By March Twisdale
Dear Vashon Island Visitor, Tourist, and Summer People,
Roughly one year ago, I began a series of articles about “Bank Taxes.” This is what I call the predatory and increasingly ubiquitous money extraction technology also known as “transaction fees.”
Wherever you live, these are impacting you negatively and directly, but even worse, they are a “resource extraction tool” meant to siphon money out of your community. Forever.
I aim to reverse this trend on our Island, and hopefully in your communities, as well. It is my hope that you will accept my invitation to return home as an ambassador for greater fiscal resiliency by sharing these ideas (and my past articles) with your locally owned businesses. Trust me, they will thank you.
Here on Vashon, as we pass the one year mark of articles about this issue, local banks tell me there has been a very large, noticeable increase in cash moving through their ATMs. Local business owners report a shift in customer purchasing habits, with many instances of customers saying, “Oh wait, let me pay cash! I’ll dash over to the ATM and be right back.” Also, those businesses that are passing transaction fees back to their customers report great support, no complaints, and very often, a shift from plastic to cash, right then and there.
People care. People are concerned. People are listening and thinking and seeking a better option. Cash is that better option except in cases where the government and police are failing to protect local business owners from chronic theft and break-ins.
But does it really matter?
Yes! And the biggest reasons are “personal privacy” and “the cost of doing business.” We, as consumers, have been groomed to believe that “the system” is inherently trustworthy and a true boon to society, or else it wouldn’t exist. This has resulted in most consumers simply accepting transaction fees as an inevitability, meaning we don’t track it, we don’t notice it, and if we do, we shrug. It’s just fifty cents, right?
Vashon Island has a mere 10,800 residents (according to the 2020 Census), yet our 10,800 residents are exporting well over $160,000 a week in transaction fees. You can read the full breakdown in my September 2023 article: How to Avoid Being Nickel and Dimed.
Yes, I said “every week.” For 52 weeks out of the year, our community exports $160,000 (or more) to distant big banks, and for what? For the sake of “convenience?” Convenience isn’t worth that much.
Here’s a question for every reader who lives elsewhere, “If your home community has 80,000 residents or 360,000 residents or 10 million residents, how much money are you all losing? Every single week?”
I encourage you to grab a calculator and do the math. Then, take this article home with you and start talking to the local business owners in your community. Their responses may surprise you, because small business owners tend to be hesitant to offend customers. But the truth is we care and just need to be informed.
Here’s an example of how cash beats plastic hands down. In 2021, we lost our only assisted living facility for financial reasons. Their operating cost shortfall was $4 million a year, and after covering that gap for four years, Transforming Age (their parent company) decided to close the doors on this much-needed facility that had served islanders for almost a century.
What is $160,000 times 52 weeks? $8,320,000. More than enough to have kept our Vashon Community Care facility up and running. And the other $4,320,000? That would be more than enough to cover the start up and operating costs of a Community Center, which we don’t have but we might be able to afford if we were more careful with our resources.
The poorer members of our community (adults and children) have only one community space that’s warm and dry and FREE during the six months of cold, wet weather we experience each year. The Public Library. I raised kids on this Island. We need an indoor community space, and we could more easily fund one if we flipped our purchasing habit from primarily plastic to primarily cash. Which, we are in the process of doing!
As consumers, we have far more power than we might expect. The cost of doing business (transaction fees) has a direct impact on the costs of goods and services. We directly increase (or decrease) the overhead / cost of goods and services, with each purchase, depending on how we pay. So, let’s make the fiscally wise choice, and pay cash!
This year, I invite you to become a part of the solution. My articles are relatively brief, to the point, and clearly examine the issue from multiple angles. Please read them at Vashonloop.com and share them.
