Maybe you should get a credit card?

And when you walk around with $1k in your pocket, do you wear big a sign saying that you have it? Trust me, that might get you in trouble even in Europe.

Depends on where you are in Europe. I'm in a very safe western Europe country. I don't have a sign, but most people have several hundred on them and they don't go to great efforts to hide that fact the way you have to in the states.

Hmm. This is the kind of faux-classy thing that Reddit would love. What it is doing on hacker news, and why is it being upvoted?

Because it's nice to get a glimpse into the minds of other people's approaches to dealing with people ...

it's a people-hack ...

Because we all wish our inbox contained more of this and less of, well, what it normally contains.