My mother used the envelope system. One envelope for groceries, one for meat, one for childrens’ clothing and shoes, and so on. I believe there was even one for school field trips that cost money, so I could go with my class to the local museum. But always, those were paid in cash from the envelopes.
Dad looked after the bigger bills: the gas bill, the electric bill, the mortgage, etc., by cheque. But Mom looked after the smaller stuff, using the envelope system, and always paying in cash.
I think when people are talking about “paying bills in cash” , they are talking about paying the utilities , maybe the rent or mortgage payment and such in cash. The bills that often come in the mail and are paid by check. People don’t normally refer to making cash purchases at the supermarket or other stores as “paying bills in cash”. It’s usually done by people who don’t have checking accounts (or often any sort of bank account) who cash their check on payday and pay the bill either at the utility or landlord’s office or the bank or at a “payment agent” which might accept payments for multiple utilities. Since the people who do this typically do not have checking accounts , the alternative to paying the electric bill in cash is buying and mailing a money order.
When I was younger, our local grocery store had a little counter where you could pay things like phone bills, electric bills, and other utility bills, in cash if you wanted to.
I think you can still do that at Walmart.
For decades I used an “imaginary envelope” system my father used all his life, and still does, AFAIK (he’s 93). When I was about to move out on my own, he explained that when you deposit your paycheck, set aside what you’ll need to pay your regular bills (rent/mortgage, utilities, car loan, etc.), that are more or less fixed each month. The rest is available for variable expenses like food, clothes, movies, and other fripperies. As long as you don’t spend more than that difference, you’ll have enough to pay the important bills.
But instead of literal envelopes, Dad uses large multi-column ledger books, with each column representing a regular expense. Note, this is not double-entry accounting.
I did the same thing for many years, transitioning to a computer spreadsheet version as soon as I could (which Dad never did, even after getting a computer). Eventually, I switched to Quicken and later Ace Money.
Me too.
Not from childhood exactly but from “back in the day”. For anyone over 45 ish, remember helping people move and the massive pain of moving any sort of CRT TV or monitor?
Anyone under 40 ish has probably never experienced the sheer weight, bulk and awkwardness of those bastards.
This occurred to me today when I was moving my two external monitors from the dining room table to our basement. I think that one is a 25 in monitor and the other is slightly smaller.
I was able to very easily carry both of them at once. If they were CRTs I would have to have carried one at a time and they also would have been probably eight inches or a foot from from front to back with no easy way of carrying them
And then there were portable TVs, which were really only portable in theory - sort of like carrying two car batteries strapped together.
That’s why the last 8(?) columns of the 80 column IBM punch cards were not used for the program but could be sequenced with numbers to be sorted. You learned to increment the numbers by 10 so you could insert one or a few cards if you had to reprogram.
The poorman’s method was to take a dark think marker and draw a diagonal like across the top of the cards so you could see if a mark was out of order.
Is that why example Fortran programs always have numbered statements lines that increment by 10? (I was at the tail end of the punch card era - there were card punch machines and a card deck submission slot available at the comp sci building but i never used them myself - fanfold printer terminals and VT100s were the thing for me).
There used to be cash-boxes with separate slots/compartments you could label for different payees.
Or how about TV repair shops. I worked in one for a while. One of my primary responsibilities was to help the repair guys go to peoples houses and pick up TV’s. Not a bad gig when your young and strong. I wouldn’t want to do it today.
When dual monitors became a reality, it was a true pain in the ass to first find room on the desk for the second monitor, then insert the new video card, and then install the software and hoped that worked. And as noted, these were definitely not flat-screens.
I remember stores that had wire baskets on a trolley system.
There were also family shops (butchers, bakers, and one downtown deli) where you picked up your order at the counter and then took it to the cash register. The person at the cash register was ALWAYS a woman of the family. (I suspected that it was a theft-reduction method, so non-family employees would never handle money.)
I’m not so sure. They’re not that old, and I suspect that there are a lot of them still in people’s basements and garages, just because they’re so hard to get rid of.
My kids are 32 and 33 - and they knew CRT TVs and monitors. Even if they don’t remember when I had the big one in the living room , they would remember when that one became the Nintendo TV and the CRT TV in my bedroom was probably there until at least 2010. I don’t think flat screens became more popular than CRTs until 2007 or so , which means a lot of under 40s would be familiar with them - today’s 40 year olds would have been 25 in 2007.
For most of the 2000s I had a Sony 21" CRT for my computer. It was the best image quality of its time, but it was massively heavy (60 pounds) and bulky; the depth meant that it took up most of the real estate on my desk.
I now use a 43" flatscreen monitor: it cost less (even before considering inflation), has twice the linear resolution, much better image quality, uses less power, and has relatively little depth, making better use of my desk space.
Do I ever!
They were an absolute SOB to move/carry weren’t they? That odd shaped bulky thing with with its weight distribution belying its shape, where even if you were capable of lifting that much weight ( say, barbells ) you couldn’t get a grip on it. Even with two people, it’s awkward AF. The other thing is that their flat bottoms means you have to dead weight it up off the floor without a hand hold underneath, forcing you to lift with your back, not your legs, until you get to shift your hands underneath. Don’t even get me going trying to go up or down stairs…
Well you’re right that they’re not so old as to never have seen the beasts. I was thinking, however, of the situations in which you’re helping the guys, buds, whatever, by humping these things from the rented van into the apartment building and possibly into an elevator or up a couple of flights of stairs, to get the full, wonderful experience. And, figuring that they’re 20 year olds, and recalling first seeing flat screen monitors in the early 2000s.
And what if it was some '60s vintage console thing so you’re carrying something only slightly smaller than a modern sub-compact car 
?
Never had the “pleasure”, but I can imagine it.