I haven’t written a personal check on, you know, like, paper since June 1998. I don’t own a check book. About once every 2-3 years I have a need to pay someone and can’t do so by any means other than a check handed to them & not mailed to them by my bank, etc, and on those rare occasions my gf makes out a check and I pay her back.
I should perhaps add that the reason for this is that banks don’t remove the amount that the check was for until the check is presented for payment and the recipient’s bank contacts my bank.
One day in June '98 my bank’s online checking switched from proprietary non-internet telephone-powered software to a standard web page, and the web page did not offer the service of telling you whether a specified check had cleared yet or not. Meaning that your balance as shown would be plus or minus an unknown number of outstanding checks, so you either could or could not spend some unknown unspecified portion of the total shown on other debts, and had no way of knowing.
Online banking was too convenient. And easily made either/or choice: no more checks.
Pre debit card, probably 300-400 checks a year.
Post debit card, maybe 6.
I do still have a cheque book, but I rarely use it any more. I’d write perhaps one or two per annum. I pay almost all of my bills electronically.
The only time I ever write checks is when I have to pay a contractor or someone that has come to do repairs or a service of some kind to my house. I also wrote a check recently to pay my buddy for an order that himself, some of the players on our ball team and I put in for some equipment. He paid the money up front and I just paid him my portion with a check. I also still pay my car insurance via check. Other than that, I avoid checks. Online banking is just easier.
And another surprise for the UK dopers: you have to pay for the checks in the US. And an even bigger surprise: some people actually pay extra in order to have some sort of design on the checks.
Yes, checks come in boxes and can have your name, address, and driver’s license number, although the latter is not recommended for security reasons. Most every store I write a local check to asks to see my i.d. and writes the license number on the check even though it’s printed on it.
I have 2 free checking accounts and use one for rent, an insurance payment, and for pocket money on a bank across the street from my home and near my office. I’ve had that one for about 10 years and the consecutive numbering on the latest one is about 8000. The other is on my credit union and I just received my latest order of 2 free boxes of 80 checks each for that account, with numbering of about 2400, after about 5 years of use. Those new checks came from my CUs printer, not from this typical company
http://www.designerchecks.com/IntroOffer.aspx
I also do not own a debit card and am down to about 30 checks a month but I do use a couple of credit cards for accounts for which I get a 10% savings and a 5% reduction or rebate.
I’ve seen one too many horror stories of a utility company or other agency/individual draining a checking account that they had e access to.
Actually, we usually get all the cash we need by charging over purchase at the grocery store. Using Discover, we get a float and cash back on our cash too. On the unusual occasions that we need more cash, our bank with drive-thru is right across the street from the grocery, approximately 1 mile from our house. Never any fees.
Thr 2 of us use the same bank/charge accounts. For ease of record-keeping we decided it was better to not have both of us hangiing onto ATM slips, each of which changes the balance in our account. Just what works for us.