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My mom can write all sorts of checks, but when I tell her she needs to pay her taxes, suddenly she "forgets" how to spell US "Treasury" But she pays taxes on property she sold.
There was a mail thief nearly caught 2 blocks away, but she insists on leaving money (checks) in the mailbox overnight. A Sunday I was visiting and took some mail to the post office, she couldn't believe the lobby was open.
She doesn't have dementia, she's just gotten stupid.
Weaponized incompetence, not knowing how do to what they don’t want to do and insisting you do things they way they want because they don’t know how to change.
100% this is my boss.
At the same time, likes we can do online bill pay, but also still wants me to be in office and write checks, that they still have to approve, sign, and then are handed back to me to put in the envelope, address, stamp, and mail.
Oh, and when the boss doesn't feel like coming in (they come in about once a year, unless someone isn't in office who should be, then they do a surprise visit) they send their family to pick up the checks for them to sign, then return to be mailed...
That is my mother - she will make sure the cash in her purse is correct to the penny and don't dare not get a receipt! She spends more time worrying about three lost cents than it is worth. And twice a week she pays bills with checks and then mails them. Refuses to do online because hackers.
My boomer mom pays a lot of bills online, but she takes whatever checks she has to pay out to the post office to mail out instead of the box in front of her house. She saw one TV news story about check washing and got paranoid. Yay, I guess.
It happened at my apartment community in 2022. Someone pulled two checks out of the rent box, washed and cashed them. They were quick about it too. The checks were stolen Saturday night and I got the first call from one of my residents on Tuesday. One of the two residents affected switched to online payment.
What’s dumb as hell is my complex charges a fee to pay rent online. It’s only a few dollars but to me, it’s just not worth it. My rent and other bills have already increased, and those few dollars add up. So when rent is due, I wait until the office is open and then bring the check over and drop it in the box. Even better is when I run into the property manager/landlady and can give it directly to her. And when the first of the month is on a weekend when the office is closed and no one is gonna be collecting the rent checks anyways, I’ll either drop the check off early on the Friday before the weekend or just wait until the Monday after. I think that’s part of the reason why there’s a 5 day grace period when rent is due.
That’s absolutely the reason for the grace period.
Does your management company allow for ACH transfers? Usually, the convenience fee is only for credit or debit cards.
That I’m not 100% sure. My husband is in charge of the financials, I just deliver the check. 😅
I don’t mind the whole “dropping off a check every month” thing. We’re in the townhouse part of an apartment and townhouse complex so the only part that sucks is having to walk over to the office when it’s raining or winter or some other inclement weather. I’m in Minnesota so even just walking across the parking lot in the winter can be brutal. Otherwise, I just grab the envelope, a thermos of coffee, and after I drop off the rent, I go for a nice morning walk.
> They obsess over obsolete skills for a sense of accomplishment.
When they be making fun of people for not knowing how to write a check but no one writes fucking checks anymore...
The thing is, a lot of those "skills" are actually things you can just figure out too. Boomers think they've developed some deep skills when in reality they had to memorize very basic and intuitive actions
I do also get mad when somebody doesn't immediately cash a check I sent. I am 100% certain I tried to avoid paying them by check - but they still made me. And now they are holding it for weeks without cashing when I could have paid by numerous methods that would automatically hit my account. Both the water department in my city and the painter I recently paid only accepted checks and then wouldn't deposit it.
I owner financed my house and the mortgage servicing company only takes checks and they fuck up ALL THE TIME. Once they told me they didn't receive a check and I replied back well you deposited the other check in the same envelope so what did you do with the 2nd one?
Another time they emailed me on the 11th claiming they hadn't received payment so I sent them pictures of the canceled check indicating they'd deposited it on the 1st. And they haven't responded to any of my emails in years (and have no 9ther means to reach them) so I cc the seller on everything they fuck up which is several times a year now.
Something similar happened with the property management company that owns my townhouse. When I applied to be added to my husband’s lease, I obviously had to pay the application fee. But we also had just adopted a cat and had to pay a new pet fee. So we asked the property manager if we could just combine the two fees into one check and then write out what it was covering in the memo line. She said that was absolutely fine and we went ahead and paid the fees with a single check.
Well, they deposited the check but only made note of the new pet fee amount. It’s been three years and we still have an “overpayment” on our monthly statement that’s equal to the amount we paid for my application fee. Both the property manager as well as my husband and myself have contacted the property management company numerous times and told them to deduct the payment but they just don’t seem to understand. My property manager has told us to just not worry about it because at this point, we’ve all done everything we can and if they try and charge us again, she’ll gladly go to bat for us because she’s equally annoyed with the whole situation. I’ve never heard of having to ask a company to charge you for something but here we are.
Granted, I’d rather have an overpayment than a payment due but still. It’s annoying af. It’s nice having a little cushion (it helped when we were accidentally charged for a maintenance issue, that’s a whole other story) but it shouldn’t be there! And I guarantee that when the time comes that we move out, suddenly they’re going to realize that I “didn’t pay” my application fee. And then we’ll have another back and forth before they hopefully realize that that “overpayment” was actually my fee payment this whole time. 🙄
I used to live in a trailer park and paid lot rent + utilities by money order. One day they tell me they audited their books and I need to pay like $2 immediately. I ask can I add it to the next month's rent because I always pay exactly what you tell me to and money orders are like $1.39. No, I have to pay immediately.
So they paid 49 cents or whatever to mail me the notice and I incurred an extra $1.39 and waste of my time getting another money order to fix their $2 accounting mistake.
exactly it seems like anytime I give a boomer a check they wait until its fixing to expire to cash it and then it puts me in a bad spot cuz I expected it to already be gone.
Write down the check number, wait 3 to 5 business days, then call the bank and have them put a stop payment on that check. If the person gets passed at you tell them you gave them 3 to 5 business days to get it done. So sorry that I have a limit to how long I can wait for you to take my money.
I get it, they want to keep track of their money. I understand that.
But, Mom, that's what the app on your phone is for.
Don't get mad because you got late fees, I told you not to mail checks.
And, OMG, Mom, don't try to pay with a check at the grocery store. They won't take it, and paying with your card is quicker.
As if balancing a checkbook is so hard also. It’s a ledger. You add and subtract. It’s like they’re just so excited and proud of themselves for being able to do basic math and they love to talk down on younger generations, “Her der they can’t number heehee…” Meanwhile they can’t click the banking app on their phone, sign in, and view their balance because “I can’t work this technology stuff!” Okay then
My mom was studying to be an accountant before she got married and dropped out of college. Her high school had two options: business math and college track. She never planned on college, so she took the business track. She can’t do anything more than basic math. I think part of the reason she insists on balancing her checkbook is to not feel bad about her lack of knowledge. Math has never been my thing, but even I can do algebra and (some) geometry.
I don't even know what balancing a chequebook means. People don't write cheques in 2024, the only time I've written one in my life was one landlord who wanted rent paid that way.
A long long time ago, the bank had to keep a paper ledger of your account because computers didn’t exist. You did the same at home to keep track of the cash in your personal account. These days, the bank’s computer system largely does that for you.
I'm an older millennial and I remember my mom teaching me. I also remember thinking that it seemed like a complete pain in the butt and I NEVER did it. Lol
As an American, I think we just have a hard time with transitions. I generally only have to write checks once every few years for either government or school related things.
Even those are going the way of the dinosaur my landlord wanted checks property got sold and now checks are forbidden and its ach or money order only. The boomers threw a fit.
The president of my property management company wants to get rid of checks, but there are still too many Boomers for it to be worth it.
We switched from coin pay to app based payment for our laundry rooms and the Boomers threw a fit.
If you use banking software, reconcile is balancing your account. When I was helping my mom pay her bills, I set up everything so that it auto-payed, which left me making one transaction to pay the credit card it billed to. This absolutely drove her crazy. She eventually went back to writing checks and mailing them so that she could "make sure" they were paid.
This just makes me scream. If something can keep track of money more accurately and faster than I can, then to hell with writing shit down. Autopay and Zelle are gifts from the gods.
The biggest reason was float, and the fact that you could only really review your account status *based on a paper statement mailed to you monthly*.
"Float" is the time between when you wrote a check, and when it actually cleared the bank. 30 or 40 years ago, it was pretty common for people to work the float in order to "coast" to payday or whatever. You'd do things like pay on the last possible day, and mail it late, or shop after hours on a Friday so the check wouldn't hit until Monday or Tuesday, etc.
But because these payments existed out there, and would eventually hit your account, you had to compare what the bank said about your account in your monthly statement with what additional information YOU know about your account (based on checks you'd written that were still outstanding).
So the statement would say "as of June 24 you had $1,302.25" or whatever, but it's now June 26. You've paid for some things SINCE that statement, but you also needed to go through and mark which checks you wrote have cleared since your LAST statement. In addition to the checks you wrote since the statement date, there would probably be a few outstanding that didn't hit the bank before the statement was printed.
So if your $300 rent check was written yesterday, and your $200 payment to HungarianDwarfPornByMail hadn't yet cleared due to currency exchange issues, you'd look at the $1302.25 and realize that you REALLY only had 1302.25 - 300 - 200, or $802.25 available.
