I pay my bills online, through my credit union (EFT). I’m quite a bit over TheLoadedDog’s 40 year limit, but I’m just as lazy as the younger crowd. I also use my ATM card for many purchases. I don’t, however, use it to pay for a $2.00 cappuccino.
What’s with that? 
Peace,
mangeorge
I’m 40, have excellent credit, I make almost 60k a year, and I’ve never ever had a checking account. Not even a joint account with my wife. Writing out a check and keeping tabs on an account is a pain (a small pain, but still a pain). We charge almost everything we buy to a GM Mastercard, then pay the card off in full using a money order (free from my bank) at the end of the month. No interest, and 5% towards a new car. Before the GM card came out, we used a Ford card. I also have a credit card from the company I work for, for business expenses, company car mantainance, etc…
My wife has a business checking account, but she has to have it as she owns the company and employees usually don’t take credit cards on payday. Otherwise, we don’t use checks at all.
Per the OP you’d be surprised how differently some people live at the economic margins of society. Some people (and a lot more than you would think) don’t have checking accounts simply because they don’t have the first clue about how to open an account and the notion intimidates them. Cash is king and most other forms of transaction are viewed with distrust. The bank accounts and credit cards etc. that we take for granted are a different planet to them.
I don’t have a checking, and I don’t want one. Paying by money order means that my creditors know they have their money, I know they have their money, and everyone’s happy.
Considering that my landlord evicted a tenant because he kept getting bad checks from her, he’s more than thrilled to have a tenant who pays her rent in a less-risky fashion.
I also pay my bills in person, which means I get a receipt at the time the payment is made. This is quite useful in the case of misapplied payments or payments not posted until after the due date (which have happened with alarming regularity, and some utilities have held me responsible for their mistake).
Yeah, it’s a hassle, but in the long run, it’s a lot easier and less stressful than the convenience of a checking account.
Robin
I ran a small company with around 15 workers. Very few of them ever had checking accounts. When payday came they would hurry to the bank at lunch time. The bank that the company used would cash them for free. This went on for the 25 years I was there and hasn’t changed in the few months I’ve been gone. The only way they know how to live is week to week and many hit you up for a loan on about Tuesday (Thursday was payday).
Really???
Is this in a specific geographic area, or everywhere?
The only intimidation I recall was the attitudes of the bankers. There didn’t seem to be much interest in low Average Daily Balances.
Peace,
mangeorge
There is an industry built around those who are in the economic subclass.
Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California presented that story in its 1996 yearbook. You can see a summary here.
Robin
This is on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and I would imagine it to be similar elsewhere. This is based directly on sitting next to the rental agent for 5 years and (if bored) talking to a number of renters who were waiting for him on busy days. A good number of them existed on a cash only lifestyle basis for both poor whites and blacks, many of whom had never had a checking account or a credit card in their entire lives. I was initially stunned to hear this and when I politely asked “Why?” on several occasions, by far the most prevelant answer was that they didn’t “trust” banks, not because a bank had done them wrong but the concept of having the money anywhere but readily at hand made them profoundly uncomfortable.
In addition, while most people may view setting up a bank account as trivial matter, if your parents and your peers never showed you how the prospect might well intimdate you. And yes, bank workers can sometimes be quite snotty with poor or poorly educated customers, which I am sure does not help the situation.
Maybe this lady doesn’t trust checking accounts - and she may be wise not to. I thought pretty hard about giving up on checking accounts recently, because some crook started taking money out of my account (still no idea how it started). 8 debit cards and accounts later, I am still trying to straighten things out. Although the money has all been replaced, I was completely amazed at how hard it is to fix this once it starts. It’s been many stressful hours - and still not quite finished.
And I’m no deadbeat. Same job 20 years, good pay, owned the same house 17 years, lots saved for retirement, clean credit rating (once the fraud items were cleared), paid bills by modem - I’m not on the edges of the economy, I’m a little cog working away right in the middle of it.
The advantage of no checking account would be no publicly accessible wondow of vulnerability. But thinking through the logistics of doing without scared me into getting yet another account, albeit at a new bank. Both old and new banks told me they’d seen a great deal of fraud in the last 6 months… jeez, maybe it’ll happen again…
Having a checking account instead of having to cash each paycheck at some check-cashing place that charges a substantial fee may seem like an obvious move to most of us, but it’s not an intuitive piece of knowledge that you’re born with. Many of the people who don’t have checking accounts are living paycheck-to-paycheck and come from families where everyone was living paycheck-to-paycheck. They have literally never been told basic financial facts that all middle-class people learn from their parents (usually in their teen years) when they get their own first checking account. And where else except from your parents can you learn such things? High schools don’t generally offer courses on basic finance, as perhaps they should.
