can get a secured credit card where you put down something like a $500 deposit that you get back ~1 year after getting your credit card. After having that for a bit you can usually get better credit cards.

I'm not surprised you'd say the bolded. But its obviously wrong.

When I reached that level, coming from 24k a year, it was shocking how stupid easy it was to get approved for all sorts of stuff.

Regarding fulfilling jobs. I've worked with factory workers and cooks who woke up everyday absolutely living their job. Sure, punching holes is boring as hell to some of us, but who are we to really judge what's fulfilling to other people? An outsized proportion of programming is optimizing ad-clicks, so let's all get off our high horses, ffs.

I get 5-6 new cards a year just following the deals "Get $200 back when you spend $2500 in the first two months"... That is almost 10% back.

Most store cards are 5% back. Going without that is insane to me but people are huge fish.

They also lead to coupons, every week Target sends me a book of coupons for all the **** I buy there that saves another $5-10/week.

You are also covered if your card is lost of stolen, unlike cash.

Also, somewhat unrelated, I went to the DMV yesterday. A ****ing mad house. I then went to their website and instabooked an online appointment and they called my number 10 minutes later. Two guys were complaining that they had been there for 2.5 hours already.

Yeah it's meaningless if you don't care about buying a house or getting a job - depending on the market conditions, it becomes either impossible or very expensive (in terms of rates) to get a mortgage with bad credit and some employers will definitely consider credit score as part of the background check. In the latter case, I assume only terrible scores matter but yeah credit scores are very important unless you're very wealthy and don't need credit or jobs.

Dave, its obviously true that some people find repetitive jobs fulfilling and that many tech jobs suck. But its just as obviously true that the ratio is definitely on the side of more tech jobs being fulfilling (in their own right) than the repetitive jobs we're talking about.

It's not at all about being on a high horse, but acknowledging the truth and our good fortune. It's also good to realize what the real alternatives are when you're considering a job in tech and to encourage people to seek education and opportunities that open up more fulfilling jobs for themselves.

It's not a sign of disrespect for the people working these tough jobs.

I once worked with a line cook from Brazil (well i worked with dozens of such people, but this dude was special) who was clearly a really sharp dude and was the best high volume line cool I've ever met (and I grew up with my dad in the industry and have worked at 7+ restaurants growing up through HS/college).

Dude could have tickets coming in with the grill and broiler _completely_ packed every inch with about 40 meals working and be super relaxed with a totally clean station, fully prepped, and just constantly flipping/moving meat around and hitting every temp perfectly.

He worked two 40/hour week jobs, was always in a great mood and had a great sense of humor. When we spoke about me going off to college, he was really happy for me, and I'll never forget the way he said to me, "if I grew up here in America, I would have gone to college, and right now id be in an office, kicking back (putting his hands behind his head and leaning back laughing)" and there's no doubt he would have been a successful business person. But instead, he makes the best of working 80 hours a week (it was 110 when he first came to America) and saving money to one day go back to Brazil to open a restaurant. This was over 10 years ago, hopefully he's living his dream now.

To say these restaurant jobs are fulfilling and that we are optimizing ad-clicks seems to completely miss the point. The best restaurant people I've ever worked with were deeply unfulfilled and their jobs only required a fraction of their skills/attention. To be able to have jobs that require curiosity, continuous learning, and a sense of intellectual pursuit is completely different from a fulfillment level on almost every person.

ya Ive worked some jobs that have driven me absolutely crazy. I just have a real hard time doing repetitive stuff all day. but some ppl just love it. they consider themselves blessed to have such an "easy" job. I just look at them like they are insane. fast food and painting were 2 such jobs. also, worked at an oil change place that wasnt very busy and we just stood around for 8-12 hrs a day.