vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Presumably you need a car to get to work, so let's start with the assumption that you need to buy something to replace the car you just lost. The biggest difficulty to overcome in buying a car is the concept of the monthly payment. Dealers will play games with all of the numbers to massage a monthly payment that the buyer can swallow, but this usually doesn't end up giving the customer the best deal. The 18 month term is not normal for a lease, typically you'll see 24 or 36 months. You are focusing on another goal of paying your student loans by then which would free up much more money for other wants (like a car) but at what cost? The big difficulty of personal finance is the mental mind game of delaying gratification for greater long-term benefit. You are focusing on paying your student loans now so that you can be free of that debt and have more flexibility for the future. Good. You're tempted to spend another $5400 (assuming no down-payment or other surprise fees) to drive a car for 18 months. That doesn't sound any wiser than $5,000 for an unreliable used car that gave you more problems than you bargained for. Presumably you got some percentage of that money back from the insurance company when the car was totaled, but even if not, the real lesson should be finding a car that you can afford up-front, but also one that you can still use when the loan is paid off (like your education--that investment will keep giving even when the loans are a distant memory). My advice would be to look for a car that has about 30k miles on it and pay for it as quickly as possible, then drive it at least for 70-120k more miles before replacing it. You may wish for a newer car, especially in 3 or 4 more years when it starts to show its age, but you'll also thank yourself when you can buy a newer better car with cash and break out of the monthly payment game that dealers try to push on you. You might even enjoy negotiating with car salesmen when you see through their manipulations and simply work for the best cash price you can get.
in my experience no-cash transactions are the best deal. Take your Portuguese credit card, get some cash ($60) for emergencies. Only pay with your credit card. It's much cheaper because it's all virtual.  The best would be to set up an American bank account and transfer the money there. You can also get Paypal account, they offer credit cards too. The virtual banks, credit unions are the best option because they don't charge you for transactions. They don't have expenses with keeping actual money. Find some credit Union that accepts foreigners and take it from there. You can exchange your money on the airport because it's in tax free zone. I recommend the country of the currency since they sell you their 'valuts' and you are buying dollars. Not selling Euros... Make sure to find out what is the best deal.
I had a similar situation when I was in college. The difference was that the dealer agreed to finance and the bank they used wanted a higher interest rate from me because of my limited credit history. The dealer asked for a rate 5 percentage points higher than what they put on the paperwork. I told them that I would not pay that and I dropped the car off at the lot with a letter rescinding the sale. They weren't happy about that and eventually offered me financing at my original rate with a $1000 discount from the previously agreed-upon purchase price. What I learned through that experience is that I didn't do a good-enough job of negotiating the original price. I would suggest that your son stop answering phone calls from the dealership for at least 1 week and drive the car as much as possible in that time. If the dealer has cashed the check then that will be the end of it. He owes nothing further. If the dealer has not cashed the check, he should ask whether they prefer to keep the check or if they want the car with 1000 miles on the odometer. This only works if your son keeps his nerve and is willing to walk away from the car.
Indeed - the math. I bought my car 6 years ago. It was an ex showroom model (not demo) so came fully kitted and with a decent discount. I had the cash, but the salesman wanted me to take financing on half of the price *and gave me a discount* so that I would. It was a 3 year loan at a very low rate and was therefore lower than the cash price I had gotten. So I took the deal. I can only assume he was getting better commission rates for financing than he was selling cars. Either way, worked out for me.
"JohnFX and TTT provide excellent answers. Researching prices others have paid, being up front that you'll go buy a junker car to hold you over if they won't meet your price, and playing a few dealerships off of each other are all great tactics. In addition, I've got a few points about timing your purchase. If you're not desperate for a car, these can really help give you the upper hand in negotiations: Wait until the end of the month. Dealerships and individual salespeople usually have quotas that they're trying to clear, and the month is usually the standard cutoff. The last time I bought a car, the salesman made the mistake of mentioning, ""I don't usually work Thursdays, but I'll be in this Thursday."" Thursday was the 31st - I inferred from this information that he hadn't made his quota for the month yet. So I came back on the 31st to negotiate, and managed to hammer out a pretty good deal. Wait until about an hour before the dealership closes to show up and shop. This gives you enough time to not be obvious about the tactic, but you'll definitely be holding them past their normal quitting time if you do much negotiating. The salesman will be  a little more inclined to make a deal so he can get home and have dinner. Bonus points if you can wait until a month that ends on a Friday!"
