2025, Business, education, Uncategorized

Out With the Old

36 Comments

Most of my adult life, the new year has come with the headache (mild) of having to remember to write the correct year on forms and checks, mostly checks.  I can’t even guess how many times into a new year I have still been writing the old year in the date.

As I changed out all my calendars this morning, I thought was thinking about this problem and realized that it’s not much of a problem anymore.  I write almost no checks anymore.  I still write a check to Bachmans most months since they do not have any kind of online billing yet.  And the place where I pick strawberries in the spring and raspberries in the fall still needs a check.  Even the apple picking place accepts cards now.  Since I write so few checks, writing the date isn’t as automatic as it used to be either.  Of course, I haven’t had to order checks for a couple of years now.

When I got my first checking account, my mother spent a couple of hours teaching me how to balance my checkbook, which I did religiously for decades.  These days I check my bank stuff online every few days so even balancing the checkbook has gone by the wayside. 

Do you still write many checks?  How do you remember the new year’s date?

36 thoughts on “Out With the Old”

  1. We still write 5-10 checks a month. We do have a several auto pays, and I occasionally pay for something online, but I am still leery of potential hacking. It doesn’t help that my step-son just lost several thousand dollars to a bank scam when he tried to do a transfer online. I don’t put any banking info on my smart phone…

    So I’ll write down on scratch paper the new year 2025, 2025, 2025… to get used to writing it. : )

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  2. Morning all. I’ve been thinking about this all morning, but we still call them checking accounts but hardly anybody writes checks anymore. Is this going to be one of those phrases that follow us around for decades like the word typing? And why did we call them checking accounts in the first place?

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    1. I think they were called checking accounts because those accounts were allowing checks to be drawn on them, as opposed to savings accounts which had no method to pay a bill other than withdrawing cash.

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    2. Will these vestigial words fade as we oldsters do? There are more, like “dialing” a phone number, when phones haven’t had dials for decades or “albums” of music, when cds are hardly album-like and cds themselves are mostly history.

      Others?

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      1. Bushels and pecks? Reams and quires? Taiwan was home for 39 years, where produce in the market is weighed by the catty, the area of your house is in the ping, and the foot of length is divided into 10 inches. The systems there are workable within their own logic.

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  3. When a roommate taught me how to balance a checkbook (I was 20 and freshly out of the Army, where keeping a balance wasn’t so important because food, rent and clothing were taken care of), he just said to “round up the pennies so there would always be a little extra” in the account. Several years later, a married guy, I let balancing the account become my spouse’s responsibility, because she wanted a “to the cent” figure that I didn’t want to bother to compute.
    We write few checks. Mainly make payments online now. Though a check for the offering at church still feels better than an automatic withdrawal… though that’s, admittedly, about “how it feels”.

    As for remembering the year, I have an avocation of writing songs, each of which requires a copyright line that includes the date. I write those often enough that the “year”, at least, is noted frequently.

    Anybody wanting to see any of those songs can check them at http://www.aboksu.wordpress.com

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  4. I have the same sentiment as BiR – still write some checks every month and balance my checkbook every month. It’s part of my budgeting. I am much more aware of where my money goes when I write a check versus using plastic. I have an online account with my bank but only use it to view the status of my account. There are a few auto pays and I do use my credit card (never debit card) for online purchases. Just call me dinosaur! I don’t have difficulty remembering what year it is.

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  5. Rise and Shine in the New Year, Baboons,

    This morning my feet are cold in my wool socks, so we are back to real winter. I have slowly transitioned to paying most bills online. I monitor the accounts often, though. I also purchased a credit monitoring service in case of a fraudster or identity theft, so it is constantly monitored and so there would be assistance with that if my identity is stolen. I can track the year easily enough, but monitoring the supply of checks and their location in my files has become difficult because I use them so rarely.

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    3. It’s now possible to get an identity protection PIN from the IRS without a confirmed theft of your personal information. Everyone should have one. For most of us on the Trail, it’s less important, because once you reach 65 and no longer qualify for earned income credit, you’re a less valuable target than younger people. Still, you never know why someone might taret you till it happens.

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  6. I write so few checks there’s no habit of writing 2024 I have to break.

    All of our monthly bills for utilities are auto-paid. Anything we pay remotely using a check we take directly to the post office. Maybe that’s an excess of caution but given the incidence of theft from P.O. boxes coupled with the alteration of checks therein makes (to us) the practice of sending checks in the mail less secure and more trouble than making an online transaction.

