Last year, there were a few cases of mail being stolen out of mailboxes in my reasonably safe neighborhood. As far as I know, I wasn’t a victim, per my credit report. Since then, I have signed up for e-mail delivery of all of my bills. It makes me feel better about not having my personal information sitting in an unsecured mailbox for several hours before I get home from work.
During some downtime at work recently, I mentioned that I did this to a few co-workers, and overwhelmingly they said that they’d rather have their bills delivered the old fashioned way than online and risk it being “hacked” by someone. Most of the people that expressed this were older, 55-60 and female. They also said that they prefer to mail a check rather than use online services for payment.
I was wondering if a lot of my fellow dopers got their bills delivered via email rather than via the postal service. I’m also wondering if this (e-mail delivery) fear is somehow due to an age thing. It reminds me of my grandmother. She lived during the depression and didn’t fully trust banks, even into the 1990’s when she died. She kept a somewhat large amount of cash hidden in her house. Is e-mail delivery of bills a fear of middle aged people, who didn’t grow up with the internet?
This always cracks me up. How do these people think all payments are processed from charge cards or from banking? Through a secret-guarded-magic-dedicated money tube? Nope, it’s done over the internet. :rolleyes:
I’ve paid my bills online for years. Most of them, anyway. Some of the companies charge a service charge for paying online which is higher than the cost of a stamp, so I still mail those, instead.
I recently switched over to getting all my bills & statements delivered electronically. I’d been paying electronically for a couple of years already, and decided to cut the USPS out of the loop.
For the most part, I pay bills online. But I still prefer to receive a paper bill in the mail. My lame reasoning for this is that I tend to pay all my bills once a month and if the paper bill is not sitting there in the pile then it won’t get paid.
I only have three bills I pay monthly (gas/electric, cable/internet, home phone), so I just have them set to email me bills. The home phone is set to auto debit once a month, but I pay the other two online when I get around to it.
I pay everything online. I write maybe 10-15 checks a year, and those are generally birthday/holiday gifts to family members. I haven’t bought any new checks in 4 years. Oh–I guess I qualify as “older” (50).
It is absolutely an issue of age! I worked in a massage therapy clinic that sold a monthly membership and the older the client, the more likely they were to decline the offer of pulling the money out of their checking account each month (EFT dues). Cost/commitment aside, plenty of people wanted our service but didn’t trust “the technology” involved with EFT. In four years, I saw the system slip up maybe once… it’s not like one day the computer will just charge your card/account over and over and over. I don’t understand the fear, but I am an 80s baby and I’ve been using computers since I was probably 5 yrs old so it’s just a generational thing.
My parents are only in their 50s and they both think I am crazy for not owning a checkbook. I’ve never had one, never needed one. I pay online or use cash/debit/credit cards. Sending a check in the mail seems far more hazardous than sending a payment online through an encrypted system. My dad in particular is opposed to online purchases/bill paying. He thinks the government is out there waiting to steal my information…whatever. I haven’t had a problem yet.
Thai banking laws prohibit me from paying my American credit cards online. I have to send them a bank draft.
For the Thai credit cards, we pay at the post office. Most other bills can be paid at 7-Eleven. I’m not sure banks here are really into the online-payment option at all.
Sorry, that was supposed to be fleshed out a little, but I got interrupted.
I’ve been slowly getting rid of an immense (ca. 10 year) backfile of paper documents by scanning them. It was in the midst of the big push to complete this project last summer that, late one night, I went to every company I was still getting paper bills/statements from and switched over to electronic versions. It dawned on me that since they all come as PDFs, I would save myself a lot of trouble in the long run.
Really? No checking account at all? I’d love to go without one, but it sure seems like there’s always one or two holdouts that absolutely positively require checks. One is my favorite pizza delivery place - they only take checks or cash for delivered pizzas and too often I don’t have cash. Other one is the guy who plows our driveway in the winter. He’s just a guy, not a business, and he sends a bill once a month or so that I pay with a check. What else? I know there’s a couple more. I only write 8-10 checks a year, but it would be a major hassle to not have a checking account for those instances.