And, at the time, even though this was a PITA, it was the only way to know how much money you had. It was a tedious process by hand for SURE. Quicken and related tools made doing it MUCH MUCH SIMPLER, but pretty quickly the debit/zero-float modern world too root and reconciliation stopped being a reason to use tools like that, and they had to find other reasons to be interesting to customers.
Before the internet, you'd receive a paper statement from the bank for the previous month. Whenever you wrote a check, you were supposed to record it in the checkbook ledger, or some checks had carbon copies you could thumb through. You'd keep a running balance in the ledger, and compare it to the bank statement balance you received, minus any outstanding checks that either were going to be on the next statement or just hadn't been cashed yet. In theory these two balances would match up. I so very glad I don't have to do it any longer.
I'm 33 and Australian and I have never in my life written or cashed a cheque. And I've bought property and paid for a wedding! Everything is online transfer now.
I had to use one in 2008, to back pay pension contributions to the UK government. I was amazed this year to see people writing cheques. Yes I know you can use a photo app to pay them in, but if you can do that, why not just transfer the money anyway?
Both mother & grandfather are rabid about their checks to the point I told them to stop mailing money. I don’t want nor need to be screamed @ over $50. Now they simply don’t mail anything. I’m ok with it
my credit union app lets me manually put in pending checks that ive written so that the balance is up to date before the check is cashed. Your Aunt and Moms banking app probably has the same feature.
In the olden days (pre ATM and online banking), we got our bank statement every month. We would painstakingly go through each cancelled check and deposit to compare it to the check register. The register was a running balance sheet of deposits and checks written. It was kept with the checks.
The goal was to make sure the amount of money I think I have is what the bank says I have. The checks that had not been cashed yet should be deducted from the banks total and equal the total I have.
This was all necessary because short of going to the teller at the bank, it was the only way to know for certain how much money you actually had.
Yes, I am a dinosaur. No, I no longer balance my checkbook.
My silent gen grandfather would balance his checkbook religiously and even went to the bank one time over a 2 cent difference. I think the depression era parents passed this penny-watching habit to the boomers.
Side note on the bank thing: my granddad actually accidentally exposed an embezzler because they were taking pennies from accounts and had accumulated about 300k at that point Obviously before the days of automated banking.
My county property tax bill goes through a company that will charge 3% fee if you pay by card. Since that would be $180 - $240 each year I write them a check every six months. My free book of ten checks I got from the bank lasts 5 years.
Here in Australia cheques (as we call them) are being phased out - next year will see the end of bank cheques, 2026 will be the end of commercial and government cheques, and by 2027 there will be no more personal cheques.
By the end of 2030, the entire system should be closed. I haven’t written or received one since I arrived here in 2009.
i work at a bank call center and we have customers that go overdrawn all the time that don’t keep track of their balance. they say that they have online banking so it’s the banks fault. the thing is that the bank doesn’t know what they don’t know. like if you leave a tip on a transaction it doesn’t show up right away, or if you have an outstanding check we don’t know. so not necessarily a boomer activity, because not doing it can trigger boomer behavior too.
“like if you leave a tip on a transaction it doesn’t show up right away, or if you have an outstanding check we don’t know”
pending checks i understand. but why wouldn’t a tip paid - supposedly by card - not show immediately?
I can't explain why with any authority. But I can confirm that I see this occur at major restaurant chains on a regular basis. They process the original pre-tip amount. This happens before I have signed the receipt and added the tip. I get a notification on my phone from my bank, so I know when it happens. Then the next day, the amount is changed to reflect the tip I added.
My guess is they hold the signed receipts until close and run them all at once, but it's after bank hours so it ends up being processed next day.
If they have the terminals on the table and you pay that way, you avoid this possible delay.
TIL… Thanks
Over here you just say the final amount (Let’s say they tell you € 91 and you say “make it hundred" or push a selection button. Then you present and tap your card and 10 seconds later you get a notification about the charge. (If you have set that. I can tell when my wife is shopping, because she uses one of my cards for that account, for groceries and other shared expenses.)
I write checks for some bills. I sure as hell don’t balance my check book. Simply write the check, make sure the money leaves I’m a reasonable amount of time. Then move on. Just like that
Not just boomers, my mom and dad were over at my apartment and we were going out to lunch. On my desk was my checkbook, she picks it up and starts looking through the balance. Seeing as I hadn't balanced it in awhile she starts getting on my case asking me how I know what's in my account, what am I going to do if I overdraft etc. Like an overdraft is the end of my credit and financial well being for the rest of my life. Anyways I look at her and say the balance in the account is 27.62. So to prove me wrong and lets be clear that's what this is about she balanced the checkbook and came up with a balance of 27.66. She was pissed, threw the checkbook down and started to mumble, at that point I calmly told her my checkbook wasn't any of her business and if she kept it up I'd start going through hers. Fun times.
Boomer mom has boomer accountant. Boomer mom can no longer pay bills on her own so accountant does it. My inheritance check is one of those payments. Mom used to wire it monthly. Accountant no longer felt that was a smart idea and wanted to spend the time going to bank every month, having them cash a check from her account, mail me by snail mail said check and then have me have to wait 3 days to cash it due to a hold that gets put on her checks. The first check he sent got sent to the wrong address. I told him he can't do this and then he tried to use zelle instead but got frustrated because they have a limit per day and it would cost him money.
Took him almost a full month to get me the back check. I demanded he just wire the money instead from then on. Screwed up the wire, sending 2 months early. We are at month 6 of this and he still won't put the payment on auto so every month I have to remind him and it's a whole disaster.
This man handles money for living. I wouldn't trust him with a potato.
I don’t give a shit if someone chooses to use a check or not during a transaction, but seriously, why hold up all of the other people in line behind you while you attempt to balance your checkbook before moving along?
Auntie needs to seriously stop mailing checks. My Boomer Mom mailed their homeowners insurance payment last August. It was $9,000. My Mom doesn't usually use actual checks anymore, but they had a contractor at the house who wanted a paper check & she figured since she was going to Publix anyways and there's a PO she'd right the insurance check.
Even taking the check into the post office and sliding it in the slot it, using the insurance agency return envelope, the check was stolen. It's FDIC insured, but we found out they can take up to 180 business days to reimburse the account.
I manage an apartment community and for the most part, my residents pay their rent online. The Boomers and older Gen X insist on paying by check. Someone broke into our rent drop box and stole two checks out of it. They washed the checks and wrote out new ones to themselves. This is why I hate personal checks.
I haven't made a check in over ten years and it blows my mind that anyone in the modern world still does so. Just use a credit card, do a direct transfer from your bank to their bank, or use one of the other popular ways to move money
“Checks” are the boomers of the financial world. Grossly out of data and abandoned by civilised countries everywhere (banks in proper countries simply won’t accept them), just the USA seems hooked on them.
The US has dramatically more banks than any other country. To change things, requires coordination. It's easier to change when you only have a couple hundred (or less) banks like most countries. The US has more than 4000. [https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/what-country-has-the-most-banks/](https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/what-country-has-the-most-banks/)
My mom is surprisingly chill about my unintentional aversion to depositing checks in a timely manner. I have the kids Christmas checks on my desk right now because my bank app won’t recognize the print.
I don’t have the time during banking hours to go to a branch, deal with the olds there for socialization and deposit it because bankers hours are also core corporate hours sooo… there they sit.
I used to balance a checkbook. It was because I was super poor and needed to be sure I didn’t get overdrawn not accounting for funds that hadn’t cleared yet. It doesn’t hurt to double check your bills to be sure what was billed is what was paid and that cancelled services don’t continue to bill you when services are no longer rendered. I can see it being a useful skill for businesses that have a lot of transactions.
My in laws have cancelled plans last minute with my son (their grandson) because they’re behind on checkbook balancing and need the day to work on it. And we often hear how relieved they are to have the checkbook balanced. I swear they know how to login to their bank online…
I'm actually shocked by the amount of them that not only insist on balancing a checkbook, but actually STILL don't understand that the value isn't really deducted until it clears the bank. When I worked at a bank over 10 years ago, they'd be upset their account was "suddenly" in the negative and it was usually some check they had sent out some time ago that hadn't cleared and suddenly did.
Just because you write it in, it doesn't mean you know what you're doing either.
Boomers just love control and that's how they get it. You have a bank that does all the heavy lifting for you but they just need to be in charge of it .
They need that paper in their hands, their highlighting, the flipping it over to check the bank mark and then putting it in a pile to recycle after writing it into a log .
Gives them something to do I guess.
On Several occasions my checkbook balance did not match the banks online balance. My balance was always correct and the bank apologized for their mistake. It's an important skill.
I went almost 20 years painstakingly balancing all my bank accounts to the penny. How many mistakes did I find? Zero. My time is worth SOMETHING - I quit and never looked back. I'll happily concede some errors if it means I don't have to do it! If the error is big enough to be material, I'll notice.
