I use my American Express card for everything now. I pay it off every month. Have online access to the account. It's secure. Get a detailed breakdown of my purchases for the year. And it only costs the equivalent of 45 minutes of my billable time once a year. Oh, and I get a free cross country flight every few years. From time to time businesses won't take it but not much anymore.

My wife's debit card number has been stolen twice now.

The alternative is to use a credit card, deduct the amount of each purchase from your checkbook balance, and pay off the bill every month.

Edit: what Trobinson said while I was typing.

I don't even know my debit card #. I use cash or checks locally, and my credit card for online or big ticket items.

I get dirty looks at the grocery, but honestly, I can write a check in the same amount of time it takes to run a debit card. Sometimes faster, since I fill in all but the amount while I'm standing in line.

And it's not because I'm an old fogey. I'm the least technology adverse person in the world.

There are probably fees involved, but you can get prepaid credit cards if you don't trust yourself with regular credit cards.

You can also just open a separate bank account tied to a bank debit card, and limit what you put in that account, so you won't be cleaned out if it's cleaned out.

I recall that I respectfully disagreed on this subject before, but if someone did find his debit card had been used fraudulently and he could not survive the 48 hours it would take his bank to refund his money because he had no overdraft protection on his checking account, had no cash stashed anywhere at home (or in any other account?), had no food at home (even in a can?), had no gasoline at home (for a mower, maybe?), and had allowed his bills to accumulate rather than paying them as they arrive...why couldn't he just use that credit card to survive those harrowing 48 hours? Shoot, he could even get a cash advance on it, I'd think.

But it is precisely the person I describe above (and that you described in your initial post)--the clearly disorganized and/or irresponsible person for whom 48 hours without a debit card would pose a crisis--whom it seems to me is the last person who should be using a credit card all day, every day, with the intention of paying it off at the end of the month.

I'm a person of modest means, I think everyone here knows, so my observation is only that using a credit card does not somehow preclude the need for adults to handle their personal finances with enough organization and responsibility that 48 hours without a debit card doesn't pose any crisis.

Now, I do think my 21 year-old son would suffer a crisis if he had no debit card for 48 hours.

Shortly after he moved out last summer, he returned the first aid kit, the sewing kit, and a small stash of jar candles, flashlights, batteries, and matches I'd packed up for him. Said he didn't need them.

I made him take them all back to his apartment and he's used all those items since then. He's coming along...but I wouldn't advise him to use any credit card daily and pay it off at month's end :-)

wow

"Wow" is right. That's some inordinate bad luck!

You say the credit card company usually catches it before you do? So you mean someone stole the card number, not the card (which you would presumably notice was missing)?

I haven't used a credit card in so many years, I don't really understand how this can happen. Gas purchases are almost exclusively "pay at the pump" these days and retailers of other sorts ask us to just swipe/insert our cards, right? And after our purchases, retailers have only their copy of a receipt with the last four digits of the card number, unlike that carbon copy of the card's face itself that they retained in days of yore?

Whether using debit or credit cards, I've imagined that clerks at a cash register no longer know our card numbers, given today's technology. Were these thefts of your card number then the result of some back office hoodlum accessing your information electronically, in ways the clerk at the front counter could not?

(I hope my questions don't require you to type umpteen paragraphs in answer, but I don't understand!)

In the decades I've used my debit card, I've never lost it and had it stolen only once. Used it at Walmart on Clinton Highway, but after completing my purchase stood at the checkout a moment longer to fumble with something in my purse, then walked off leaving the card on the counter. Someone in line behind me scooped it up and used it at Kroger on Clinton Highway and at two other eateries nearby, seems like.

Anyway, I discovered my card missing (and spotted the three fraudulent charges online) within hours, and reported the card stolen. My bank, ORNL Federal Credit Union, refunded those three charges in a couple of days (or less?), charged me not a dime, and also issued me a temporary debit card directly from a branch office on the spot. I recall them explaining that every branch can't produce such a card on the spot, but some can, so they sent me a couple of miles away to a branch that could do this.

The incident really posed no particular costs or inconvenience to me, beyond my needing to show up in person at two nearby bank branches.

Thanks, mjw. The processes you explain match the vague understanding I brought to this question. I didn't understand that my debit card with a chip no longer communicated my card number directly to the POS device, but of course I realized that (somehow) my card number was still being made available to the network used by the retailer to obtain my payment. You seem to confirm, too, my understanding that retailers' cashiers aren't likely the culprits in fraud of this sort, but rather hackers (I called them "back office hoodlums") accessing data at some point beyond the POS.

And thanks, Biz, for taking the time to share that backstory on how/when this happened to you guys. It could be my luck's been better because I travel so little (?) and particularly because I've very seldom used my card for online purchases. In fact, I've bought online only from Amazon a few times, to obtain textbooks or novels the kids needed in high school AP classes and later in college.

So possibly my advantage is that I generally leave my house only to procure food (at area grocers, not at restaurants). It is fitting that providence should reward me this way for living so small, huh?!

Skimming at the gas pump on the rise in Florida.

So far in 2017 285 devices have been detected on gas pumps. In 2016, 219 were found.

It would appear it happens more often in tourist destinations. Could it be a problem in Gatlinburg?

The public can help protect themselves from skimmers by using cash or credit cards — not debit — at gas stations, making sure the cabinet underneath the pump is securely closed and checking that the machine’s security tape is intact.

They should also avoid pumps on the station’s outskirts, which Putnam said more often have skimmers.

ATM customers should pull on the card reader and receipt dispenser to make sure they’re real, Tejada-Monforte said.