JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I may be the last person in America who
uses checks.
Well, not, that’s not entirely true. I know Youngest had a
checkbook exclusively for paying her Bangor landlord; she left it behind when
she moved to The Hague, and she informs me the Dutch run a practically cashless
society there. A cashless society! Imagine life without a penny jar.
Maybe I’m the last person in America with a penny jar?
It’s not that I only and ever pay with checks. I dutifully go online for my phone bill, my insurance, and my internet. But co-pay at the doctor’s office? Check. Electric bill? Check. (That’s because they screwed it up TWICE when I tried paying on line. Fool me once, etc.) Before I finished up my mortgage this spring? Check. (They make you pay EXTRA to do it electronically!) Also my fuel oil, because they make me pay a “convenience fee” to reimburse them online. B####, please.
I also never use checks at the grocery store or other retail establishments. Because I’m not a monster.
I just like writing out amounts and sending out paper bills. Out of all the organizational possibilities, paying bills like it’s 1943 works best to keep my finances on track and to make sure I’m paying on time. Sure, I can look at my balance on my credit union’s app, but it’s not the REAL balance. That’s written in pencil (payments in ink) in my register. Which I keep in a monogrammed leather checkbook cover.
No, I don’t have bills set up automatically, because I just don’t trust it. I am, in fact, actually 96 years old.
I also use checks for gifts to nephews and my adult kids, because I think it’s more fun to open a card and have a check fall out than it is to receive a pop-up notification from Venmo that someone’s put $50 in your account. I may be wrong about this; if you are a Youth, please tell me.
My weird antediluvian habits finally started paying off – literally – when interest rates took off in March ’22. I have an interest-bearing checking account (again, credit unions FTW) and I make a few pennies here and there (see jar, above) while waiting for my chimney sweep to deposit the check I wrote him for maintaining my wood stoves.
Yes, I always shake his hand for luck. Me = 96 years old.
How about you, dear readers? Cashless and frictionless or
scratching out the accounts with a fountain pen?
