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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (219786)	9/15/2007 12:46:53 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793843

debit card usage is high with genx and y... apparently they don't like folding money and rarely carry checks just found this.... washdateline.mgnetwork.com it certainly confirms what i see with my own kids and others, i've actually seen my son toss pennies rather than put them in his pocket.....john, you and i are obviously soooooo old school... i remember years ago, talking with a business woman who was something of a mentor to me, she was extremely successful owning a chain of hardware stores....she told me something that has stuck (this was in response to why she had apparently changed vendors on a certain item with a very small price differential, my thinking was 'why bother, such a hassle setting up the new account) she told me...."look, i've learned over the years to 'take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves" people are literally throwing money in the trash today instead ************************************ No Small Change for Gen X and Y By MARSHA MERCER Media General News Service WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Generation X and Gen Y aren't like the rest of us. They hate change. Not change in the sense of progress or evolution but the coins we take back when we pay cash. That's another thing. Gen X and Y aren't fond of folding money either, and they never carry checks. I learned these nuggets at a seminar here last week on what newspapers need to know to attract younger readers. One of the seminar presenters asked Dennis, 25, to empty his pockets. Dennis didn't even have a wallet. He leaves it in his car. When I heard earlier this month that President Bush carries nothing in his pockets but a white hanky - "No dinero, no mas. No wallet," as he told an Argentine reporter -- I figured the president was reverting to form as a rich person. I noticed years ago that the rich rarely carried cash. Just a credit card. Now, whole generations are leaving home with nothing but plastic. And here's the scoop about the tip jar at Starbucks. Younger people aren't putting in money because they're generous. Naah. They're unloading their change. Now you know. These sweeping generalizations don't apply to every single person born between 1965 through the 1990s, but millions of cash-averse young people are changing the way America works. Cash and checks constituted only 45 percent of consumers' monthly payments, a study by the American Bankers Association and Dove Consulting reported last month. That was down from 57 percent in 2001. Generation Xers and Yers like Dennis carry a debit card and its upscale cousin the check card, which looks like a credit card but works like a check. I asked Dennis later what he does with his change when he has to take some back. Sometimes he throws pennies on the ground just to be rid of them.** I'm a baby boomer who will fish through many coins on the bottom of my purse to find three pennies for exact change -- although not usually when people are behind me in line. Once I read a suggestion to toss spare pennies on the sidewalk to delight children who'll find them. I tried it but I felt silly, like a poor John D. Rockefeller, who used go hand out dimes to children on the street. The notion that someone would toss pennies away without the motive of giving kids a thrill seemed exotic. I also don't see the appeal of paying now with a debit card when I can pay later with a credit card. But Generation X and Y are shaping retail, banking and the newspaper business. Companies that print checks have suffered such a decline in demand for checks that they're shutting down manufacturing plants. Newspapers have figured out that many potential readers don't have two quarters in their pockets waiting for the impulse to buy a newspaper. As for the seven or eight quarters needed to buy the Sunday paper, get real. Ed Baron and Steve Duke, who ran the American Society of Newspaper Editors Readership Seminar, told anecdotes that chilled the boomers in our group. One young man in his 20s was so accustomed to looking up phone numbers and addresses online that he was puzzled by a simple phone book. He didn't know how to "work it." Such readers also may find their morning newspaper baffling. There's no Search function in the paper. For some, the cashless society is already here. Commuters pay highway and bridge tolls with EZ Passes. At McDonald's and other fast food places, the hungry pay by tapping a card or key fob against a machine. There's no need to wait for a receipt or the hated change. But speed and convenience may come with a waistline price. People evidently eat more when they are charging their fast food. A few weeks ago, Deborah and Amy visited the Washington bureau from Richmond, Va. They told me how shocked they'd been that the food court didn't take plastic. They'd driven a hundred miles to the nation's capital, and neither of them had more than a couple of dollars in their purses. It never occurred to them that their debit cards wouldn't be enough. "What do you mean cash only?" Deborah had demanded. "What century are you in?" fumed Amy. I resolved to shake the coins from my purse. And maybe even get a debit card. Marsha Mercer is Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service. Email mmercer@mediageneral.com