Why did nobody tell me that writing checks is cringy?
I feel like a clueless old man wearing an ascot and a fanny pack.
Yahoo News this week blared the headline: “Almost half of Americans haven’t written a single check in the past year.”
What? No way.
I should have known. Earlier this year I wrote a column that mentioned that I had just mailed my electric bill.
“Wait … you mail your power bill using a stamp and a check?” was the incredulous response I got from a reader on Facebook, who, incidentally, is older than me.
Well, yes, Facebook Pat, I certainly do pay bills by mail. Doesn’t everyone?
Apparently, the answer is no — not by a long shot.
According to the Yahoo News report, 46% of Americans did not write a single check in 2023. And only 15% said that, like me, they write “a few checks a month.” That’s only about 1 in 7 people identifying as habitual check writers. For context, that’s about the same percentage of Americans who approve of the U.S. House of Representatives.
(READ MORE: Why paper checks refuse to die)
The Yahoo story went on to say, “check writing was the primary means of monetary exchange in the 1980s.” The article called checks “an old-school form of payment.”
Old school my ascot.
I’m sorry, but this sounds like it was written by a 22-year-old anthropology student examining an ancient culture. Then, I reminded myself that the 2020s are to the 1980s as the 1980s were to the 1940s.
I have two checkbooks that I still carry every day in my left back pocket. I even pulled one out a few weeks ago when an auto repair shop wanted to apply a 3% surcharge for credit cards. I saved myself about 30 bucks.
Just this week, Target said it would no longer take checks, which means that we are on a slippery slope. Lots of schools and sports venues have already gone completely cashless, too. Paper payment is clearly doomed.
Yahoo explained that young people find the whole idea of checks crazy. For them, Yahoo reports, “the thought of writing numbers down on a slip of paper and trusting the money to get into the right hands feels like a risk.”
(READ MORE: Overdraft fees could drop to as low as $3 under new Biden proposal)
Come to think of it, handing a stranger a piece of paper with your name, address, phone number, bank account number and actual signature does sound rather outlandish. It’s sort of like taking an Uber and tipping the driver with your passport and Social Security card.
We are very close to the day when digital payments by PayPal, Venmo or Apple Pay will be the only approved form of money transfers. Yahoo points out that “landlords, contractors and real estate agents” are among the last holdouts for check transactions.
I already see people rub their iPhone on the card reader at Walmart, causing some sort of mystical digital cash exchange that I don’t understand.
I didn’t always love checks. When I was a kid, my banker mom would write me a $2 check to take to school for my weekly lunch money. Most of the other kids paid with cash. I didn’t think my mom’s check was real money, but just a promise to pay at some future date when we were less poor.
Even now, I’m not very proficient at check writing. I have some sort of deficiency in my brain that means, for example, I can’t instantly distinguish left from right. Due to this condition, I don’t fill out a check in any particular order. I may start with the signature one day and then start with the date the next.
I am also prone to poor envelope stuffing — getting the check in front of the bill, for example, so the creditor’s address doesn’t show through the little window. This means I have to perform a tedious surgery that involves snipping off the end of the envelope, switching the paper inside and then closing it up with cellophane tape.
Wait … is it even called cellophane tape any more?
Probably not.
OMG, I feel prehistoric.
The Family Life column is published on Sundays. Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.