Let me mention a slightly less basic piece of knowledge that many people below a certain income don’t know and probably will never have a chance to learn. Most of us know that if you have more than a certain amount in the bank you transfer some of it to a savings account. It will earn more interest there and will be just as safe (if it’s at the same bank). I’ll skip for the moment the more difficult question of whether you should move some of your money to a higher-interest but riskier sort of account. My parents never had a chance to learn that till just recently. What they learned growing up was what most working-class people learn: You get a stable job with health insurance, buy a house using a mortgage, get some insurance on your life and on your property, and hope to make it to retirement without going broke. If by living frugally you can manage to send your kids to college and retire with a couple of thousand dollars in your checking account (and a pension to support you), you’ve won. The absolute best you can hope for is to have the house and maybe those couple of thousand dollars in your checking account when you die for your children to inherit.
My parents won, by those standards. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been so stupid as to have eight kids, but at least they retired owning the house and having enough pension and Social Security to live on. They had even managed to send most of us to college. Even with my father working a job and a half most of his career, they barely scraped by most of the time, but, as I said, by working-class standards they had won. So they’ve now lived more than fifteen years beyond retirement. They continued to live frugally and didn’t spend all of their pension and Social Security. A couple of years ago, we kids were astonished to learn that they now had over $65,000 in their checking account. We had to gently explain to them that there’s no reason for them to keep all that money in a checking account.
Let me begin with this…
I have no credit cards.
I have no checking account.
I own no atm cards, nor do I use a debit card…
I do have a savings account, but only because my employer decided to stop handing out our checks in favor of mailing them, in order to pressure those like me to use direct deposit.
The reason for these things is this;
I am afraid of identity theft.
I live in a state that uses my social security number as a our drivers licence number. While it is possible to change this, it is difficult and means renewing my licence before its time, thus costing me extra fees.
I pay for everything with cash, or money orders.
My only real debt is at the end of each month, when the electric bill, phone bill, and the rent come due.
That and my wife’s medical bills which, while extensive, are being paid directly from my check, as I work for the hospital.
If someone gets my number, and applies for credit, they will be turned down. Simple as that.
I am not part of that system.
I have friends with debt coming out of their ears, due to bad credit card usage while in college. (Now in their middle 30s.)
Life is easy enough. If I have no cash to buy things with, I do not buy them.
For Wendell Wagner here to equate not having these things as being deficient in education, I say this.
I hope some lowlife gets your SocSec number and teaches you a thing or two about trusting the system.
Message ends.
My experience with living paycheck to paycheck and having an account was a real eye opener to me.
First off, they often wouldn’t credit my deposits for somtimes a week. Even when I went to a teller, which was what everybody did in those days (late 60’s). That’s a long time when you don’t have the resources to bridge those extra days.
Once, when I had to work out of town for a couple weeks I wrote out checks for my bills and gave them to my girlfriend to mail one week after she deposited my paycheck. All three checks bounced. Come to find out, I’d dated the checks on the day I wrote them. Even though the money was in my account, and credited, when the checks were presented, the bank bounced them. The manager said that because the checks were dated before there was money to honor them, they were technically NSF. Love them NSF charges, huh? Plus the late charges and such from my creditors. The whole thing was only about 30 bucks, but they refused to make good.
Well, I took them to small claims court to recover all the charges incurred. The morning of the court their lawyer (yes, they can use their own lawyer) showed up before the hearing and offered to pay. I said no, I wanted a court order.
Good thing I had copies of all my papers. The judge ruled in my favor, plus a little extra. And he raised hell with the bank lawyer. And he ordered them to write to my creditors and to the credit reporting agency. 
Come to find out, this was a common practice by the bank (the stagecoach one) when dealing with low value accounts. That, and delaying deposit credits. All to increase NSF charges.
Suckers.
End of rant. I feel better now. 
Peace,
mangeorge
When I had a checking account, the financial institution (a large credit union) had a practice of deducting checks before crediting deposits. I bounced several checks written the night before payday for this reason.
This same credit union once bounced a check written about five minutes before I made a large cash deposit. I went to the store, wrote a check, went to one bank on the first floor of the building, cashed the check, went to the CU on the second floor and deposited the cash. (The CU put a hold on a few of my paychecks before so I simply cashed them at a branch of the bank outright and deposited the cash.) The check to the store bounced. I took the check, letter from the store’s collections department, and deposit receipt to the credit union. I talked to the manager, who took care of the check and wrote a letter to the grocery store explaining the problem.