Oh yeah, the IRS. Quarterly filings to the Feds and the State as I’m self-employed. I don’t think those can be payed without a check… can they?
Pay 'em all online but rent. Future MIL could save almost $100/year by doing them online, and she steadfastly refuses not to. Such a stupid waste of money. I can understand the elderly not wanting to learn a new system but come on, at 52? Jesus. You’ve been using computers a minimum of 25 years at that point.
I make my quarterly estimates online. I usually don’t tell my clients that’s an option though, since they often can’t even figure out how to access the internet :). But since you clearly can, here’s the link.
Your state may have a similar system- California does.
I have a checking account but no check or check book. When I need to write a check I can go on my online account and put all of the information (amount, account info, mailing address) and them will send them a check for me. I get all the convenience of online bill pay but in 3-5 days a check shows up wherever I tell them to send it. I know that I can pay parking tickets with the system so I’m sure it would work with any other government agencies.
I pay my online bills through my credit union. I use their website exclusively, rather than paying each bill at its own website. When someone I want to pay won’t take a transfer, the credit union writes and mails a check, caching out the amount of the check so that it doesn’t appear in my online balance any more.
If a check’s involved, you have to schedule the payment a few more days ahead, but they can pay anyone who isn’t demanding straight cash. And there’s no extra cost for the checks. I get online bills from anyone who will coordinate them with the credit union, so that they show up on the CU bill-pay page.
I actually get my bills in the mail and pay them that way and I’m only in my mid20s.
But once I get with the times and acquire a smartphone, which should be happening in less than a month, I’ll make the switch to pretty much completely paperless.
I used online bill paying for several years before it finally occurred to me: what was the point of reconciling my account? Why am I bothering? I can monitor every expense that hits my account on an hourly basis, should I feel so inclined. I can sit right there at work and watch my balance dwindle until next paycheck. What’s the point of saving receipts, writing them down in a little register and then reconciling the account? There’s just no need. I stopped receiving paper bank statements and started adding more billers to my online bill pay accounts until pretty much, anyone I ever give money to is paid from wherever I am. I have paid bills online using my phone while I’m waiting for a table in a restaurant.
After that, I basically lost my checkbook. I write about one check a year and it’ll be to pay a boy scout at my front door waving tins of popcorn or something. Wish those damn kids would start taking debit cards.
Anyway. Reminds me of a story. Many moons ago, I was in line at the grocery store. Two or three customers before me all paid with debit/credit cards. Little old lady was standing behind me, tsking every time someone whipped out a card to swipe. She starts ranting about how we irresponsible kids these days all lived beyond our means and the world is going to hell in a handbasket all because people don’t like to carry cash. “I gotta have that paper trail,” she said to me, as she got out her checkbook and started writing the check. I gave her major points for preparing to write the check before she was even being checked out. She was behind me and planning ahead. That’s pretty rare in busybody old ladies you find in the grocery store, right?
I ignore her ravings for a second to step up to the register. With a wink to the cashier, I whip out my debit card and swipe it. I point out to the lady that some people use debit cards and not credit cards and that is the same thing as paying in cash, only I don’t have to carry around ten pounds of change after a week’s worth of transactions. The cashier echoes, “And it’s faster, because I don’t have to make change.” Old lady is sputtering because she had been saying what irresponsible pieces of shit we all are to me, not knowing I was going to be a traitor to her cause and join in the fiscal debauchery right in front of her. Cashier hands me the receipt. I flash it in the old lady’s face and say, “Oh look! A paper trail!” and scampered off with my groceries. I could hear the cashier snickering behind me as I left. I don’t know what happened to the little old lady; I assume her head asploded or something.
So yeah. I live in an electronic world. I rarely have cash and I don’t write checks. If I can’t pay online or with my debit card, I am often at a loss and have to think back, “How did I function in the olden days of yore when I had to carry around paper money? Where did I get it?”
I do this through my bank, which is one of the Big Evil ones. I’ve paid the plumber and many one-time expenses this way. I’ve even paid the rent that way: you put the date due on the check and the bank will magically make the check appear in your creditor’s hands by that date. As long as you have a name and an address, you can pay anything through your bank or credit union’s online banking.
