{"id":88955,"date":"2026-07-05T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=88955"},"modified":"2026-07-04T14:23:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T20:23:21","slug":"six-things-that-drive-us-crazy-about-money-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/six-things-that-drive-us-crazy-about-money-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Six things that drive us crazy about money in America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Six<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate, but also to reflect and raise a glass to what makes the honoree unique \u2014 and also give a bit of a roast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it goes with America and our approach to how we deal with money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are awash in choices, which is fantastic until it isn\u2019t. There are so many credit cards, for instance \u2014 and influencers promoting them, and credit-counseling agencies to bail you out of debt, and bankruptcy lawyers standing by in case you\u2019re about to go under.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also have practices and policies that make little sense when we compare them with what goes on elsewhere in the world. We pay more for college and spend tons on tips and write paper checks, still, seriously. And do we even have to mention health care? (We do. And it will make you laugh, promise.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following is a list of six deeply American elements of personal finance. We\u2019d fix them if we could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Tipping \u2014 Everyone, Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for coming to this section of the article! Before you finish the words we\u2019ve served to you, the device on which you\u2019re reading will need to ask you just a few questions about our transaction today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tipping is common in America, but it\u2019s mostly absent elsewhere. And if you try to do it in some countries, you run the risk of embarrassing or even offending the person you\u2019re trying to reward and feeling like the lughead American that you probably are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here, gratuitous gratuities keep creeping into ever more places. Would you like to add $1 while buying water at the airport? Do you understand \u2014 as DoorDash reminds some customers \u2014 that if you don\u2019t tip when placing an order you might wait a long time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possibility of late or limp wontons might have been the moment when tipping culture reached its apex of absurdity, but President Trump\u2019s kinda-no-tax-on-some-tips law means that we may never quit this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the questions will keep buzzing in your mind. Why are they asking me to reward service at the point of sale, before it is actually rendered? Is it on me to subsidize a living wage to people I encounter, or shouldn\u2019t that be on, you know, their employers? How do I tip the person who cleaned my room if the hotel has no cash at the front desk?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be a pop-up before you can proceed to the next section of this article, asking if you would like to add $1, $2 or $3 to your subscription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Paper Checks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offended by our request for more money? We would be happy to refund your subscription via a paper check, which we\u2019ll send to you through the mail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this were nearly any other country in the world, this ugly-colored, rectangular bit of dead-tree matter would not be available to you, since checks just aren\u2019t a thing in most other places. So consider yourself lucky; it might even be suitable for framing, kind of like a first paycheck or royalty payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But be forewarned, our third-party check printer is subject to employee theft. Those rogue workers might grab the check, wash out your name, insert their own and make off with the money. And if no one steals it, it may well never arrive because of spotty mail service, or come weeks or months from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banks and the federal government have been trying to move the country away from checks for some time now. But like your piano teacher, homeowners association and generous great-uncle at Christmas time, we believe in tradition, penmanship and American singularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The check is in the mail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Moving Money<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, the check may not be in the mail. The best way to move money around these days is electronically, not with paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean that it will be instant, or that immediate transfers will be free, as they are in so many other countries. You know this, because if we were that evolved, there would be no $25 wire transfer fees. And the peer-to-peer payment app you use would not be prompting you to hand over a kind of upgrade fee, in exchange for not making you wait days for money to move from the app to your bank account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t seem like too much of a stretch to assert that on the occasion of the country\u2019s 250th birthday, it should not cost you money to move your money. Nor is it likely that these ticky-tacky fees are anything but high-margin pickpocketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Federal Reserve\u2019s gallant efforts to speed things up through its FedNow Service and other nudges haven\u2019t worked very well yet. Until they do, we\u2019ll probably pay more for fast or need to settle for slow if we have the temerity to transfer money from one of our bank accounts to a different one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Filing Taxes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the U.S. tax code were made into an audiobook, it would take roughly 19 days of continuous listening around the clock to finish, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation estimated. The entire code, after all, is roughly 4.26 million words long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheer complexity is why it takes tax filers about eight hours to comply with the 1040 tax form and a full day \u2014 24 hours! \u2014 for those with business income. Across the country that\u2019s billions of hours, and $148 million in out-of-pocket costs, according to the Tax Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now imagine a world where you could file your federal tax return in under five minutes. Such a place exists, and that place is the tiny nation of Estonia, which had the benefit of crafting a system largely from scratch after it regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. But many other developed countries \u2014 Denmark, Norway and more \u2014 send out pre-filled forms that taxpayers with straightforward situations can often complete in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why can\u2019t we have nice things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a couple of major obstacles. There\u2019s the powerful tax prep lobby to contend with. (Remember when Intuit misled filers and added code to its website to bury the government-sanctioned but privately run Free File service for lower-income filers?) And the tax code itself would need to be simplified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when there are efforts to streamline \u2014 doubling the tax deduction in 2018, for example, meant 30 million filers no longer needed to itemize their deductions \u2014 something new ultimately crops up, adding back a new layer of complexity (like the new kiddie savings accounts with Mr. Trump\u2019s name on them). That has been happening for more than a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration had created a promising and popular free filing service called Direct File, but the Trump White House dismantled it, citing high costs and limited participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. College Costs and Byzantine Borrowing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, college is more expensive here than in most of the world. And yes, American students often shoulder more of the bill than counterparts in many other countries, which often subsidize costs with lower (or even free) tuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we\u2019d be remiss if we didn\u2019t first acknowledge the role American culture plays in this game, where it\u2019s a rite of passage to spend four years in what are really miniature cities, which are increasingly costly to run for many of the same reasons our regular lives are so expensive. Some families will celebrate admission into these small cities by spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars lavishly decorating beds with university swag, processed foods in the school\u2019s colors and other landfill, then post it on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can\u2019t afford to pay for education inside one of these private gated cities \u2014 even after saving since your newborn arrived \u2014 you can attend a local state-run college and hope that state subsidies are sufficient to make it affordable. Or you can commute to a community college and transfer later. Income inequality, it\u2019s the American way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But higher education is often a prerequisite to higher earnings, which nudges students to borrow vast sums while they are still children. They often borrow from the federal government, whose policies and programs, while well intentioned, practically require advanced degrees to digest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Health Care<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darlene Bereznicki, a Canadian-born comedian living in New York, knows her way around both countries\u2019 health care systems. But she mastered the inner workings of the American scheme while working at a payroll and human resources company, where she spent significant amounts of time listening to brokers explain health care plans to employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She knew their spiel so well that she drew on that deep expertise when trying to come up with a new bit when she had writer\u2019s block \u2014 she used the old trick of just putting words on a page about anything you know to get the creative juices flowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just wrote out how health insurance works, and then I was like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s actually it,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s the joke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting bit is both incisive commentary and the funniest thing we\u2019ve seen in a while. Laughing at the absurdity of it all is better than the alternative, particularly when the state of health care has driven so many Americans to tears or, like many of Ms. Bereznicki\u2019s comedian friends, to simply go uninsured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n