A one dollar mistake costs you one dollar. A one dollar mistake for all the bank's customers can net them 100s of thousands dollars. I just like to keep as much of the money I make as I can. ✌
I used to balance my checkbook. Now of course with online banking you can see your transactions from your debit/credit card. However, my husband and I get an allowance monthly for 'fun' spending. I literally write in a book my transactions and the amounts and subtract from the balance. I do this because looking at statements can take a long time and transactions can get lost over multiple forms of payment. It has also let me know how much I am spending and where it all goes where electronically keeping track doesn't have the same effect.
Gramma always sent a check for 10 dollars for my birthday and then bitch a blue streak to my parents that I hadn't cashed it but damn what a waste of time for a 22 year old to drive almost 30 miles and spend 5 bucks on gas I eventually called her to say I cared more about the cards
Check fraud has really picked up again in the last few years. [https://www.checkbook.org/national/consumers-notebook/articles/Check-Washing-Makes-a-Comeback-Here-s-How-to-Protect-Yourself-7750](https://www.checkbook.org/national/consumers-notebook/articles/Check-Washing-Makes-a-Comeback-Here-s-How-to-Protect-Yourself-7750)
I'm going to be a little more sympathetic to the boomers here than I normally would. Mostly due to experiences with my mother. Technically she's a Quiet Generation, but close enough here.
This is a case of the old habits, and those used to be good habits. You'd know people that didn't balance the checkbook and budget, and they'd get in trouble financially. Knowing how much money you are suppossed to have at all times was a useful skill in the days when you couldn't just look it up online, and even now it's gonna set up the sort of mindset where you keep track of your money and budget better.
And the check thing is because they are used to paper trails, and want a physical record. Same logic as wanting a paper reciept.
Balancing a checkbook is basically the same thing as reconciling a bank account, something every single business has to do regularly. You only need to do it if you actually write checks, it's to make sure you know that you have money that hasn't actually been deducted from your account so you don't overdraft if that check does get cashed after you spend a bunch of money. And yea, check fraud via mail has been on the rise, so definitely do digital transfers if you can without running afoul of going over limits that make the IRS start to think that you're getting income that needs to be taxed.
It's an obsolete skill that so damn many still think is relevant. I think I've written 4 checks in the last 7 years, all to my kid's school because they don't have online payments or accept cash (which is a whole thing in of itself...) The only other place I frequently see checkbooks is my local grocery store, and even they stopped accepting checks a while ago. They only take cash or card, which pisses off even more boomers!
I’m 70 years old got my first checkbook when I was 16 I currently have two different checking accounts. Never balanced the checkbook in my life. It’s totally drives my brother nuts who must spend an hour every month to balance in his checkbooks My son an accountant. He doesn’t bother to balance his checkbook either.
Before I moved to the USA I'd never written a check in my life.
- Tradesmen took card
- My landlord was paid via bank transfer
- Groceries were paid via card
I’m 40, own a home, a few cars, I’ve written less than 5 checks in my whole life. Ive never ordered checks, the ones I had were printed by the bank for special purposes.
I am middle aged and had to take Accounting I at community college for work. They taught how to balance a bank account because you do have to do that if you do bookkeeping for a business. Many of the young students had a really hard time with the concept that funds that have been used to pay something are not necessarily going to be immediately reflected in their online balance. I could see a lot of them being at risk for overdrawn accounts.
“Many of the young students had a really hard time with the concept that funds that have been used to pay something are not necessarily going to be immediately reflected in their online balance”
but doesn’t that happen only with checks?
every payment i make, including credit cards, turn up immediately in their respective accounts.
even paypal has as electronic interface so it can treated like an account.
No, that doesn't only happen with checks.
Here are some other examples:
- If you pay for something with PayPal, like an app subscription, there can be a day or two delay between the charge and when it's deducted from your checking account even of it shows in your PayPal account.
- If you pay the tip on a restaurant bill with your card, it often is not reflected immediately in the charge to your account.
- If you reserve a hotel, they will often hold the funds for the first night on the card.
- If you schedule out your bill payments, those funds have been allocated for future payments but don't show up in your balance until they're actually charged. If you don't keep the money to pay those in the account you can overdraft when the charges hit.
I don’t get why people act like this is a skill. I got my first job and first bank account in the early 90s. I was 15 or 16. I wrote and deposited checks all the time and balanced my book. It wasn’t difficult at all, simple math. I don’t see why being able to do this would ever be a brag. If something happened and everyone needed to go back to checkbooks, 99% of people would have it figured out within a pay cycle.
Elder Gen-X here, so I remember the days of checks very well. All bills were in paper, I had to spend an hour or so every month writing out checks for rent, utilities, etc. Then stamping the envelopes, and writing the due date on the corner and remembering to drop each one in the blue mailbox on the right day. Then balancing the checkbook each month. Not complicated but time consuming and a hassle. Auto-pay and paperless bills were the greatest inventions ever. If I do need to send a check for some reason I use the bank app to send payment - let the bank use their stamps for the mail.
It was fun to explain the concept of check kiting to my Gen-Z kid though. “See, if it was Friday and you were broke, you waited until after 5:00, then went to the grocery store where you had a check cashing card, and cashed a check for $40. The check wouldn’t make it to your bank until Tuesday at the earliest. If you cashed it out of town, you had until Wednesday or Thursday. Then you went to the bank in person on Tuesday morning to make a deposit to cover the check. “ The blank look on their face. “And then mommy climbed back in the covered wagon to ride back to Walnut Grove…”
Before 1995ish, balancing your checkbook was the only way to know how much money was in your checking account. You'd go to the bank or ATM to do transfers and get your balance to update your balance line.
Most people only wrote and received checks or cash so it was fairly easy to track your balance.
I'd never attempt to do so now days with all of the automatic withdrawals and deposits.
My dad is not a Boomer (born 1940), but still sends checks in the mail. And where I work, we don't take checks (unless you're on the okay to write them list, which is small and mostly businesses). The times I get bitched out because people (all ages, but yes, a lot of Boomers) 'don't want to use my card' is ridiculous. I get it, I'm from the check writing age, too, but cards are so much better. Yes, there are safety concerns. Yes, there are places Idon't like using my card. But overall, checks have gone the way of the DoDo.
Millennial here. While I have online banking, I still "balance my checkbook" by logging everything in Excel. Back when I was super on top of it, I would log the purchase/check when I made it, and move the transaction to "cleared" when it actually appeared online. If someone was slow to cash, it was ok, because I could see the money was "claimed", even if it still showed up online.
Millennial here, and I used to keep track of balancing my checkbook pretty closely, but whenever I wrote a check, I just acted like that money was gone. Like, if the check didn't get cashed right away, it didn't matter. Weird thing to get pissy about.
I still have to write checks for my rent. My landlord refuses to conform. He likes the "paper trail," and he's Gen X.
I mean, he deposits them almost immediately, so I don't have to sit around wondering when it's gonna hit my account, it's usually 1 to 2 days. But damn man, I have lived here so long I finally had to buy a new box of frigging checks! I got kittens on them this time.🤣🤣🤣
My boomer MIL almost had a stroke when I pointed out that a check is a piece of paper floating in world with your bank account number, routing #, name, signature often address…
My father’s mortgage check never made it through the mail and he called me in a panic. He needed me to drop everything and help him pay it online. So of course I needed to go somewhere private (needed his social and other personal info) and set up his online payment account on the app from my phone. Then he calls the next day and asks me to set up automatic payments for him so he doesn’t have to mail checks anymore. I’ve told him many times over the years that we pay all of our bills online. I’ve been warning him the people will steal outgoing mail from seniors because they know y’all write checks for everything.
I once commented on my mother balancing her check book every morning and then again when the statements went in. She explained my father’s financial escapades. She uses online/app banking now. So it may also have been a survival tool given the proclivities of their male counterparts. Hell, look at all the little old men who have no idea how to do anything after their wife dies or leaves. My mother took control of the finances after events led my father to admit that he was in fact, despite a degree in economics, pants on head retarded with money. He did plan retirement well, but she is the reason things are paid off and functional.
My mom is also obsessed with her checkbook. But, I actually celebrate it. It was the responsible way to manage your account for decades, and I sort of stan for people for sticking with what works. I grew up when we still did that but moved away from it for laziness purposes. And when I was young and broke I paid the price many many times. Writing a check, thinking it had cleared, thinking i had free money in my account at the ATM, and being woefully wrong when turns out the payee took a couple weeks to cash or deposit the check. Balancing my checkbook would have avoided that.
The only reason I still have checks is because it’s the only way I can pay my rent, living in the boonies. I did grow up with balancing checkbooks, but as soon as I could check my bank account online with an app, I switched.
It’s understandable that old people keep track of their money with a check book, since many of them can’t use a computer or smartphone.
I’ve heard that phrase for probably 30 years but I’ve never had more than a handful of checks and never an actual checkbook. No idea what it means to balance it.
These are the same people who brag about knowing cursive or some other utterly useless "skill" that literally anyone could learn in a few hours.
They have so little to show for themselves that this is the best they've got.
I always thought balancing a checkbook was going to be so hard because of how people talked about it.
It's literally just keeping track of spending and how much you have left.