From my reading of the wikipedia page (CRT), this only happens if you deposit or withdraw currency, not checks.  The idea behind this is that checks, ACH, etc. leave paper trails that can be tracked.  Cash doesn't, so it gets this extra level of scrutiny.  If yu get a cashiers check or a money order to pay a bill, I don't think a CRT is created.  If you withdraw $15,000 to buy a car in cash (1 stack of $100 bills), then a CRT would be generated.  It still isn't a problem, as long as you can show a bill of sale showing where the money went (or came from, if you are the seller). The IRS has a FAQ about this.  It says (taken from several spots at that page): Cash is money. It is currency and coins of the United States and any other country.  A cashier’s check, bank draft, traveler’s check, or money order with a face amount of more than $10,000 is not treated as cash and a business does not have to file Form 8300 when it receives them. These items are not defined as cash because, if they were bought with currency, the bank or other financial institution that issued them must file a Currency Transaction Report. The exception to this is if you are buying something with a resale value of more than $10k with a check, money order, etc of less than $10k.
With cash your sales guy is on your side because you are basically throwing him a couple hundred dollars at the end of a shift (where most would just be sitting around watching TV). Some other tips: be fair. If they would have said 28,300 is our lowest that we can go and that's it. I probably would have still got the car. Dealerships will tell you their lowest price if you are close and you are still below it. since they didn't show me their lowest price I didn't budge much but still budged a bit to show good sport. They brought their invoice number out to show that at 28,100 that they were going to lose $1500 on the car. I made the manager laugh because my response was to bring up KBB and show the used car price for the car, which was minus $2000. So I just said, ""Well you lost $1500 but I lose $2000 driving this off the lot."" I then went back to $27,850 to meet in the middle of ""losing"" money. This actually closed the deal. Anyway don't ever believe any piece of paper they show you with numbers. These dealerships get monthly bonuses on sales and that is a lot of their profit past selling your trade-in. If you actually value your money you would never be trading in a car to a dealer so if you are paying cash, sell your own car or at least take it to a place like CarMax which I don't endorse but better than dealer."
There should be no problems with CBP; they'll take the form and may ask some questions, but it is completely legal. I would be worried to carry so much cash around though, and many places might not readily accept cash. You cannot rent a car (without a huge cash deposit), and you cannot book hotels or anything else online with the cash. If you have any way to have a credit card, prefer that. If this is not possible consider even buying a refillable card in a supermarket after arrival.
Really basic Revolving credit for individuals. Use a credit card to pay for a purchase. You pay the card off completely before you pay interest and get 30 days free money. Your cash balance is for that 30 days doing you some good instead.
So hopefully you are not spending the money before you make it.  If you are, you are asking for trouble.  If not the solution is easy. If you use a spreadsheet for tracking have a item in your checking account running total that is simply CC to pay.   Lets say you just got paid, and your balance is like this: You can then do virtual withdrawals for each category In this case you have 70 left to spend.  Whoops the car gets a flat which costs you 5 that you put on the card and you also pay your rent by CC.  Then your spreadsheet should look like this: You still have the 70 left to spend, and when the CC bill comes due you are free to write the check.
With new cars it's usually the other way around: finance at a low APR or get cash back when you buy it outright. With used cars you usually don't know how much they have invested in the car, so it's more difficult to know how low they're willing to go. Regardless, I do think it's odd that they would knock 2K off the price if you finance with them, but not if you pay cash. The only reason they would do that is if they intend to make at least 2K in interest over the life of the loan, but they have no way of guaranteeing you won't refi. Therefore, I suspect they are bluffing and would probably close the deal if you wrote them a check (or put the cash on the table) for 2K less. However, if they won't budge and will only knock off 2K if you finance, you could finance and pay it off in full a week later. Just make sure they don't have any hidden origination fees or pay-off-early fees.
Credits are expensive, so it's a great advantage to pay in cash. Obviously, it's even more an advantage to pay in cash for a house or a car, of course if you can afford it. But, as annoying as it could be, there are some services, where you're out of option to pay in cash, or even to pay by bank transfer. One of the most prominent examples, Google Play (OK, as I've learned, there are prepaid cards. But Groundspeak, for example, has none.). With the further expansion of Internet and E-Economy there will be more cases like that, where paying in cash is no more an option. Booking of hotels or hostels is already mentioned. There are some that provide no other booking option that giving your credit card number. However, even if the do, for example bank transfer of, say, 20% as reservation fee, please note that international money transfer can be very expensive, and credit card is usually given only for security in case you don't come, and if you do come and pay in cash, no money is taken = no expensive fee for international money transfer and/or disadvantaging currency exchange rate.
