I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.
What is this old timey bullshit? Why not a burlap sack of fucking pieces of eight?
I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.
How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?
I’m in my early 40s and still use checks now and then.
I used bank deposits. First through the mail, then through electronic-but-not-Internet payment systems and finally online and mobile banking. Also bank authorizations.
Checks were never big here, but they had been phased out completely in the 00s. I haven’t actually seen one since the nineties. I have never owned a check book.
Man, I would never pay rent or a mortgage payment with a deposit. I did that once, and they claimed I didn’t pay several times, and I had no receipt. I had to pay my bank $20 to provide proof of deposit (several times) Fuck that. Also fuck US Bank.
I probably messed up the translation. I mean a kind of bank account to bank account transfer order.
I don’t know about that guy but you can’t even get cheque books in NZ anymore. They were phased out, mostly because electronic payments are ubiquitous and most places already stopped accepting cheques a decade or two back.
How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?
We had something called an ‘acceptgiro’, it was basically a pre-filled money transfer order. Usually the amount, beneficiary and some reference number were pre-printed. All you had to do was sign it and mail it to the bank (which usually was free, you had pre-paid envelopes from the bank). It was usually attached to the bill, basically a tear-off part of the bill that you signed, stuffed into an envelope and mailed.
For recurring payments you usually give the other party ongoing permission to directly take it from your account. This is still extremely common and how I pay 99.999% of my bills. For things like mortgages, rent and insurance it’s usually required to pay in this way. Basically, my monthly bills get paid without me even having to think about it.
He must have been homeless his entire adult life.
I’m mid 40s and didn’t get a credit card until I was 25. And I couldn’t even pay for any utilities, rent or car payments with it. And still can’t. Online bill pay wasn’t a thing until like after the recession.
Not homeless, just Northern European.
Password Manager
There will be lots of a useless accounts you have to make in life. Scale yourself. Many such accounts will not be optional. At least this one provides you with some value.
Hard why not both? You should use a password manager & create less accounts on platforms or sharing your phone/email if you can help it.
Sure, in general yes. But in reference to the comment, writing a check they would already have my name address and some reference to my bank account details even without the online account, which implies a high degree of trust.
If I need an account to read an article on a website? Then I’m not interested in reading your article.
V true. I was think more along the lines of any sort of cash, debit, check transfer that doesn’t involve accounts or folks skimming money off the top rather than checks specifically when interpretting the meme.
Password managers are good; but keeping track of passwords is not the main problem with making online accounts for everything.
Every account need a valid mail direction, ofte als with 2FA a phone number, both pretty easy to track in the network. Every website know your ISP, your public IP, your OS and a lot of other data which they can store and sell it to third parties for commercial reasons. Never create an account if it is not essential for you.
Pretty sure that a company that I would otherwise write checks to with my name address and phone number already has the lion’s share of those details. My IP address and operating system are the least of my concern in that case.
Hiding my IP address from the power company seems like a limited improvement.
…Does anyone have data on how many people still use checks?
If it’s any indication… the last time I ordered checks their website was littered with nuisance upsell popups that significantly hindered that task (felt kinda like Indiana Jones navigating booby traps), so I think the “check industry” (if that is a thing?) is getting desperate.
I use them all the time for contractors and architects. Nothing else …
I mean… The account exists if you log into it or not. You still need to keep track of it so that you’re paying into the correct account, and so that you know how much to pay.
Only you now have to talk to a person if you need to check or change anything.
Not the account for the random hotel or restaurant. “Pay with the O’Burger app!” “Collect 425 SkyPoints with a Platinum Membership!”
You don’t need an online account to buy food at a grocery, but if you had one I guarantee they’d spam the heck out of you, alongside whatever else they might do with your data.
I assumed this was in the context of paying recurring bills rather than shopping. Agree with you about stuff like groceries.
I mean, paying for Netflix with cash would definitely be a power move.
Utilities don’t have special offers that I know of. Check or online is very country dependent though.
I’m having a little trouble thinking of a service that would have automatic reminders but not require an account to access the service… Hotel? Something with layaway? Maybe car payments. Tuition too. Those don’t exactly seem like spurious account services though… Maybe the reminders are for pickup?
My VPN sometimes sends me reminders and special offers when my contact is almost up, for example. Mobile phone data usage reminders and warnings. Even just reminders that they’re going to be charging your card on payment day.
But mainly I don’t wanna leave home so paperless has already won for me lol
Ah, term based contracts, that’s the missing use case! Here I was forgetting not all contracts can be canceled whenever.
Okay Boomer.
fellas is it old-fashioned to not want more unnecessary tracking ?
A check has the same information as a basic account. Any sane company is probably storing it in the same backend too.
I’m old school, if I want to buy something, I go to the store with the ability to essentially examine the item, pay for it in cash and go home. Crating an account and paying with the card, with which also the bank knows what I had bought? WTF, capitalism surveillance shit.
Cash anyone?
You can over $5000 in cash with you at all times???
What does it even mean “one less account to track?” The money is still coming from a bank account, if you track the money in your account you would still have to account for a check, and it would be even worse if the check isn’t cashed right away.
Is it that you don’t have the monthly credit card bill if you send a check? But you’re spending the same amount of money regardless, checks are more like one-off credit card transactions, that don’t confirm payment like a credit card does. Checks are worse for the payment-neurotic. That’s maybe an argument for debit cards, it’s not an argument for checks.
Or just use a password manager
I think the last time I cashed a cheque my elderly mum wrote it. Had no idea before that people even still had cheque books after 2002 or something, but fortunately I didn’t have to find if there was a branch of my bank left within fifty miles because you can scan them in the app and pretend the other person sent you money in a normal way.
a check? ok bye, ive never understood what the fuck that shit should do… like what about cash or just a simple transfer? why do people use checks?
Hm, seems legit
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I keep all my bills organized in bookmarks. Keep track of their due dates on a Google Sheets budget. I’m not going back to checks…lol
Do you guys not have direct debit? All my bills are paid automatically. Manually paying my bills sounds like a pain and I would definitely forget/double pay if I needed to do it that way
We do. I never give companies power to pull money from my account. I realize it’s a convenience for some people in the way they budget, so no judging… I’ve just been screwed by it one too many times. I keep full control over my finances. I budget everything out on an Excel template I created. It actually doesn’t take much time at all …an hour or so once a week to get everything balanced and paid for the month.
where i live its hard to find places who even accept them. im not sure how i can get my bank to give me a check book if i really wanted to use them.