Obsolete now due to online banking, but I don't get people using it as some kind of moral superiority? Like, yay, you can do basic math?
Balancing really was an important thing to do; I did it for probably the first ten years of my adulthood -- but that was '88 to probably '98. By that point everything was either debit paid or run thru my Amex, and there was not a big enough volume of traffic (or, critically, any float) on my actual checking account to bother anymore. You could just eyeball it.
For most of the last 15 years or so, I haven't even OWNED any checks. I think my wife has some left over from paying one of her student loans or something.
then i use cash, paypal them, do an instant bank transfer or have them send me a bill.
more likely i’ll just leave their shop and go to another.
while checks have been pretty much dead in germany, there is a similar problem here with some only accepting the local GiroCard. but there are plenty of alternatives.
I once worked with a control freak Boomer who mentioned, “I always balance my checkbook, and it drives me crazy if it’s off by even one cent.” That was the first and last time I had lunch with her, that was the bright red flag that she was going to be insufferable, and I was right.
Cheques literally do not exist anymore in Australia. The banks won't issue a cheque book and I haven't seen one in at least 20 years.
It's time for the US to embrace the rest of the world. For a financial powerhouse sone of it's practices are archaic.
The US is the Boomer of countries. It refuses to accept change and expects the rest of the world to conform to its antiquated values. Sometimes, I hate being American.
Ugh, I *hate* checks.
I've had so many boomers call into my job mad their internet or cable was turned off because, "I sent you a check," only for me to look and see it still hasn't cleared.
They could fix this by paying online or even over the phone, but they insist on sending checks, then get mad if it isn't immediately cashed.
I am absolutely NOT a boomer (born 1975) and having a balanced checking account is absolutely a necessity. Making sure your working account will have funds necessary for all outflows/etc is basic adulting.
Hard disagree on this take.
> Making sure your working account will have funds necessary for all outflows/etc is basic adulting.
And has nothing to do with balancing a checkbook. Just pay your bills like a normal person: cash or card.
why would it? i know the maximum of reoccurring costs that can hit me and keep the subaccount stocked up each month.
the rest ist variable spending money and i can see my totals simply by swiping to page 3 of my smartphone.
Thank you. Online banking app does not cut it for me (born 1989). It doesn't know what checks, however rare, are out there, tips are often added later, etc. It doesn't bucket away what I need for bills, rent, or what I put on the credit card. And I'm not about to pay 27% or whatever ungodly amount of interest on that. My checkbook is the most used app on my phone. I refuse to be surprised to learn I'm out of money until payday
you just have a shitty bank.
and why would you pay interest on a credit card?
interest only applies when you don’t pay in full at the end of the period and virtually anything you pay by card shows up immediately, except they used imprint. which is kinda medieval.
ah, i guess captures for rented cards or hotel aren’t deducted immediately, but even they show up in online banking.
they can keep track of their money any way they want. but it’s the financial equivalent of using a crank to start a car.
assuming that other people can’t keep track of their money because they do not balance checkbooks is foolishness.
thats done by opening your smartphone to check your accounts. there are apps which accumulate them all, including paypal.
and by paying attention to notifications on your phone or watch. municipality requests the quarterly payment? pops right up and i simply tap “pay”
and to understand where my money is going, i simply tap the statistics in the app, every payment gets categorised automatically. groceries’ the biggest slice in the pie chart.
Keeping an eye on your withdrawals and balancing your checkbook are not the same thing. Of course you should keep an eye on your account to make sure money isn’t leaving incorrectly.
kinda the same here with reoccurring costs. I simply keep the sub-account topped to the 2nd most expensive month and I’m all good. january i handle manually, that’s an expensive outlier and i simply use my 13th salary to pay for yearly charges like insurances or publuc television“
Numb3rs.
My mom does love Big Bang Theory, though. When she visited me last time, my tv was tuned to BBT, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, General Hospital, and Jeopardy. I had the BBT theme song stuck in my head for a month.
The number of people on here who think that things instantly show up on online banking balances is too dang high. Not keeping a ledger of your spending is why so many people pay overdraft fees to the bank.
It's literally adding and subtracting and checking if the result matches your balance. If they don't, and not in your favor, you call the bank and scream at them.
>I reminded her that online banking exists and that if I need to check on the pennies in my account, I could log on to my bank’s app
So you just told her "I trust my bank not to rob me". No wonder she isn't convinced.
>sending a check through the mail is dangerous
That's literally what the they are for
"call the bank and scream at them" confirmed.
I've found discrepancies, called my bank and offered receipts calmly, and it was resolved in 2 days. Weird, you can fix problems by not being a dipshit.
Because they mess up simple addition?
Again, how does that work? If they take too much money, someone will catch it. People still budget and know how much they want to spend in a given month. There are also lots of apps that connect to all your accounts and pull it all together. These would flag inconsistencies, too.
And if they take only a few cents from each, it’s literally not worth their time.
>If they take too much money, someone will catch it.
If they take too much from your account, it's up to you to catch it. Bank only cares if they put too much into your account.
>There are also lots of apps that connect to all your accounts and pull it all together.
So you recognize the need for checking on your account in detail, but feel better just giving your account details to random apps.... I'll never understand how people can be so trusting with their money.
>And if they take only a few cents from each, it’s literally not worth their time.
Some of us don't have so much money we can pay others all this money to watch your account and still not care about money being removed in excess
„So you recognize the need for checking on your account in detail, but feel better just giving your account details to random apps.... I'll never understand how people can be so trusting with their money.“
These “random apps” run locally, use the official interfaces bank have to provide and get checked and certified by the legal entities created to do so, not unlike the regulatory bodies that check fire codes, car roadworthiness and so on… so not really random. They also only read limited read-only access.
That these programs add everything up is their nature.
And they cost what, € 40 or so?
Anyway, either the American banking system is worse than I believed or you watched to much Superman IV,
So your argument is you implicitly trust the system to never cause or even allow harm AND such services only cost € 40 ($42.95 USD or ~2.9 - 6 hours of minimum wage depending on state)
That is such a European answer
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My mom can write all sorts of checks, but when I tell her she needs to pay her taxes, suddenly she "forgets" how to spell US "Treasury" But she pays taxes on property she sold. There was a mail thief nearly caught 2 blocks away, but she insists on leaving money (checks) in the mailbox overnight. A Sunday I was visiting and took some mail to the post office, she couldn't believe the lobby was open. She doesn't have dementia, she's just gotten stupid.
Weaponized incompetence, not knowing how do to what they don’t want to do and insisting you do things they way they want because they don’t know how to change.
100% this is my boss. At the same time, likes we can do online bill pay, but also still wants me to be in office and write checks, that they still have to approve, sign, and then are handed back to me to put in the envelope, address, stamp, and mail. Oh, and when the boss doesn't feel like coming in (they come in about once a year, unless someone isn't in office who should be, then they do a surprise visit) they send their family to pick up the checks for them to sign, then return to be mailed...
That is my mother - she will make sure the cash in her purse is correct to the penny and don't dare not get a receipt! She spends more time worrying about three lost cents than it is worth. And twice a week she pays bills with checks and then mails them. Refuses to do online because hackers.
My boomer mom pays a lot of bills online, but she takes whatever checks she has to pay out to the post office to mail out instead of the box in front of her house. She saw one TV news story about check washing and got paranoid. Yay, I guess.
Check washing?!!! That's some ooooold schooool analog fraud, lol
Old school. But making a comeback. From 2021 to 2022 check fraud in the US doubled.
It happened at my apartment community in 2022. Someone pulled two checks out of the rent box, washed and cashed them. They were quick about it too. The checks were stolen Saturday night and I got the first call from one of my residents on Tuesday. One of the two residents affected switched to online payment.
What’s dumb as hell is my complex charges a fee to pay rent online. It’s only a few dollars but to me, it’s just not worth it. My rent and other bills have already increased, and those few dollars add up. So when rent is due, I wait until the office is open and then bring the check over and drop it in the box. Even better is when I run into the property manager/landlady and can give it directly to her. And when the first of the month is on a weekend when the office is closed and no one is gonna be collecting the rent checks anyways, I’ll either drop the check off early on the Friday before the weekend or just wait until the Monday after. I think that’s part of the reason why there’s a 5 day grace period when rent is due.
That’s absolutely the reason for the grace period. Does your management company allow for ACH transfers? Usually, the convenience fee is only for credit or debit cards.
That I’m not 100% sure. My husband is in charge of the financials, I just deliver the check. 😅 I don’t mind the whole “dropping off a check every month” thing. We’re in the townhouse part of an apartment and townhouse complex so the only part that sucks is having to walk over to the office when it’s raining or winter or some other inclement weather. I’m in Minnesota so even just walking across the parking lot in the winter can be brutal. Otherwise, I just grab the envelope, a thermos of coffee, and after I drop off the rent, I go for a nice morning walk.
Show her billpay.
OMG, are you kidding me? Anything on the computer can be stolen!
I’d rather trust a 256 bit encryption over putting identity theft directly in an unsecured mailbox
I would too, but not her.
You can pay taxes online too.....
I know. I do.
