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Hm, seems legit
🔒Verified secure ✅
I had doubts until I saw that. Very reassuring!
The postal service has recently been a victim of a lot of theft targeting checks. People are willing to rob postal workers at gunpoint for their box key. Then, thieves sift through all the letters for a chance of finding a check.
Worse, they have ways of “washing” the check to turn it into a blank check, and reuse it with a new amount and recipient.
Or just use a password manager
Option 3: make my bank write checks for me
I think the last time I cashed a cheque my elderly mum wrote it. Had no idea before that people even still had cheque books after 2002 or something, but fortunately I didn’t have to find if there was a branch of my bank left within fifty miles because you can scan them in the app and pretend the other person sent you money in a normal way.
I’m the same way. But since I’ve been having to handle my elderly relative’s estate I’ve had to write a ton of checks. The clerk of court requires the use of checks to pay bills for the estate. The estate account was issued a debit card but the bank said I couldn’t use it because of the same requirement.
In France it’s quite regular and quite useful IMO (I’m from sweden where you can’t pay a bus ticked with cash, nor a credit card… and checks were like abolished in the nineties) paying school stuff, sport inscriptions etc.
Additional bonus, you can split a payment and ask for it to be cashed in over time, without needing some nank taking a cut.
I still have a checkbook for the occasional handy man that doesn’t want cash or transfer. I’m pretty sure most apps take a cut from business accounts, and others will report to the IRS when you make a certain amount, so for some workers it makes sense to avoid the apps.
Zelle is somehow the one that is usually free and does not report, but my credit union has a daily limit for Zelle transfers, so if the bill is larger, I offer payment in check as an alternative to cash since it’s safer.
I keep all my bills organized in bookmarks. Keep track of their due dates on a Google Sheets budget. I’m not going back to checks…lol
Do you guys not have direct debit? All my bills are paid automatically. Manually paying my bills sounds like a pain and I would definitely forget/double pay if I needed to do it that way
US banks won’t even issue chip and pin cards because their customers would find entering a 4 number code too arduous and complicated.
We do. I never give companies power to pull money from my account. I realize it’s a convenience for some people in the way they budget, so no judging… I’ve just been screwed by it one too many times. I keep full control over my finances. I budget everything out on an Excel template I created. It actually doesn’t take much time at all …an hour or so once a week to get everything balanced and paid for the month.
What does it even mean “one less account to track?” The money is still coming from a bank account, if you track the money in your account you would still have to account for a check, and it would be even worse if the check isn’t cashed right away.
Is it that you don’t have the monthly credit card bill if you send a check? But you’re spending the same amount of money regardless, checks are more like one-off credit card transactions, that don’t confirm payment like a credit card does. Checks are worse for the payment-neurotic. That’s maybe an argument for debit cards, it’s not an argument for checks.
I’m old school, if I want to buy something, I go to the store with the ability to essentially examine the item, pay for it in cash and go home. Crating an account and paying with the card, with which also the bank knows what I had bought? WTF, capitalism surveillance shit.
Password Manager
There will be lots of a useless accounts you have to make in life. Scale yourself. Many such accounts will not be optional. At least this one provides you with some value.
Password managers are good; but keeping track of passwords is not the main problem with making online accounts for everything.
Every account need a valid mail direction, ofte als with 2FA a phone number, both pretty easy to track in the network. Every website know your ISP, your public IP, your OS and a lot of other data which they can store and sell it to third parties for commercial reasons. Never create an account if it is not essential for you.
Pretty sure that a company that I would otherwise write checks to with my name address and phone number already has the lion’s share of those details. My IP address and operating system are the least of my concern in that case.
Hiding my IP address from the power company seems like a limited improvement.
Hard why not both? You should use a password manager & create less accounts on platforms or sharing your phone/email if you can help it.
Sure, in general yes. But in reference to the comment, writing a check they would already have my name address and some reference to my bank account details even without the online account, which implies a high degree of trust.
If I need an account to read an article on a website? Then I’m not interested in reading your article.
V true. I was think more along the lines of any sort of cash, debit, check transfer that doesn’t involve accounts or folks skimming money off the top rather than checks specifically when interpretting the meme.
Okay Boomer.
fellas is it old-fashioned to not want more unnecessary tracking ?
A check has the same information as a basic account. Any sane company is probably storing it in the same backend too.
…Does anyone have data on how many people still use checks?
I use them all the time for contractors and architects. Nothing else …
0 in my country. They were abolished many years ago
My old appt charged a $17 fee for paying online, check is free. We still wrote checks until recently.
I had an apartment that switched payment processor that jacked up my credit card fee well above my cash back (prob cuz people like me ended up saving like 10/mo), so I just switched to bank issued checks that they send for me.
Using the checkbook I got 20 years ago is just a massive pain in the ass.
Definitely this. There are utilities here with 5% service charges for paying online. I’d rather pay by check
Also, most all US small to mid sized business transactions are by check.
I’m not going to take a suitcase with over $10,000 to the city to pay a permit fee, or $50,000 Venmo to pay a business partner.
Unless you are in the marijuana industry, then you have to…
Also, most all US small to mid sized business transactions are by check.
Why? It is a bank transfer with extra steps. A check can get unreadable, get lost… No one in Germany would write a check for a permit fee or to pay a business partner. You pay online. Fast, safe, can’t get lost, easy to proof what, when to whom you have paid for years to come. And the transfer won’t get through if you do not have money on your account or are allowed to overdraw, while you can write whatever you want on a check and then run.
It is not cash or check it is bank transfer or check and the bank transfer is the safer, faster option. All they do at a bank is to scan the check and to turn it into the exact same bank transfer it could have been in the first place. All you do is adding a layer of risk by writing on a piece of paper.
I find that really funny, because many Germans still refuse to buy their groceries without cash, many like me do not own a credit card only debit cards, but no one younger than 90 uses a check. I am 58 years old and have never owned checks.
I don’t know what to tell you, but I work in business in the US and work in invoicing in the construction industry.
Everything is done via paper, full stop.
Bank transfers do not generate invoices, full stop. Company to company payments are made using a PO or check. Nothing else, in my experience, are accepted.
These are for amounts of $1 to tens of millions of $$$.
If it’s any indication… the last time I ordered checks their website was littered with nuisance upsell popups that significantly hindered that task (felt kinda like Indiana Jones navigating booby traps), so I think the “check industry” (if that is a thing?) is getting desperate.
a check? ok bye, ive never understood what the fuck that shit should do… like what about cash or just a simple transfer? why do people use checks?
I’ve never used a check in my life. I can’t imagine who would accept one in my country.
where i live its hard to find places who even accept them. im not sure how i can get my bank to give me a check book if i really wanted to use them.
don’t have to drag ur ass to a store
