Me - USA, I’ve had direct deposit for about 30 years, except for one period…
I was working for a bank and had my account with the same bank. They deposited my pay like usual, then they discovered they had made an error. So, they reversed the entire amount out of my account until they could get around to re-depositing the correct amount (days later). Mayhem ensued, checks that I wrote from the account bounced, etc.
As soon as I could, I changed to a physical paycheck, and I closed my account. I then opened an account at a competing bank. There was no way I was going to let those monkeys have so much control over my money again.
At my next employer I was back to direct deposit and have been happy with the arrangement since then.
I pay all the bills that I can online. It’s a pain in the assets to deal with checks incoming (rebates, gifts, etc.), I have to drive to the bank!?!? and outgoing (gardener, pool man), where are those stamps and envelopes?!?!.
Around here, you generally need to pony up about $5000 just to open the account, and that may also be the minimum balance. After that, depending on the precise kind of account, there may be federally-mandated maximums on the number of withdrawals you can make per month. Adding to the annoyance is that you’d have to go to your bank’s ATM to get money - savings accounts are rarely associated with debit cards, so your whole life is on cash - pay cash at the grocery store, pay cash at the gas station, and so on.
If you can only make three or four withdrawals per month for all of your living expenses, you’re carrying a lot of cash. You probably can’t get enough cash per withdrawal at an ATM to live on, so you need to go into the bank once a week, either to get enough cash, or to buy money orders to pay your bills with.
Our tenant is one of those unlucky people that bounced checks and had their checking account closed with a chargeoff. As a result, any bank that uses Chex Systems (and it’s far easier to count up the banks that don’t use them!) won’t let them open an account. He’s got a pre-paid Visa debit card through H&R Block - it was one of their options for receiving an income tax refund. He is able to have his paychecks direct-deposited to that, so he can live pretty normally as far as being able to use a debit card at stores, as well as at ATMs to get cash.
About the only weird thing is that he has to hit the ATM on three successive days to get enough cash to pay rent.
We’re strictly DD around Casa Silenus. The big bonus is that my pay is almost always in my account the day before it’s supposed to be there (if the 1st is a Wednesday, for example, my pay is deposited Tuesday. It’s supposed to go in after business hours, but that time has crept earlier and earlier until I get paid by noon the day before now). I’m on a monthly paycheck, so the early day comes in handy sometimes. Prevents me from having to shuffle money from savings and all that. We pay all bills on-line, so I really wonder why I still have a checkbook.
My employer will only do direct deposit. If you don’t have a bank account, they set one up for you at a local credit union.
For us, if payday is the 31st, the money gets deposited at COB on the 30th. So, if we did have paper checks, that would be the slower way to get to your money.
Where I work it’s all direct deposit except for bonus checks. Strangely, not only do we not have a choice about dd, we can’t even choose the bank. I already had an account at that bank when I was hired so it wasn’t an issue for me but other employees have had to open accounts there when they came aboard. It’s a big company but the payroll department has always been very insistent on that.
Wow, I’m like the only luddite freak who prefers a check. I also prefer to pay cash for things.
I like having a physical understanding of how much money is going in and out of my account. At a bookstore, for example, it is really easy for me to swipe my card and spend a hundred bucks. But if I’m paying cash, it’s hard to let that many twenties fly out of my pocket. Being a physical part of the flow of money helps me have a intuitive understanding of exactly where I stand, money-wise. Yeah, I know pay stubs are physical. But for me it just isn’t the same feeling as walking up to an ATM and depositing my check.
Now (in China) I have direct deposit and I hate it. I never know quite when I get paid or how much money I have at any time. It’s really hard for me to have the instinctual understanding of my financial situation that I had in the States.
When we say savings account it means something different. To us it means an everyday account with a debit card attached. Much as cheque accounts are treated in the US.
Yeah. I’ve been on direct deposit since early 1990. I only go into a bank once a year, and that’s to deposit my tax cheque. Everything else I do at home on the internet.
Being handed a paypacket of cash or a cheque at the workplace would be to me like commuting by horse and buggy. I couldn’t imagine it now, it’s been so long.
That would still be called a checking account in the US, even if you never used a paper check and always used the debit card. A savings account is not meant to have many withdrawals. Instead, it’s where you save money for the proverbial rainy day.
I use DD. I’m in Mississippi, but our home office is in Florida. DD goes in every other Friday, but checks are also sent on that Friday. So, if you get a paper check, you won’t receive it until the Tuesday or Wednesday after payday.
My kids have not quite figured this DD thing out. It’s cool to see them when the money “magically” appears in the account.
A non-US “savings account” is a cheque type everyday account but we don’t generally have cheques so there is less risk of overdrawing the account. It seems you guys either have high risk cheque accounts that people with poor credit history can’t get, or restrictive savings accounts that can’t be easily used for day to day transactions.
The Loaded Dog, even my tax refund is a direct deposit into my account. I’m so out of touch with using cheques and going to banks that I have over a hundred dollars in medicare refund cheques sitting in my in-tray; I never get around to depositing them.
My Google-fu is weak; I haven’t been able to discover what this means. Searching only seems to reveal info about “working white-collar employees” or “working white people.” My best guess is that it’s the opposite of “working under the table”; that is, a legitimate job whose wages are appropriately taxed, recorded, etc.
The last job I had in the US only had 6 or 7 employees and we got paper checks… no choice in the matter. The last job I had overall was in the Republic of Georgia and I was paid in cash as there was no system of checks or direct deposit… it’s a cash society. In fact, the company I worked for did not use banks at all… they just had a big burley guy with a massive safe, and everyone was armed. I don’t know anyone who used banks there.
I get direct deposit, but the company my husband works for has only paper checks, which must be picked up at the office after 4pm on payday (every Friday). It’s a small company of only about 15 people, so I guess it’s easier and cheaper for them to do it that way.
