In Europe (maybe also elsewhere outside the US?) nearly all transactions are simply direct bank transactions. Occasionally facilitated through some app, but usually it's just your own bank's app. Nobody has used checks for decades, and the only reason we're using credit cards is because the US keeps forcing them on us.

You just have to memorize the coins

Plus they are not even logically ordered by size or anything.

Americans love overcomplicating things in general, and particularly love using overly specific and technical names for stuff. There’s acronyms everywhere, and things are named after weird technicalities. Like nobody says “retirement account”, they call it “401(k)”, named after the paragraph in the law which defines it.

As a plus, I can greatly confuse and terrify an Irish person by telling them about the thousands I send "to the old IRA" every year. 😂

Exactly. When I was self employed, my monthly invoice was almost always in the 5 figures. From that you pay your VAT every quarter, save up for income taxes, pay all sorts of insurances, and what you've got left is a lot less, but the initial transfer looks very good.

I'm not really sure what your point is. If I bill my guy 8k for the hours I did last month he sends me 8k. I then personally have to buy my own insurance and do my quarterly taxes