One final point about checking accounts and bounced checks is that if you bounce one check, you can lose your check-writing privileges at several stores if they use a large check collection agency, even if you make good on the check in a reasonable time.
Robin
You need to get that old growth redwood off your shoulder. WW was making a perfectly valid point about one of the primary reasons the large majority of those who live without checking accounts, do so (ie they simply don’t know the mechanisms and rationale for setting up an account).
The fact that you have opted out of the system for fear of getting your identity stolen is perfectly valid but this rationale represents a vanishingly small percentage of the cohort of those without accounts. The vast majority fall in line with WW’s description.
I have also noticed that some groups of people who have not been in this country very long carry a lot of cash. (I assume they don’t have checking accounts.) I used to work at a fabric store, and whenever there was a Big Sale, these ladies from the Old Country (whatever country you imagine!) would come in and buy tons of fabric. Paid for it with big wads of bills.
astro spoke thusly:
Ya know, you were right! It is much less difficult to walk now! Thanks.
It did seem to me, however, that WW was painting “people living paycheck-to-paycheck” with the same broad paintbrush of ignorance.
Wendell Wagner spouted these words…
If this doesn’t smack of being condecending to the lower class, I don’t know what does. How the hell does HE know what those not born to the “middle class” are taught? I know I was taught these things in high school. In fact, I was taught these things in elementary school. Does he have studies to back up these claims? Are there research papers dedicated to this phenomenon? Most likely not. I knew a few “upper class” kids in school that went on to be serious credit card debtors because they thought all cash came from daddy.
They were wrong.
Stupid crosses all class boundries.
Message ends.
You should see the huge numbers of check cashing places in Los Angeles and San Diego. These places do a huge business with illegal aliens who don’t want to start a bank account.
particlewill writes:
> If this doesn’t smack of being condecending to the lower
> class, I don’t know what does. How the hell does HE know
> what those not born to the “middle class” are taught? I
> know I was taught these things in high school. In fact, I
> was taught these things in elementary school. Does he
> have studies to back up these claims? Are there research
> papers dedicated to this phenomenon? Most likely not. I
> knew a few “upper class” kids in school that went on to
> be serious credit card debtors because they thought all
> cash came from daddy.
I know about the lower class because I was born into it. My parents weren’t poor, I suppose, but they were only a couple of steps above it. If you went to a school with upper-class kids in it, you grew up in a richer neighborhood than I did. The families in my school district varied from between being on the lower edge of middle-class life to outright poverty. If your elementary school taught you things like how to open a checking account, it was distinctly better than my high school. Luckily, my parents at least knew that it was important to have a checking account. They still didn’t have enough extra cash for a savings account till they were in their sixties or seventies. Heck, I didn’t have enough extra cash for a savings account till I was in my thirties, finally out of grad school and into a secure job.
If those upper-class kids in your high school became serious credit card debtors, the problem wasn’t that they weren’t taught good financial habits by their parents or by the school. The problem was that they ignored these lessons and proceeded to spend themselves into oblivion. I was talking about poor people who have never learned basic financial lessons. There are people who have learned basic financial lessons but have decided not to have a checking account anyway, but this group is distinctly smaller than the set of people who just were never taught to open a checking account.
After college, I got by with just a savings account.
My bank had a policy of writing one free bank check per day, which was more than enough to pay my bills. (Yes, not all banks are evil)
Anyway, I’m not surprised that many people distrust banks. Many banks (and bank employees) are fairly hostile, both institutionally and personally, towards small depositors.
As alluded to by other posters, this hostility manifests itself in many ways – numerous illogical fees; a total lack of trust of even long-time customers; a refusal to admit error; and a snotty attitude.
When you find a “good” bank - that’s like gold (until they are acquired :()
I do NOT miss North America…
In THIS part of the world. Checks/Cheques are an oddity. Most people on the other side of the teller desk say, “What?” When asked if they can make out a check/cheque.
Everything here is done electronically. Bill payments are paid when you give your bank the order to send money from your account to the firm’s account. I pay my rent by sending the cash from my account to his.
No delays, no pre-dated pieces of paper, no promises.
Just the dough.
Most people do their banking using their computer. (Internet banking)
Many do it using their phone. (Phone banking)
Many others (still a large number) do their banking using their phone, but not even speaking into it. (WAP banking)
But then, we also use our phones to pay for parking…
Day-to-day business is done using credit cards (don’t have one/don’t need one/don’t want one) or directly using their bank cards (you call them debit cards-the same ones you use for ATMs), or ca$h.
But considering how many businesses accept your bank card, you could go without cash in your pocket for a pretty long time.
NVMe 