Went online a bit ago to see if a check the wife had written had cleared our joint account. Check. Realized we had written 5600+ checks on this account since we opened it 25+ years ago. We write quite a bit fewer now than then, maybe 10 a month or so the past few years. Some are for when we get caught short of cash and don’t want to or can’t use the debit card or for things like kids need a payment for some school thing.
This also doesn’t include the checks that came out of our individual accounts over the years. Mine hasn’t had a check drawn in probably 15 years but hers might have a dozen or two per year.
I use maybe one or two a year. Everything else is debit card, credit card, cash or electronic. I hate checks and am glad to see them dying.
Why?
I mail one check per year, for local taxes, along w/ the one page form. All other “checks” are Bill payments or handed in in person, typically for charity &/or race entries.
I’m 40 and I’ve never written one in my life, though I do remember my parents writing them when I was a little kid. Handled a few of checks when I graduated from high school back in '97 and relatives were giving me cash gifts but haven’t even seen them since. Based on everything I’ve heard about them I’m just relieved I didn’t have to learn how to use them at all.
When I opened my business 11.5 years ago i got 200 checks for the business account. I just finished them in November. The only things I use checks for are shop rent and paying the charge account at the lumber yard.
I still pay all my utilities, tax and insurance by check. Down to about 5 per month. I’m at 8300 + for the check number.
Dennis
I write a lot less checks than in the old days, but it’s still probably about 10 per month. The big ones are to the IRS 
I pay most of the bills on line, and never use a check for retail anymore.
My number is 6150, but I’ve changed accounts over the years.
I haven’t written a cheque (nor had a cheque account) for probably 35yrs or so now*. Credit and debit cards and online banking for all bills and transfers for this old duck. Cheques are really redundant nowadays here in Australia.
*Except a few weeks ago I had to get a bank-cheque made out for an entity that wouldn’t allow EFT. That bugger cost me TEN BUCKS on top of the cheque amount itself.
:mad:
The only check written is to our Homeowner’s Association every month (they are very VERY old school - green ledger book and everything. Kinda quaint, actually). Otherwise credit card or online payments.
What the hell are you people writing all these monthly checks for, if not for paying bills?
I think I write maybe one or two a year. Taxes are one. I can’t remember what the last non-tax one was.
We opened our account at the credit union in 1983. I used to write checks for everything - gas, groceries, most purchases, as well as the usual bill-paying. We’re well over #7000.
Now they’re mostly used for local business guys who don’t take plastic, like the guy who cleans our gutter, and the septic tank cleaner, and the guy who’s going to bring a load of dirt for our back yard. I don’t know if I write a dozen a year these days.
On the other hand, our credit card gets a major workout, thanks to the cash back feature.
My parents moved to their current house in about 1969-70. When they did so, they got a mortgage from the bank downtown (the only bank downtown, this being suburban Connecticut), as well as a safe deposit box and a checking account. They’ve since upgraded the safe deposit box, due to my mother’s growing jewelry collection but still have the same checking account after all this time. I have no idea what check number they’re up to but it’s gotta be in the thousands. And now they also do electronic bill payments so they write very few paper checks.
Only for taxes and car tag renewal around here. Oh our vet doesn’t take plastic. We are close to #8000.
Not renting anymore, I only write a few checks a year. The city gets one every few months for the water bill (they charge a HUGE fee for using a credit card) and maybe a handful of others.
I’m also happy to be getting rid of them. No more getting tied up behind someone using one, but more importantly, when you pay my store (or myself for that matter) with some kind of electronic transaction, the money is as good as mine as soon as the machine says ‘accepted’.
I don’t have to wonder if the $350 you wrote is going good. I don’t have to wonder if it’s even worth depositing your check that you wrote for 65¢.
At my store, after years of hemming and hawing and me pushing for it, we finally stopped accepting checks a few months ago. Long story short, we had two checks bounce and a few minutes of research showed me that they were mom and son and mom has been writing bad checks for 20 years. She’s currently in jail, for the second time, for writing bad checks.
Living in a small town, there’s still a handful of places that don’t take anything but check or cash, generally small companies or individuals. I still write checks to:
-
our cleaning lady (could probably pay in cash, but that would mean we’d have to run to the cash machine to get said cash)
-
the guy who plows our driveway (we get monthly bills, he’s never offered any way to pay him but ‘write a check and mail it in’)
-
the occasional plumber / electrician / handyman who comes and repairs things
-
personal transactions. 'I owe my buddy Joe $100 for that favor he did me / money he loaned me / joint expense he paid for"
That’s about it. I’d love for them to go away altogether but we’re just not there yet.
I write one, maybe two checks per year. Just wrote one to pay my taxes. The checks were so old that it had my old address on it. I’ve lived here for eight years. (The account is the same, just the address is old.) I stuck an address label over the old address and put it in the mail.
Businesses still use a lot of cheques, as they’re better for accounting and record-keeping. You can add notes to the memo lines.
I write cheques to the guy who clears snow in the winter and mows the lawn in the summer. I send my grandchildren checks for birthdays. I write cheques to our doctor (he charges for lab tests, but office visits are under medicare) and chiropracter, neither of whom takes credit or debit and also the guy we buy meat from (who has recently got and account for debit cards, but forgot to bring it the last time). Most all other bills are paid online, including income taxes. So my wife and I probably use about 2 dozen checks/cheques a year. Actually, last week we went to the town hall and paid our real estate tax bill with a cheque and got it receipted on the spot. When I bought my car ten years I got a cashier’s cheque from the bank, a bit over $20,000.
The only checks I write any more are to the lawn service (about seven or eight a year) and when I renew my car tags every year. And the only reason I write a check for my car tags is because they charge extra for paying with a credit card.
In fact, when I renewed my tags back in October, I noticed that the carbon copy of the first check in that particular book was the check I had written for my tags the previous year!
I write a lot of checks every month. I deal mostly with small businesses and don’t want to burden them with credit card fees. HoA, board, farrier, water, gas, electric, chiro, hairdresser, the list goes on.