Cash or Credit

$200 just doesn't go as far as it used to. I use my American Express card for gasoline and airline tickets, but for most everything else I prefer to use cash. Food especially, I bought it, I ate it, it's gone. Who needs a record of that? It's not like I'm going to return it or anything. Paying cash eliminates bookkeeping for all my trivial expenses.
    None of my kids use cash for anything. They have debit cards and they use them for everything. But what about the extra bookkeeping you ask? What bookkeeping? Balance a checkbook? Yeah, sure, later, dude.
    I have to admit I've gotten a bit slack myself lately. I will look at my bank and credit card statements to see if there is anything funny, but I haven't bothered to actually reconcile a statement in a while. This is why credit card fraud is so rampant. People who make a hundred purchases a month are not going to remember every single one, and since they haven't discovered an error in lo these last umpteen years, it is unlikely there is going to be an error this time, and you want me to spend an hour of my time checking to see if there might be a $20 fraudulent charge on my account? You're kidding, right?
    So nobody notices and card thieves get away with it. As long as they spread their fiscal mischief around it is unlikely they will get caught, and so a new industry is born.
    But $200 doesn't go very far anymore. $200 is what I can get from the ATM. I might be able to get $300, but 300 doesn't add up nicely. Five times 200 is a grand. To get to a grand in $300 increments you need three and a third. Last time I checked ATM's would not hand out $400. Too much money all in one spot. What I should really do is go to the bank and get a larger sum like $500 or $1000, but even though the value of the dollar has dropped I am still leery of carrying that much cash around with me. Losing my wallet with $200 cash would be unpleasant, but not the end of the world. $500 on the other hand, that's a chunk of change. I would be seriously perturbed if I lost that much money. Never mind that I haven't lost my wallet or a noticeable amount of money in, like, forever.