Filling out my car insurance payment today, I thought about the way people add a long horizontal line after the written payment amount on the check. Also, some people put one after the name of the check casher as well. Back in 8th grade, when they made some feeble attempt to teach us about personal economics, the word was that you did this so some unscruplous person couldn’t add anything in after it. Made sense at the time.
But how realistic is it? Wouldn’t it look a tad suspicious to have some dollar addendum after the percentile amount? Or “…and Joe Blow” added after the original name? I guess I could potentially see a check written out to multiple people (can you do that?) but I’m hoping that bank tellers are savvy enough not to fall for the dollar amount trick. Besides, it’s written in numerical form on the check already, and “$25.77 + $100,000,000” should raise a few eyebrows.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Good point, Jophiel, I’ve been a faithful “draw a line” guy all my life but I never really thought it through. I always thought it would make more sense to squeeze something in front of the written amount so “Five” became “One Hundred and Five”, etc., so I would be real careful to start way over on the left edge. And my parents taught me to always add “and 00/100” or “and XX/100” to any whole dollar amounts to prevent someone changing “Five” to “Five Thousand” as well as drawing a line.
A few years ago, when I thought I was too compulsive about a lot of things I chose to loosen up by leaving off the “and XX/100” on my checks. (I AM a uh-wild and cuh-razy guy!) But I had to concentrate so hard to remember not to that it was more compulsive than before. So much for life on the ragged edge!
I thought of a clever new sig line last night, but I forgot it when I woke up this morning.
Regarding the question about whether you can have a check written to multiple parties, the answer is yes. In fact, when we cashed checks we received for our wedding, I can’t tell you how much of a pain in the ass it was with all kinds of amounts made out to ‘Mr. and Mrs. Yarster’ when my wife hadn’t changed her name yet. Even for checks of $20, they wanted to physically see my wife and her signature in person to cash it at Bank of America.
While I certainly admit this is an idiotic policy, it makes you think that I could really screw someone over and prevent them from ever getting to cash a check by adding my own name after theirs to the ‘pay to’ line because B of A (and probably other banks) would insist on having me there to sign it as well…certainly so if it was for a large amount. So I guess I should put a line after the payee’s name as well.
you should also write the “and” on a slant from upper left to lower right (with the “d” on the line) to make it hard for someone to write “thous” just before it.