Yes, and it’s a somewhat recent American thing. I’ve been carded more since turning 50 than I was before I turned 50.
Which only makes me even more puzzled by the American public opinion’s apparent major hangup against a universal citizen/resident ID. Yet another thing we have to be Exceptional about. Identify yourself, but figure out how.
So instead we’ve spent a century making things that were not intended to be secure IDs — SSNs, DLs — into de facto ID papers and then the Congress tries to herd the states into the kludgy and inconvenient Real-ID system.
“Show me your papers”.
Yeah, fuck you.
Right, I know, I know… if a uniform national ID exists it WILL, it MUST be used that way, it HAS to be used that way, of course…
It demonstrably has been used that way, and it left a really bad taste in my mouth. Similar to the way building a wall and rounding up and caging ethnic groups has been used.
Mine is good for about 7 years. We opted to get passport cards as well, this last round - they’re RealID compliant (something our state did not offer at at the time), and they can be used for driving into Canada (and I assume Mexico though we haven’t tried).
I imagine the first time I try to pull that out for ID purposes, it’ll get scrutinized and loudly declared to NOT be valid ID, as many people aren’t familiar with them.
I’ve had passports for 50 years and RealID for 10 days. But I now live uncomfortably far from a border, I’m too old to skateboard to Mexico, and I’ve no intention to remove my shoes to fly anywhere. What a pickle!
I predict the imminent demise of passports. Checkpoint robo-guards will take a flake of your skin; analyze and ID your DNA to know who you are and where you belong; and pass, jail, or execute you as indicated. Hackers will have fun with such a system.
If you get TSA Pre-Check or Global Entry then you don’t need to take your shoes off.
If the airport you’re at is participating.
I voted yes, but technically my passport expired a few weeks ago. I’ve already sent in the renewal paperwork, though, and am currently waiting for my new passport to be sent back to me.
I got off a cruise earlier this month, and my passport expired a few days later. I sent the renewal paperwork in a couple of weeks after we got back. I didn’t renew it sooner, because you have to send in your old passport with the renewal paperwork, and I was afraid I wouldn’t get it back in time for the cruise (which was booked at the last minute).
In the ten years I’ve had this passport, I’ve used it about once a year on average. Next year, I’ll need a passport at least two and possibly three times.
ID which has the kind of security features which other countries’ ID systems consider basic, and which in theory is supposed to supersede the need to present two or three pieces of ID for a bunch of transactions and procedures.
Got mine renewed (for the third time) in late 2016
I renewed my passport a few months before I needed it and was afraid I’d waited too long, so I used the “rush” option. I paid extra ($100?) and was pleasantly surprised when I got it back in a few days.
I have a passport, but it has expired.
As a US citizen living in Taiwan I’m legally required to have a valid passport.
So how do the diplomatic and official versions vary from the standard ones? Anything extra?
I applied to renew my passport in February. They have stopped processing applications so I no longer have my passport and don’t know when I’ll get the new one. I suppose that my late-June trip to Ireland isn’t going to happen anyway so my temporary lack of passport won’t have any practical implications.
Oh yeah: my husband and I also got Global Entry / TSA Pre-check. He’d gotten it when his work set up a session where the interviews were done en masse at one of the company offices - and he travelled several times with it and found it to really improve the airport checkin experience. So I got mine - and have now used it a grand total of twice. Supposed to be 3 times, but the last time, I made the flight reservation in a huge hurry and didn’t realize / notice that i had to enter that info online - so I got to the precheck line at the airport and they sent me back to the line with the hoi polloi 
I just recently lost mine in France. This one was only a year or so old, but I had to the entire new passport fee (not the renewal fee) to get a replacement. I’m surprised at how quickly it arrived. I think it was less than two weeks total from my appointment with the Dept. of State employee, to my receipt of the actual passport book. It probably helped that this was in late January, just as everything was starting to shut down. They probably had a lot fewer people trying to get passports at that time.
I’ve had 3 passports. First issued in 1994, only used once for a trip to England/Ireland via Indonesia.
Then got another in 2015 which was meant to be valid until 2025, but in Dec last year we wuz robbed two days after returning to Aus from a month in Bali. My handbag, including my passport (amongst other things) were gone.
Of course my other ID like licence etc was also in my bag, so it was a real bloody pain getting another passport!