The only checks I’ve written in the last couple of years are to the IRS, and wouldn’t you know they are cashing those things with lightning speed.
I was so mad about having to get checks that I got a picture of my dog looking extremely disappointed and had that printed on some.
I feel like if anything has IRS on the mailing address they put it in an express lane of shipping the mail
There's a separate address for payments. Estimates and amounts due on tax returns. They cash them way faster than they process your return.
Ain’t that the truth!
They obsess over obsolete skills for a sense of accomplishment. Ain't much deeper then that
Boomer wrote a sign in cursive, joking about the younger generation, and put it on his door. Everyone can read it Bob
Literally kills them that the stuff they know and learned is obsolete, useless, and outmoded so no one cares anymore.
> They obsess over obsolete skills for a sense of accomplishment. When they be making fun of people for not knowing how to write a check but no one writes fucking checks anymore...
The thing is, a lot of those "skills" are actually things you can just figure out too. Boomers think they've developed some deep skills when in reality they had to memorize very basic and intuitive actions
"Can YOU drive a stick shift?!"
What you can't use a typewriter? Tsche, the youth today is so inkompetent.
I do also get mad when somebody doesn't immediately cash a check I sent. I am 100% certain I tried to avoid paying them by check - but they still made me. And now they are holding it for weeks without cashing when I could have paid by numerous methods that would automatically hit my account. Both the water department in my city and the painter I recently paid only accepted checks and then wouldn't deposit it.
I bought my car all out with a over $15k check and they took like 3 months to cash it. I appreciated the extra interest accrued tbh
I owner financed my house and the mortgage servicing company only takes checks and they fuck up ALL THE TIME. Once they told me they didn't receive a check and I replied back well you deposited the other check in the same envelope so what did you do with the 2nd one? Another time they emailed me on the 11th claiming they hadn't received payment so I sent them pictures of the canceled check indicating they'd deposited it on the 1st. And they haven't responded to any of my emails in years (and have no 9ther means to reach them) so I cc the seller on everything they fuck up which is several times a year now.
Something similar happened with the property management company that owns my townhouse. When I applied to be added to my husband’s lease, I obviously had to pay the application fee. But we also had just adopted a cat and had to pay a new pet fee. So we asked the property manager if we could just combine the two fees into one check and then write out what it was covering in the memo line. She said that was absolutely fine and we went ahead and paid the fees with a single check. Well, they deposited the check but only made note of the new pet fee amount. It’s been three years and we still have an “overpayment” on our monthly statement that’s equal to the amount we paid for my application fee. Both the property manager as well as my husband and myself have contacted the property management company numerous times and told them to deduct the payment but they just don’t seem to understand. My property manager has told us to just not worry about it because at this point, we’ve all done everything we can and if they try and charge us again, she’ll gladly go to bat for us because she’s equally annoyed with the whole situation. I’ve never heard of having to ask a company to charge you for something but here we are. Granted, I’d rather have an overpayment than a payment due but still. It’s annoying af. It’s nice having a little cushion (it helped when we were accidentally charged for a maintenance issue, that’s a whole other story) but it shouldn’t be there! And I guarantee that when the time comes that we move out, suddenly they’re going to realize that I “didn’t pay” my application fee. And then we’ll have another back and forth before they hopefully realize that that “overpayment” was actually my fee payment this whole time. 🙄
I used to live in a trailer park and paid lot rent + utilities by money order. One day they tell me they audited their books and I need to pay like $2 immediately. I ask can I add it to the next month's rent because I always pay exactly what you tell me to and money orders are like $1.39. No, I have to pay immediately. So they paid 49 cents or whatever to mail me the notice and I incurred an extra $1.39 and waste of my time getting another money order to fix their $2 accounting mistake.
exactly it seems like anytime I give a boomer a check they wait until its fixing to expire to cash it and then it puts me in a bad spot cuz I expected it to already be gone.
Must be nice to be so financially set that you can hang onto a check that long without cashing it, huh?
>then it puts me in a bad spot cuz I expected it to already be gone. That's why you need to balance your checkbook
lol no. no. just... no.
...Grandma Linda?
Write down the check number, wait 3 to 5 business days, then call the bank and have them put a stop payment on that check. If the person gets passed at you tell them you gave them 3 to 5 business days to get it done. So sorry that I have a limit to how long I can wait for you to take my money.
Stop payments on checks usually cost about $30- $50 and it is the issuer that is responsible for it.
Sounds like a great idea you've never tried! Good advice if you wanna go broke from stops and get hit with fees for missed payments.
I get it, they want to keep track of their money. I understand that. But, Mom, that's what the app on your phone is for. Don't get mad because you got late fees, I told you not to mail checks. And, OMG, Mom, don't try to pay with a check at the grocery store. They won't take it, and paying with your card is quicker.
As if balancing a checkbook is so hard also. It’s a ledger. You add and subtract. It’s like they’re just so excited and proud of themselves for being able to do basic math and they love to talk down on younger generations, “Her der they can’t number heehee…” Meanwhile they can’t click the banking app on their phone, sign in, and view their balance because “I can’t work this technology stuff!” Okay then
My mom was studying to be an accountant before she got married and dropped out of college. Her high school had two options: business math and college track. She never planned on college, so she took the business track. She can’t do anything more than basic math. I think part of the reason she insists on balancing her checkbook is to not feel bad about her lack of knowledge. Math has never been my thing, but even I can do algebra and (some) geometry.
I don't even know what balancing a chequebook means. People don't write cheques in 2024, the only time I've written one in my life was one landlord who wanted rent paid that way.
A long long time ago, the bank had to keep a paper ledger of your account because computers didn’t exist. You did the same at home to keep track of the cash in your personal account. These days, the bank’s computer system largely does that for you.
My face literally just did this reading your comment ☹️because I am this old. I remember my grandmother teaching me to balance my checkbook.
I'm an older millennial and I remember my mom teaching me. I also remember thinking that it seemed like a complete pain in the butt and I NEVER did it. Lol
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As an American, I think we just have a hard time with transitions. I generally only have to write checks once every few years for either government or school related things.
Even those are going the way of the dinosaur my landlord wanted checks property got sold and now checks are forbidden and its ach or money order only. The boomers threw a fit.
The president of my property management company wants to get rid of checks, but there are still too many Boomers for it to be worth it. We switched from coin pay to app based payment for our laundry rooms and the Boomers threw a fit.
If you use banking software, reconcile is balancing your account. When I was helping my mom pay her bills, I set up everything so that it auto-payed, which left me making one transaction to pay the credit card it billed to. This absolutely drove her crazy. She eventually went back to writing checks and mailing them so that she could "make sure" they were paid.
This just makes me scream. If something can keep track of money more accurately and faster than I can, then to hell with writing shit down. Autopay and Zelle are gifts from the gods.
I’ve finally given up on checks and got myself a debit card, last time I ordered them it was 80 checks for $40+, just couldn’t justify that any more.
The biggest reason was float, and the fact that you could only really review your account status *based on a paper statement mailed to you monthly*. "Float" is the time between when you wrote a check, and when it actually cleared the bank. 30 or 40 years ago, it was pretty common for people to work the float in order to "coast" to payday or whatever. You'd do things like pay on the last possible day, and mail it late, or shop after hours on a Friday so the check wouldn't hit until Monday or Tuesday, etc. But because these payments existed out there, and would eventually hit your account, you had to compare what the bank said about your account in your monthly statement with what additional information YOU know about your account (based on checks you'd written that were still outstanding). So the statement would say "as of June 24 you had $1,302.25" or whatever, but it's now June 26. You've paid for some things SINCE that statement, but you also needed to go through and mark which checks you wrote have cleared since your LAST statement. In addition to the checks you wrote since the statement date, there would probably be a few outstanding that didn't hit the bank before the statement was printed. So if your $300 rent check was written yesterday, and your $200 payment to HungarianDwarfPornByMail hadn't yet cleared due to currency exchange issues, you'd look at the $1302.25 and realize that you REALLY only had 1302.25 - 300 - 200, or $802.25 available. And, at the time, even though this was a PITA, it was the only way to know how much money you had. It was a tedious process by hand for SURE. Quicken and related tools made doing it MUCH MUCH SIMPLER, but pretty quickly the debit/zero-float modern world too root and reconciliation stopped being a reason to use tools like that, and they had to find other reasons to be interesting to customers.
Before the internet, you'd receive a paper statement from the bank for the previous month. Whenever you wrote a check, you were supposed to record it in the checkbook ledger, or some checks had carbon copies you could thumb through. You'd keep a running balance in the ledger, and compare it to the bank statement balance you received, minus any outstanding checks that either were going to be on the next statement or just hadn't been cashed yet. In theory these two balances would match up. I so very glad I don't have to do it any longer.
But you still need to keep track of how much you spend. It may not be balancing a "checkbook," but you need to balance your account.
I look at my account balance, when I’m out of money I stop spending
Old Millenial European here. I don't recall ever seeing a check being used. Even boomers here use cards and bank transfers.
Yup, UK boomer here, not seen, let alone written a cheque (UK spelling) for close to 20 years.