    Given that funds come and go to our “checking” account from so many places distinct from the writing of checks, the idea of balancing the account doesn’t apply. The bank keeps track and I keep track of the bank.

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      2. I’m more apt to know what year it is than what day of the week it is, and since I write about two checks a year, getting the year right isn’t a problem for me. I pay virtually everything on line. It’s so much more convenient, and it vastly improves my record keeping. I’m terrible at keeping track of paper.

        Speaking about what Bill call vestigal words made me think of the various jobs that once were commonplace but which no longer exist.

        The changes we have seen in our lifetime due to technology alone are pretty amazing. Keeping track of written records, their storage, retrieval and disposal were major issues when paper records were how we kept track of stuff. Think of how the advances in that field alone have changed everything from our medical records, to our financial records, and just about everything else. Most of these advances have both simplified and complicated our lives. Just thinking about it makes my head spin.

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  7. Between my home and business checking accounts, I wrote about 50 checks last year. I used to have trouble remembering the year when writing a check, but that was when I’d end a year writing several checks and then start off the new year writing checks in the first week or two. But when I rarely write one, remembering the year isn’t a problem.

    Chris in O-town

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  8. I write a few cheques, far fewer than I used to. I picked up the hoity toity spelling when we lived in Canada. Gradually doing automatic payments.

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  9. Hi-
    We don’t write many household checks, but I still write many for the farm. I haven’t balanced a checkbook in a long long LONG time. I had to order another box of checks in 2024. But I only ordered one box, not four.

    When I first took over the farm, my accountant had a special book I’d write entries in. Then at the end of the year, it was a lot of calculating totals of separate columns.
    I’ve been using a computerized version since 1994.
    I noticed on the 30th, the date on my analog watch was a day behind. Evidently I don’t pay much attention to that if I didn’t know it for the first 30 days…

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  10. I probably write 20 checks a year and I have always had problems remembering what year it is when I’m writing checks and find myself laughing when I’m starting out with 19. twenty four years into the 21st-century
    New Year’s is such an odd holiday. You’re celebrating the oncoming new year and going through some thoughts about the past in the future and where you’re currently at my life is in the midst of a turbulence this year, but in reality, my life has been in the midst of a turbulence most years that I’ve been around. I’m not sure I’d know how to deal with it. If it wasn’t I won’t be retiring anytime soon, but hopefully I can figure out something a little more fulfilling than doing the delivering. I do enjoy the people and find that my families at Costco and cub and the various places that I frequent really do kind of feel like family, but I won’t mess the hours and the tedium and dealing with the nitpicky little details that pop up all the time

    I have a couple new things I’ll be starting up and Debbie and I have to decide if we’re gonna stay put where we are or do a downsize thing. Our transition date will be July 1 and will need to have it figured out obviously in April or so which is only 90 days off so that will be part of the turbulence on track for 25 looking forward to seeing everyone on the trail. I love the fact that this is here and has become part of my life. I will be able to come back to book club in another session or two and look forward to that happy new year everyone hope 24 was a good one and hope 25 is better.

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  11. I don’t write many checks at all anymore. I have most routine payments on auto-pay or I pay online. One exception has been my dental insurance. I found their website unrealistically challenging to use, so I pay them every three months by check (four checks per year). I do check the balance in my checking account frequently, and track when auto payments clear my account.

    I saw Monroe Crossing last night at the Sheldon in Red Wing. Great show! They just get better and better. And I actually went to a movie today. I saw A Complete Unknown. I thought the acting was very good. Some scenes brought tears to my eyes. I liked it.

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    1. Speaking of unrealistic challenging websites, our farm insurance has finally created an online option, but there’s a service charge of about $39 which is completely absurd. So they get a paper check in the mail quarterly.

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  12. Two checks per month.
    2025 will be easy to remember as I consult Wikipedia each day for events. Also, I check each day, the Mandan, ND-based National Day calendar.

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    1. i read an article years ago about how putting to a vote to all national whatever day to be proclaimed became a thing in the sixties and before you knew it we went from 15 national whatever days to 3000
      i hear its stopped now . no more national day nominations

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  13. I don’t think I’ve written a check since the pandemic. Everything is online, or purchased with plastic. Very easy.

    I still have some boxes of cancelled checks from the late 70’s. It’s rather fun to look at them to see what I spent money on and how cheap everything was. When I lived in Alexandria I had cable with a movie channel – Showtime – and it cost eight dollars a month.

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