The problem with buying a new/used car from the dealers in perpetuity isn't the buying process. It is the fact that they will screw you on the trade-in. A car that books for 20K may trade-in for 17K. Even if the dealer says they are giving you 20K, then they make you pay list price for the car. I have many many times negotiated a price of a car and then wife brought in our car separately and I can count on ZERO fingers how many times that the dealership honored both sides of the negotiations. Not only did they not honor them but most refused to talk with us after they found out. With a lease you don't have to worry about losing this money in the negotiations. You might pay a little extra (or not since you can shop around) but after the lease you wash your hands of the car. The one caveat to this is the high-end market. When you are talking your Acura, Mercedes, Lexus... It is probably better to buy and trade in every couple years. You lose too much equity by leasing, where it won't cover the trade-in gap and cost of your money being elsewhere. I have a friend that does this and gets a slightly better car every 2-3 years with same monthly payment. Another factor to consider is the price of a car. If your car will be worth over $15K at time of sale you are going to have a hard time selling it by owner. When amounts get this high people often need financing. Yes they can get personal financing but most people are too lazy to do this. So the number of used car buyers on let's say craigslist are way way fewer as you start getting over $10-12K and I have found $15K to be kind of that magic amount. The pro-buy-used side is easy. Aim for those cars around $12-18K that are out there (and many still under warranty). These owners will have issues finding cash buyers. They will drop prices somewhere between book price and dealer trade-in. In lucky cases where they need cash maybe below dealer trade-in. And remember these sellers aren't dealing with 100s let alone 10 buyers.
You can simply use them to pay in a supermarket or anywhere else. Just give them the card and say ‘put 1.23$ on this one please, and the rest I pay cash‘ or whatever. They might be annoyed when you have really many, but you can use up one every time you shop easily. For some cards, you do not even have to know the remaining amount, just say use it up. Note that supermarkets are preferable because they are typically used to that, and know how to handle it.
"Talk to your bank first but shop around a bit as well with other reputable lenders in your area.  Another option, if you're willing to put down ~84% of the purchase price would be to talk to several dealerships BEFORE you set foot on a single lot. Tell them that you are interested in buying a Versa and that you are willing to pay cash but you are not willing to pay more than $10,200. They won't agree (trust me on that) but they will come down from $13,000. Say ""Thanks, I'll call you back."" and call one of the other dealerships on your list and tell them ""I just spoke with this dealership and they are willing to sell me the car for [whatever number they gave you]."" One of two things will happen, either the dealership will come back with a lower price or they will tell you to go buy the car there. Continue this process until you have one dealership left.  I did this with 3 dealerships in 2011 and bought a truck with a $27,000 sticker price for just over $19,000. It took about a week to make all of the calls and I ended up going to a dealership 3 hours away but it was worth it for $8,000."
Your relative in the US could buy a pre-paid Visa (aka Visa gift card) and give you the numbers on that to pay.  They're available for purchase at many grocery/convenience stores.  In most (all??) cases there'll be a fee of a several dollars charged in addition to the face value of the card. The biggest headache I can think of would be that pre-paid cards are generally only available in $25/50/100 increments; unless the current SAT price matches one of the standard increments they'll have to buy the next card size up and then get the remaining money off it in a separate transaction.  A grocery store would be one of the easier places for your relative to do this because cashiers there are used to splitting transactions across multiple payment sources (something not true at most other types of business) due to regularly processing transactions partially paid for via welfare benefits.
You can also take a major credit card to almost any bank, walk up to the counter, and take a cash advance there as well.  Doing it at the counter will save you the ATM fee, though the bank may charge a processing fee so it could turn out more expensive.
The mode of payment mentioned by your bank is called the ACH(Automatic Clearing House) which means that anyone(Trusted payment gateway owners like banks themselves) can process payments. There can be a fraud declared against any payment that you have made and you can get every single penny back. This amount can not be withdrawn in cash at all. However for your situation I would suggest that you ask your bank to block any transactions above the amount of a specific sum, this way they will require your authorization to finalize the payment. You should feel safe after this. Also no one can access any other account apart from the one whose details you are giving out so do not worry about this guy(or anyone else for that matter) to be able to access your other accounts.  Hope this helps. (I have experience in payment gateways so I do understand these procedures.) Cheers!!