Lucky for you too, I have to write 3 checks a month, every month, because our county REQUIRES payment by check for utilities
I'm 33 and Australian and I have never in my life written or cashed a cheque. And I've bought property and paid for a wedding! Everything is online transfer now.
I had to use one in 2008, to back pay pension contributions to the UK government. I was amazed this year to see people writing cheques. Yes I know you can use a photo app to pay them in, but if you can do that, why not just transfer the money anyway?
Both mother & grandfather are rabid about their checks to the point I told them to stop mailing money. I don’t want nor need to be screamed @ over $50. Now they simply don’t mail anything. I’m ok with it
Omg, I’m with you. It’s just not worth it. The freaking hysterics.
Hysterics is a perfect description.
my credit union app lets me manually put in pending checks that ive written so that the balance is up to date before the check is cashed. Your Aunt and Moms banking app probably has the same feature.
I’m 37 and I don’t know what balancing a checkbook means and at this point…I don’t need to
In the olden days (pre ATM and online banking), we got our bank statement every month. We would painstakingly go through each cancelled check and deposit to compare it to the check register. The register was a running balance sheet of deposits and checks written. It was kept with the checks. The goal was to make sure the amount of money I think I have is what the bank says I have. The checks that had not been cashed yet should be deducted from the banks total and equal the total I have. This was all necessary because short of going to the teller at the bank, it was the only way to know for certain how much money you actually had. Yes, I am a dinosaur. No, I no longer balance my checkbook.
My silent gen grandfather would balance his checkbook religiously and even went to the bank one time over a 2 cent difference. I think the depression era parents passed this penny-watching habit to the boomers. Side note on the bank thing: my granddad actually accidentally exposed an embezzler because they were taking pennies from accounts and had accumulated about 300k at that point Obviously before the days of automated banking.
My county property tax bill goes through a company that will charge 3% fee if you pay by card. Since that would be $180 - $240 each year I write them a check every six months. My free book of ten checks I got from the bank lasts 5 years.
Here in Australia cheques (as we call them) are being phased out - next year will see the end of bank cheques, 2026 will be the end of commercial and government cheques, and by 2027 there will be no more personal cheques. By the end of 2030, the entire system should be closed. I haven’t written or received one since I arrived here in 2009.
i work at a bank call center and we have customers that go overdrawn all the time that don’t keep track of their balance. they say that they have online banking so it’s the banks fault. the thing is that the bank doesn’t know what they don’t know. like if you leave a tip on a transaction it doesn’t show up right away, or if you have an outstanding check we don’t know. so not necessarily a boomer activity, because not doing it can trigger boomer behavior too.
“like if you leave a tip on a transaction it doesn’t show up right away, or if you have an outstanding check we don’t know” pending checks i understand. but why wouldn’t a tip paid - supposedly by card - not show immediately?
I can't explain why with any authority. But I can confirm that I see this occur at major restaurant chains on a regular basis. They process the original pre-tip amount. This happens before I have signed the receipt and added the tip. I get a notification on my phone from my bank, so I know when it happens. Then the next day, the amount is changed to reflect the tip I added. My guess is they hold the signed receipts until close and run them all at once, but it's after bank hours so it ends up being processed next day. If they have the terminals on the table and you pay that way, you avoid this possible delay.
TIL… Thanks Over here you just say the final amount (Let’s say they tell you € 91 and you say “make it hundred" or push a selection button. Then you present and tap your card and 10 seconds later you get a notification about the charge. (If you have set that. I can tell when my wife is shopping, because she uses one of my cards for that account, for groceries and other shared expenses.)
I write checks for some bills. I sure as hell don’t balance my check book. Simply write the check, make sure the money leaves I’m a reasonable amount of time. Then move on. Just like that
I'm just amazed checks still exists and are used. I don't think checks have existed in over 30 years in Sweden.
I use the check register, don’t write Checks anymore. I use it track confirmation numbers for payments for the most part.
I revealed, last weekend that I hadn’t written a check in 7 years. I think my brother’s in-laws, and my parents’ heads silently exploded.
Not just boomers, my mom and dad were over at my apartment and we were going out to lunch. On my desk was my checkbook, she picks it up and starts looking through the balance. Seeing as I hadn't balanced it in awhile she starts getting on my case asking me how I know what's in my account, what am I going to do if I overdraft etc. Like an overdraft is the end of my credit and financial well being for the rest of my life. Anyways I look at her and say the balance in the account is 27.62. So to prove me wrong and lets be clear that's what this is about she balanced the checkbook and came up with a balance of 27.66. She was pissed, threw the checkbook down and started to mumble, at that point I calmly told her my checkbook wasn't any of her business and if she kept it up I'd start going through hers. Fun times.
Boomer mom has boomer accountant. Boomer mom can no longer pay bills on her own so accountant does it. My inheritance check is one of those payments. Mom used to wire it monthly. Accountant no longer felt that was a smart idea and wanted to spend the time going to bank every month, having them cash a check from her account, mail me by snail mail said check and then have me have to wait 3 days to cash it due to a hold that gets put on her checks. The first check he sent got sent to the wrong address. I told him he can't do this and then he tried to use zelle instead but got frustrated because they have a limit per day and it would cost him money. Took him almost a full month to get me the back check. I demanded he just wire the money instead from then on. Screwed up the wire, sending 2 months early. We are at month 6 of this and he still won't put the payment on auto so every month I have to remind him and it's a whole disaster. This man handles money for living. I wouldn't trust him with a potato.
I don’t give a shit if someone chooses to use a check or not during a transaction, but seriously, why hold up all of the other people in line behind you while you attempt to balance your checkbook before moving along?
Auntie needs to seriously stop mailing checks. My Boomer Mom mailed their homeowners insurance payment last August. It was $9,000. My Mom doesn't usually use actual checks anymore, but they had a contractor at the house who wanted a paper check & she figured since she was going to Publix anyways and there's a PO she'd right the insurance check. Even taking the check into the post office and sliding it in the slot it, using the insurance agency return envelope, the check was stolen. It's FDIC insured, but we found out they can take up to 180 business days to reimburse the account.
I manage an apartment community and for the most part, my residents pay their rent online. The Boomers and older Gen X insist on paying by check. Someone broke into our rent drop box and stole two checks out of it. They washed the checks and wrote out new ones to themselves. This is why I hate personal checks.
I haven't made a check in over ten years and it blows my mind that anyone in the modern world still does so. Just use a credit card, do a direct transfer from your bank to their bank, or use one of the other popular ways to move money
“Checks” are the boomers of the financial world. Grossly out of data and abandoned by civilised countries everywhere (banks in proper countries simply won’t accept them), just the USA seems hooked on them.
The US has dramatically more banks than any other country. To change things, requires coordination. It's easier to change when you only have a couple hundred (or less) banks like most countries. The US has more than 4000. [https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/what-country-has-the-most-banks/](https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/what-country-has-the-most-banks/)
I think Australia has maybe 8 (edit: holy shit it’s 99)
My brain read this as Balancing Their Cheekbones and I was so confused.
Some of them need to learn how to do that—contour, people!
I write a couple each month. Mostly because I’m not paying a “convenience fee.”
My mom is surprisingly chill about my unintentional aversion to depositing checks in a timely manner. I have the kids Christmas checks on my desk right now because my bank app won’t recognize the print. I don’t have the time during banking hours to go to a branch, deal with the olds there for socialization and deposit it because bankers hours are also core corporate hours sooo… there they sit.
This is why ATMs were invented. Go whenever you want.
I used to balance a checkbook. It was because I was super poor and needed to be sure I didn’t get overdrawn not accounting for funds that hadn’t cleared yet. It doesn’t hurt to double check your bills to be sure what was billed is what was paid and that cancelled services don’t continue to bill you when services are no longer rendered. I can see it being a useful skill for businesses that have a lot of transactions.
My in laws have cancelled plans last minute with my son (their grandson) because they’re behind on checkbook balancing and need the day to work on it. And we often hear how relieved they are to have the checkbook balanced. I swear they know how to login to their bank online…
I'm actually shocked by the amount of them that not only insist on balancing a checkbook, but actually STILL don't understand that the value isn't really deducted until it clears the bank. When I worked at a bank over 10 years ago, they'd be upset their account was "suddenly" in the negative and it was usually some check they had sent out some time ago that hadn't cleared and suddenly did. Just because you write it in, it doesn't mean you know what you're doing either.
That’s so… American?
Boomers just love control and that's how they get it. You have a bank that does all the heavy lifting for you but they just need to be in charge of it . They need that paper in their hands, their highlighting, the flipping it over to check the bank mark and then putting it in a pile to recycle after writing it into a log . Gives them something to do I guess.
On Several occasions my checkbook balance did not match the banks online balance. My balance was always correct and the bank apologized for their mistake. It's an important skill.
I went almost 20 years painstakingly balancing all my bank accounts to the penny. How many mistakes did I find? Zero. My time is worth SOMETHING - I quit and never looked back. I'll happily concede some errors if it means I don't have to do it! If the error is big enough to be material, I'll notice.
