xiann.com

I’m now accepting but not expecting donations with PayPal. It’s not what you think. Whenever I travel abroad, I bring my PayPal debit card.

My reasoning: If there was an emergency and someone needed to wire money to me, it would be a lot less painful for them to PayPal me online than Western Union. Transferring cash with Western Union can be a drag, and if someone were sending cash to bail me out of a crisis, I’d want to keep them as happy as possible.

Then I could get the money from an ATM almost immediately, instead of waiting up to 24 hours or even three days. I assume that finding a Western Union agent in another country and waiting in line there would take less than 24 hours, but who knows?

My PayPal plan sounds handy, but it definitely has limitations. The PayPal debit card has a cash withdrawl limit under $500 per day, so it could help if I just needed a little cash. But what if I lost $10,000 at craps and the Kazakstani mafia was going to cut my little toe off if I didn’t pay them back tomorrow? PayPal wouldn’t bail me out. (Seriously, I’m not sure my loved ones would either. “Um, sorry Christian … but it’s only a pinky toe …”)

The PayPal debit card also allows me to spend up to $3,000, so it could be used to pay a sudden bill while traveling, as long as they take MasterCard.

But on the downside, a new PayPal user can send a maximum of $2,000. So again, I’d be fine if I just needed a few hundred for a train ride, but a PayPal payment from a new user may not help me out of a $2,500 medical emergency (very expensive reattachment of pinky toe).

So if you’re reading this, and you’ve heard that I’m penniless, starving, and missing a toe somewhere in rural Turkey, please be kind and donate a few bucks. Maybe I’ll write you a postcard.

By the way:
- The donate link is in the right sidebar.
- I’ll be away August 22 - September 5, and seriously, I’ll be back in one piece, pinky toe and all.