I've seen this approach to buying/funding cars described in a couple of different ways over the years. Random thoughts:
Buy something from Nordstrom, then return it and ask for cash. They may ask for your ID.  Nordstrom's return policies are very lax and they will almost always give cash when asked for, sometimes even if you don't have the receipt.
Lots of places in the US do it.  Although the way that they usually phrase it is 'prices reflect a x.x% discount for cash' since most of the credit card companies have an agreement that says you cannot charge a surcharge if someone is using a credit card.  So they get around it by giving a discount for cash.   effect is the same, but it skirts the letter of the agreement
Get a debit Visa Card and load it up. Be aware you may not be able to use it for check in. You could then use the maxed out card to check in, but pay with the debit Visa. You will still need to be solvent, you are still going to need to pay as you go.
"In my experience (in the US), the main draw of check-cashing businesses (like ""CheckN2Cash"" is that they will hold your check for a certain period of time.  This is also known as a ""payday loan"".  Rather than bringing them a check someone else has written you, you write them a check yourself, postdated, and they pay you the amount on the check less their fees, and agree not to cash the check until a future date.  So if you don't have the money right now but you need it before your next payday, you visit a check-cashing business and get the money, and it'll be withdrawn from your account after your next paycheck."
You're not going to like this answer.  You might be able to get out of the car. You probably won't be able to get out of the loan.  Option #1 - Sell the car privately (you'll get more in a private sale) and get a private loan for the difference between the sale price and what you owe.  Option #2 - If you go to a dealership that advertises that they will take any trade no matter how much you owe, they will roll your balance, less your trade in value, into your new loan. So for example, Let's say you buy a car for and borrow $20,000. The dealership gives you $6,000 for your trade because that's what they do that leaves $9,000 on your loan and you will end up borrowing $29,000 to buy a $20,000 car. Dealerships can be surprisingly accommodating but a lot of car buyers don't understand the terms of what they're getting into. I actually knew someone a few years ago who left a dealership with a new car and couldn't tell you anything about the deal beyond her monthly payment.  Option #3 - Hang on to the car and throw every extra penny at it to get the balance down on the loan until you can get it to the point where you can sell it, trade it in or refi it without putting out a big one time cash payment.
The key to understanding where your money is going is to budget. Rather than tracking your spending after the fact, budgeting lets you decide up front what you want to spend your money on. This can be done with cash envelopes, on paper, or on Excel spreadsheets; however, in my opinion, the best, most flexible, and easiest way to do this is with budgeting software designed for this purpose. As I explained in another answer, when it comes to personal budgeting software, there are two different approaches: those in which you decide what to spend your money on before it is spent, and those that simply show you how your money was spent after it is gone. I recommend the first approach. Software designed to do this include YNAB, Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. My personal favorite is YNAB. You'll find lots of help, video tutorials, and even online classes with a live teacher on YNAB's website. Using one of these packages will help you manage spending, whether it is done electronically or with cash. When you pay for something with a credit card, you enter your purchase into the software, and the software adjusts your budget as if the money is already spent, even if you haven't technically paid for the purchase yet. As far as strategy goes, here is what I recommend: Get started on one of these, and set up your budget right away. Assign a category to every dollar in your account. Don't worry if it is not perfect. If you find later on that you don't have enough money in one of your categories, you can move money from another category if you need to. As you work with it, you'll get better at knowing how much money you need in each category. My other recommendation is this: Don't wait until the end of the month to download your transactions from the bank and fit everything into categories. Instead, enter your spending transactions into the software manually, every day, as you spend. This will do two things: first, you'll have the latest, up-to-date picture of where your accounts are in your software without having to guess. Second, it will help you stay on top of your spending.
Go the opposite approach.  Budget a certain amount of cash and keep it combined.  Don't exceed it (but next time budget more if you need to).   If you were in the USA (where card acceptance is near universal) what I do is simply use my visa check card for all purchases and download it to my personal finance software, where you can assign categories.
Calculate a weekly budget for yourself for all incidentals (i.e. shopping, movies, eating out, etc...) and take that amount out in cash each week. For example, if your budget is $75 then try to spend only that $75 on all the extra stuff you do doing the week. It'll make you hyper-conscious of where your money is going and how fast. You'll be surprised at how quickly little things like grabbing coffee in the morning can chip away at your funds.