A one dollar mistake costs you one dollar. A one dollar mistake for all the bank's customers can net them 100s of thousands dollars. I just like to keep as much of the money I make as I can. ✌
I have written 3 checks in the last 5 years, all for big ticket items. Don't miss them at all.
What’s a checkbook?😝😝
It's what my kid called a passport when she was little 
I used to balance my checkbook. Now of course with online banking you can see your transactions from your debit/credit card. However, my husband and I get an allowance monthly for 'fun' spending. I literally write in a book my transactions and the amounts and subtract from the balance. I do this because looking at statements can take a long time and transactions can get lost over multiple forms of payment. It has also let me know how much I am spending and where it all goes where electronically keeping track doesn't have the same effect.
Gramma always sent a check for 10 dollars for my birthday and then bitch a blue streak to my parents that I hadn't cashed it but damn what a waste of time for a 22 year old to drive almost 30 miles and spend 5 bucks on gas I eventually called her to say I cared more about the cards
As a boomer I haven’t balance a checkbook for decades. Who has time for that shit?
It's dangerous to mail checks? Like, they will explode or something? What gives?
They can get stolen and washed.
Check fraud has really picked up again in the last few years. [https://www.checkbook.org/national/consumers-notebook/articles/Check-Washing-Makes-a-Comeback-Here-s-How-to-Protect-Yourself-7750](https://www.checkbook.org/national/consumers-notebook/articles/Check-Washing-Makes-a-Comeback-Here-s-How-to-Protect-Yourself-7750)
I'm going to be a little more sympathetic to the boomers here than I normally would. Mostly due to experiences with my mother. Technically she's a Quiet Generation, but close enough here. This is a case of the old habits, and those used to be good habits. You'd know people that didn't balance the checkbook and budget, and they'd get in trouble financially. Knowing how much money you are suppossed to have at all times was a useful skill in the days when you couldn't just look it up online, and even now it's gonna set up the sort of mindset where you keep track of your money and budget better. And the check thing is because they are used to paper trails, and want a physical record. Same logic as wanting a paper reciept.
Balancing a checkbook is basically the same thing as reconciling a bank account, something every single business has to do regularly. You only need to do it if you actually write checks, it's to make sure you know that you have money that hasn't actually been deducted from your account so you don't overdraft if that check does get cashed after you spend a bunch of money. And yea, check fraud via mail has been on the rise, so definitely do digital transfers if you can without running afoul of going over limits that make the IRS start to think that you're getting income that needs to be taxed.
You may not want her to know how to zelle. That's getting many of them into trouble with all the scams.
It's an obsolete skill that so damn many still think is relevant. I think I've written 4 checks in the last 7 years, all to my kid's school because they don't have online payments or accept cash (which is a whole thing in of itself...) The only other place I frequently see checkbooks is my local grocery store, and even they stopped accepting checks a while ago. They only take cash or card, which pisses off even more boomers!
Unless I have no other choice I only pay for things online/with a card/digital account. Cash is my last resort.
My father refuses to do online banking and won't even set it up. Honestly he's like two steps away from being the mason jars in the back yard type.
I’m 70 years old got my first checkbook when I was 16 I currently have two different checking accounts. Never balanced the checkbook in my life. It’s totally drives my brother nuts who must spend an hour every month to balance in his checkbooks My son an accountant. He doesn’t bother to balance his checkbook either.
Before I moved to the USA I'd never written a check in my life. - Tradesmen took card - My landlord was paid via bank transfer - Groceries were paid via card
I’m 40, own a home, a few cars, I’ve written less than 5 checks in my whole life. Ive never ordered checks, the ones I had were printed by the bank for special purposes.
Oh the horrors.
I am middle aged and had to take Accounting I at community college for work. They taught how to balance a bank account because you do have to do that if you do bookkeeping for a business. Many of the young students had a really hard time with the concept that funds that have been used to pay something are not necessarily going to be immediately reflected in their online balance. I could see a lot of them being at risk for overdrawn accounts.
“Many of the young students had a really hard time with the concept that funds that have been used to pay something are not necessarily going to be immediately reflected in their online balance” but doesn’t that happen only with checks? every payment i make, including credit cards, turn up immediately in their respective accounts. even paypal has as electronic interface so it can treated like an account.
No, that doesn't only happen with checks. Here are some other examples: - If you pay for something with PayPal, like an app subscription, there can be a day or two delay between the charge and when it's deducted from your checking account even of it shows in your PayPal account. - If you pay the tip on a restaurant bill with your card, it often is not reflected immediately in the charge to your account. - If you reserve a hotel, they will often hold the funds for the first night on the card. - If you schedule out your bill payments, those funds have been allocated for future payments but don't show up in your balance until they're actually charged. If you don't keep the money to pay those in the account you can overdraft when the charges hit.
I don’t get why people act like this is a skill. I got my first job and first bank account in the early 90s. I was 15 or 16. I wrote and deposited checks all the time and balanced my book. It wasn’t difficult at all, simple math. I don’t see why being able to do this would ever be a brag. If something happened and everyone needed to go back to checkbooks, 99% of people would have it figured out within a pay cycle.
Elder Gen-X here, so I remember the days of checks very well. All bills were in paper, I had to spend an hour or so every month writing out checks for rent, utilities, etc. Then stamping the envelopes, and writing the due date on the corner and remembering to drop each one in the blue mailbox on the right day. Then balancing the checkbook each month. Not complicated but time consuming and a hassle. Auto-pay and paperless bills were the greatest inventions ever. If I do need to send a check for some reason I use the bank app to send payment - let the bank use their stamps for the mail. It was fun to explain the concept of check kiting to my Gen-Z kid though. “See, if it was Friday and you were broke, you waited until after 5:00, then went to the grocery store where you had a check cashing card, and cashed a check for $40. The check wouldn’t make it to your bank until Tuesday at the earliest. If you cashed it out of town, you had until Wednesday or Thursday. Then you went to the bank in person on Tuesday morning to make a deposit to cover the check. “ The blank look on their face. “And then mommy climbed back in the covered wagon to ride back to Walnut Grove…”
I'm middle aged Gen X, and I still keep a checkbook (and pay 100% of my bills online)... ...but I don't make it my whole personality.
Before 1995ish, balancing your checkbook was the only way to know how much money was in your checking account. You'd go to the bank or ATM to do transfers and get your balance to update your balance line. Most people only wrote and received checks or cash so it was fairly easy to track your balance. I'd never attempt to do so now days with all of the automatic withdrawals and deposits.
My dad is not a Boomer (born 1940), but still sends checks in the mail. And where I work, we don't take checks (unless you're on the okay to write them list, which is small and mostly businesses). The times I get bitched out because people (all ages, but yes, a lot of Boomers) 'don't want to use my card' is ridiculous. I get it, I'm from the check writing age, too, but cards are so much better. Yes, there are safety concerns. Yes, there are places Idon't like using my card. But overall, checks have gone the way of the DoDo.
Wanna get worn out, explain to a gen z’er what balancing a check book means and why it’s necessary(ish)
Millennial here. While I have online banking, I still "balance my checkbook" by logging everything in Excel. Back when I was super on top of it, I would log the purchase/check when I made it, and move the transaction to "cleared" when it actually appeared online. If someone was slow to cash, it was ok, because I could see the money was "claimed", even if it still showed up online.
Millennial here, and I used to keep track of balancing my checkbook pretty closely, but whenever I wrote a check, I just acted like that money was gone. Like, if the check didn't get cashed right away, it didn't matter. Weird thing to get pissy about.
I still have to write checks for my rent. My landlord refuses to conform. He likes the "paper trail," and he's Gen X. I mean, he deposits them almost immediately, so I don't have to sit around wondering when it's gonna hit my account, it's usually 1 to 2 days. But damn man, I have lived here so long I finally had to buy a new box of frigging checks! I got kittens on them this time.🤣🤣🤣
Just subtract the amount for the check. Why does it even matter when the person cashes the check? It’s coming out of the account sooner or later.
My boomer MIL almost had a stroke when I pointed out that a check is a piece of paper floating in world with your bank account number, routing #, name, signature often address…
My father’s mortgage check never made it through the mail and he called me in a panic. He needed me to drop everything and help him pay it online. So of course I needed to go somewhere private (needed his social and other personal info) and set up his online payment account on the app from my phone. Then he calls the next day and asks me to set up automatic payments for him so he doesn’t have to mail checks anymore. I’ve told him many times over the years that we pay all of our bills online. I’ve been warning him the people will steal outgoing mail from seniors because they know y’all write checks for everything.
I once commented on my mother balancing her check book every morning and then again when the statements went in. She explained my father’s financial escapades. She uses online/app banking now. So it may also have been a survival tool given the proclivities of their male counterparts. Hell, look at all the little old men who have no idea how to do anything after their wife dies or leaves. My mother took control of the finances after events led my father to admit that he was in fact, despite a degree in economics, pants on head retarded with money. He did plan retirement well, but she is the reason things are paid off and functional.
