Checks I wrote every month:
Rent. I suspect the accountant the rent goes to could take a card, but it’s easier to drop a check in their box if I can’t get there when they are open. I would rather pay cash, but my work schedule means I’m far away when they have office hours, Mr. Celtic Knot doesn’t want to carry that much cash (he has to walk or ride his bike there), and paying cash for rent makes the feds think you might be a terrorist.
Monthly tithe. I have never heard that the church could take electronic payments (I’ve been to some that can) and I don’t spend time on the website looking.
There is a source for local honey that takes checks or cash, but that’s not monthly.
I don’t understand why electronic payments take so long. The car payment can linger in the ether for a week before it clears.
I’m in the minority here. But I’ve been happily writing checks for over 20 years.
I still write checks, and use a printout of an Excel spreadsheet on a monthly basis to balance my ins-and-outs. Using Excel forces me to sit down and reconcile where my money is going, and how to plan out the montly budget. Writing checks makes me feel the pain of spending, which in turn, makes me plan better to cut costs. Plus, handing over a check to the apartment complex is instant, whereas the online payments that have to be mailed out take a few days to process.
I could switch to online payments to those that take it, but I don’t like the idea of handing over access to my bank accounts to a third party, even if it is the County for the electric/gas bill. Just one more firewall for security. And, I no longer have credit cards. There are some remote counties I write checks to that don’t accept online payments.
Tripler
Old habits die hard. Tripler habits don’t die.
Here’s a tip for those of you who still write checks to pay your utility bills. Let’s say the bill amount is $67.34. Just make out the check for $70. It makes it easier to write the check and compute the balance in your register. The company will credit your account for the overpayment on your next bill. Easy peasy!
When we had some plumbing work done last summer, the plumber plugged a card reader into his business iPad and I paid with my debit card. He then emialed me a receipt.
I enter all my transactions into my accounting program every day or two, and balance it monthly against the electronic statements from the two banks I deal with. And yes, I will search out the penny difference like Doreen’s husband, but I’m a retired accountant so that’s just second nature at this point.
The UK might still be the holdout for cheques - uh, checks - but even there I see most people paying with a bank card nowadays, and I would guess that by this millennium people had stopped making payments in shops by writing out a piece of paper. I lived in Germany for over 20 years and never used checks there. The very few that were sent to me for payment for work done were a royal PITA, as I had to go to the bank, fill out the inpayment slip and get stiffed with a clearing charge for my trouble. These days my check book is covered in cobwebs. I think the last time I used it was to get cash before I got an ATM card, and before that, inpayments to some official body, either income tax or social security. I see checks as an obsolete technology, and one very prone to fraud, which is why for decades now shops in the UK only accepted checks that were backed up by a credit card number.
I’m always in that one line with the sweet old guy who’s busy chatting with the cashier and then when he hears the total, realizes “Oh, that’s right. I have to pay for this!” Fumbling in his Jacket Pocket Hole of Calcutta like a claw machine with palsy, he pulls out a Necco wafer, a fountain pen and … a checkbook!
Arggggh! I’m going to be waiting forEVER! Especially when he decides he really needs to update the balance before he hands the clerk his check.