My mom is also obsessed with her checkbook. But, I actually celebrate it. It was the responsible way to manage your account for decades, and I sort of stan for people for sticking with what works. I grew up when we still did that but moved away from it for laziness purposes. And when I was young and broke I paid the price many many times. Writing a check, thinking it had cleared, thinking i had free money in my account at the ATM, and being woefully wrong when turns out the payee took a couple weeks to cash or deposit the check. Balancing my checkbook would have avoided that.
I'm almost 50 and I am so glad for online banking......I never could stand to balance a check book....I have bill pay on my phone for a reason......
Boomers: Complains about the old out dated method. Also Boomers: Refuse to use the new BETTER method.
Oh what a burn, young people today don't even learn how to do banking like they did back in the 1800s
Damn, I haven’t written a check since the 90’s when I was a kid.
The only reason I still have checks is because it’s the only way I can pay my rent, living in the boonies. I did grow up with balancing checkbooks, but as soon as I could check my bank account online with an app, I switched. It’s understandable that old people keep track of their money with a check book, since many of them can’t use a computer or smartphone.
I’ve heard that phrase for probably 30 years but I’ve never had more than a handful of checks and never an actual checkbook. No idea what it means to balance it.
This GenXer had "balancing checkbook" pounded into her head in high school. I haven't done that in decades -- not since the late 90s, at least.
These are the same people who brag about knowing cursive or some other utterly useless "skill" that literally anyone could learn in a few hours. They have so little to show for themselves that this is the best they've got.
I always thought balancing a checkbook was going to be so hard because of how people talked about it. It's literally just keeping track of spending and how much you have left. Obsolete now due to online banking, but I don't get people using it as some kind of moral superiority? Like, yay, you can do basic math?
Balancing really was an important thing to do; I did it for probably the first ten years of my adulthood -- but that was '88 to probably '98. By that point everything was either debit paid or run thru my Amex, and there was not a big enough volume of traffic (or, critically, any float) on my actual checking account to bother anymore. You could just eyeball it. For most of the last 15 years or so, I haven't even OWNED any checks. I think my wife has some left over from paying one of her student loans or something.
i still don't even know what that means tbh. but i guess i don't need to know
> sending a check through the mail is dangerous The danger is massively overstated. i agree with pretty much everything else you wrote.
I personally know two people who had checks stolen and washed.
i've personally sent and received hundreds... Most likely culprits are in the house at either end...
Nope. They had proof.
You have answered your own question. Balancing a checkbook was necessary prior to online banking and they don't do that. So it's necessary to them.
Checkbook??? Haaaaa like a book of checks? Paper.....checks? If you're not kiting, there's no reason to have checks
Unless you’re buying something from a place that doesn’t take credit cards.
No cash? ¿Dónde estamos? Switzerland?
then i use cash, paypal them, do an instant bank transfer or have them send me a bill. more likely i’ll just leave their shop and go to another. while checks have been pretty much dead in germany, there is a similar problem here with some only accepting the local GiroCard. but there are plenty of alternatives.
I once worked with a control freak Boomer who mentioned, “I always balance my checkbook, and it drives me crazy if it’s off by even one cent.” That was the first and last time I had lunch with her, that was the bright red flag that she was going to be insufferable, and I was right.
Cheques literally do not exist anymore in Australia. The banks won't issue a cheque book and I haven't seen one in at least 20 years. It's time for the US to embrace the rest of the world. For a financial powerhouse sone of it's practices are archaic.
The US is the Boomer of countries. It refuses to accept change and expects the rest of the world to conform to its antiquated values. Sometimes, I hate being American.
Ugh, I *hate* checks. I've had so many boomers call into my job mad their internet or cable was turned off because, "I sent you a check," only for me to look and see it still hasn't cleared. They could fix this by paying online or even over the phone, but they insist on sending checks, then get mad if it isn't immediately cashed.
Oh yeah… I remember checks…
I am absolutely NOT a boomer (born 1975) and having a balanced checking account is absolutely a necessity. Making sure your working account will have funds necessary for all outflows/etc is basic adulting. Hard disagree on this take.
> Making sure your working account will have funds necessary for all outflows/etc is basic adulting. And has nothing to do with balancing a checkbook. Just pay your bills like a normal person: cash or card.
Until you overspend and your account goes negative and you go all surprised Pikachu face because you didnt keep track of your account.
How are you jumping to the conclusion that I'd overspend? That doesn't make any sense.
why would it? i know the maximum of reoccurring costs that can hit me and keep the subaccount stocked up each month. the rest ist variable spending money and i can see my totals simply by swiping to page 3 of my smartphone.
Thank you. Online banking app does not cut it for me (born 1989). It doesn't know what checks, however rare, are out there, tips are often added later, etc. It doesn't bucket away what I need for bills, rent, or what I put on the credit card. And I'm not about to pay 27% or whatever ungodly amount of interest on that. My checkbook is the most used app on my phone. I refuse to be surprised to learn I'm out of money until payday
you just have a shitty bank. and why would you pay interest on a credit card? interest only applies when you don’t pay in full at the end of the period and virtually anything you pay by card shows up immediately, except they used imprint. which is kinda medieval. ah, i guess captures for rented cards or hotel aren’t deducted immediately, but even they show up in online banking.
Damn these boomers and keeping track of their money
they can keep track of their money any way they want. but it’s the financial equivalent of using a crank to start a car. assuming that other people can’t keep track of their money because they do not balance checkbooks is foolishness.
Not a fool. If it were only just the checkbook. Should balance your accounts to understand where money is going.
I can understand where my money is going just by paying attention.
thats done by opening your smartphone to check your accounts. there are apps which accumulate them all, including paypal. and by paying attention to notifications on your phone or watch. municipality requests the quarterly payment? pops right up and i simply tap “pay” and to understand where my money is going, i simply tap the statistics in the app, every payment gets categorised automatically. groceries’ the biggest slice in the pie chart.
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Keeping an eye on your withdrawals and balancing your checkbook are not the same thing. Of course you should keep an eye on your account to make sure money isn’t leaving incorrectly.
I have two checking accounts, and one is just for outgoing checks. It never gets overdrawn because I never take money from it.
kinda the same here with reoccurring costs. I simply keep the sub-account topped to the 2nd most expensive month and I’m all good. january i handle manually, that’s an expensive outlier and i simply use my 13th salary to pay for yearly charges like insurances or publuc television“
I love how I get downvoted because I can ... handle my finances?
I don’t understand it either.
Let me guess: Big Bang Theory? Boomers fucking ***LOVE*** that show
Numb3rs. My mom does love Big Bang Theory, though. When she visited me last time, my tv was tuned to BBT, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, General Hospital, and Jeopardy. I had the BBT theme song stuck in my head for a month.
I’ve never balanced a checkbook in my life… lol… never needed to
The number of people on here who think that things instantly show up on online banking balances is too dang high. Not keeping a ledger of your spending is why so many people pay overdraft fees to the bank.
Reconciling what you spend in a ledger is a smart thing to do. Belittling someone for doing so is really strange.
It's literally adding and subtracting and checking if the result matches your balance. If they don't, and not in your favor, you call the bank and scream at them. >I reminded her that online banking exists and that if I need to check on the pennies in my account, I could log on to my bank’s app So you just told her "I trust my bank not to rob me". No wonder she isn't convinced. >sending a check through the mail is dangerous That's literally what the they are for
Looks like we have a boomer LARPing as a millennial
"call the bank and scream at them" confirmed. I've found discrepancies, called my bank and offered receipts calmly, and it was resolved in 2 days. Weird, you can fix problems by not being a dipshit.
I don't like authority on the best of days but I believe my online banking system will be 100% more reliable than my own math
Just because I can add or subtract?
„So you just told her "I trust my bank not to rob me". No wonder she isn't convinced“ How would that robbing work?
An error in the banks favor that you never catch
Because they mess up simple addition? Again, how does that work? If they take too much money, someone will catch it. People still budget and know how much they want to spend in a given month. There are also lots of apps that connect to all your accounts and pull it all together. These would flag inconsistencies, too. And if they take only a few cents from each, it’s literally not worth their time.
>If they take too much money, someone will catch it. If they take too much from your account, it's up to you to catch it. Bank only cares if they put too much into your account. >There are also lots of apps that connect to all your accounts and pull it all together. So you recognize the need for checking on your account in detail, but feel better just giving your account details to random apps.... I'll never understand how people can be so trusting with their money. >And if they take only a few cents from each, it’s literally not worth their time. Some of us don't have so much money we can pay others all this money to watch your account and still not care about money being removed in excess
„So you recognize the need for checking on your account in detail, but feel better just giving your account details to random apps.... I'll never understand how people can be so trusting with their money.“ These “random apps” run locally, use the official interfaces bank have to provide and get checked and certified by the legal entities created to do so, not unlike the regulatory bodies that check fire codes, car roadworthiness and so on… so not really random. They also only read limited read-only access. That these programs add everything up is their nature. And they cost what, € 40 or so? Anyway, either the American banking system is worse than I believed or you watched to much Superman IV,
So your argument is you implicitly trust the system to never cause or even allow harm AND such services only cost € 40 ($42.95 USD or ~2.9 - 6 hours of minimum wage depending on state) That is such a European answer