See, I remember back when there weren't no ATMs. (And ATM machine, while redundant, is perfectly acceptable. Fuck you, I'm a linguist.) Back then, you needed money, this meant taking time out of your lunch (half-)hour, running to the nearest branch, and praying the line wasn't so long that you still had a chance to maybe get something to eat. Once you had the money to pay for it.
Obesity wasn't such a problem back then. Must have been the running around. Or the not actually getting the money to pay for lunch.
As for weekends? Oh, you needed cash during the weekend? Well, you can either write a check at the supermarket for over the amount of your purchase, if your supermarket does that, or maybe the bank has extremely limited Saturday hours. Possibly. And a long-ass line of people just like you.
So for those of us who don't believe in long-range planning, ATMs are a Good Thing.
They were even better back in the day, when they had fives in 'em. I don't think Wells Fargo has anything smaller than twenties in theirs. In fact, I don't think they have anything except twenties in theirs. Easier to stock, yes, but if you only need $25, and pulling out $40 would leave insufficient funds to cover a check. . . this isn't much of an improvement over having to run to a branch.
This is assuming your checks actually go to the bank. I wrote -- no, I take that back. I (over)payed for some stuff at Whole Foods with a check. Which meant I signed it and handed it to the cashier, who put it in a box next to the register which printed the date, the name of the store, the amount, read my account and routing numbers, took the money, and printed a cancellation stamp on the back of the check. Which the cashier then handed back to me.
Confused the hell out me when she gave it back.
Then scared the hell out of me, since I'm from the "ok, it'll take at least two days for this to clear" school of financial management. Same reason I use the "credit" instead of the "debit" buttons when using the card. Or the credit option used to take longer to process; this is probably no longer the case either.
Back to the thing with the check. Why am I even bothering to give you the little piece of paper again?
Oh, and that Stop Using That Horrid Grammar! site? I went out with tackyminnesotabitch a week and a half ago, and she was all complaining about people saying, like, "me and her" instead of "she and I" or whateverthefuck the supposed correct form is.
I did not make a conscious effort to use the incorrect form as often as possible in the course of our conversation. It just happened. My bad.
Bitch.
"ATM" always seemed like such an unpleasant, mechanical moniker. I prefer the more anthropomorphic designation "money god." Or, if you're felling more profane because the bank annoys you with surcharges on your worship, "money anus."
WTF is up with that check business?! I've never seen that (probably because I never even think to pay wiht a check since there were maybe two places in Boston that would let you pay with a check - but only with five different types of ID...).
Freaky.
garrity, I just say Etienne instead of ATM. It's more melodic.
Jake, never used checks in IL for just that reason. In Minnneapolis, I've seen people pay for a bagel and coffee with a check. Maybe the cashier asks for ID, maybe just for a phone number, maybe doesn't even blink.
Which sounds good, but a friend had her purse stolen, and this trusting nature caused her a lot of grief. . .
i play bank float like a fine instrument. there's a certain thrill involved, which is nice, since it's really my only option.
My bank just started charging for the ATMs on campus. Before that it was all about five dollar increments with no charge either way. The stupid part is that you hit the ATM every day but you feel so much better about pulling out fives instead of the big 'uns.
See, if I pull out five, I'll only spend, at max, five. If I pull out 20 and claim it'll last for several days, I'm going to blow the entire 20 in the next few minutes.
I think the bank knows this.
kd, I have checking accounts with three different banks now. Bouncing a check with any of them would set off a catastrophic chain reaction, since sometimes I'm tranfering money between them which does not, in fact, actually exist when the check is written.
I've tried, unsuccessfullly, to go cashless. It feels great and I wind up spending less. But it is a pain since I don't have my pic on the ATM/debit card like I do with my VISA.
I would never think to write a check because:
1. The cashier would ask for 2/3 forms of ID. This despite the fact the white customer before me just presented a beat up driver's license. -OR-
2. Bounced check fees would leave me in (deeper) poverty.
thanks for...what shall we call it?..."age-checking" with the pre-ATMs reference. i tell younguns that i come from a time before ATMs and cell phones and they nod and smile, but when i tell them "i remember when only rich fancy people had remote controls" their eyes go wide.
it's bad enough explaining to people that no, i didn't see such and such a show because i am one of the old farts that believes in free t.v. but then i found out how to steal some cable so it's all good.
I remember the first time I saw a remote control for a television... huge, clunky, and clicky. One button would change the channel higher. One would change it lower. The other two were the on/off switch and the VHF/UHF switch. You still had to get up and walk across the room to alter the volume, though.
I thought it was beyond cool. I was about 13. My brother and I immediately started playing Star Trek with it and using it as a communicator/tricorder/phaser, being that it was one of the highest-tech gadgets we'd ever gotten our filthy little hands on at that point.
hanne: You got your butt whooped for even talking about touching the remote control in my house. Of course we also played Star Trek and SpaceMan with it right after school and before dinner (when Big Howard got home).
Don't remember the first remote I saw. Do remember the guy who's fam had a tv with SPACE PHONE. Yes, use the tiny speaker on your set as a telephone transmitter and receiver!
Later, the guy who invented this went on to develop New Coke and Crystal Pepsi. And was finally hunted down and shot like a dog in the street.
Guess I should do an entry about the upcoming (Sunday, I think) UPN/FOX station swap here. Just in time for the fall season, too.
You Americans are so financially ass-backward and you don't even know it. No offence intended to present company, but really. Nobody pays at shops with cheques in Australia, and we don't spell it "checks", either. Same with Europe -- they use debit cards and other things that don't cost as much as the cheque system in the US. The UK still does a bit of chequing but they have these Cheque Guarantee cards so that nobody has ugly issues about asking only certain people for ID. But in the US there's all those aeroplanes (not airplanes) flying around delivering bits of paper to their issuing banks. And having to show ID instead of having, you know, a PIN number (oops! redundant) on your debt card. And what is it with the no-banking-across-state-lines crap? I think you got rid of that one recently, but extricating yourselves from a 1930s banking system in the 1990s isn't exactly anything to be amazed by.
Do you folks even have internet banking yet, or were you all scared off by First Virtual?
Hey, I know you lot don't deserve US-baiting, but your financial system sucks and I don't really feel like explaining exactly why to warbloggers.
Actually, we have check cards here, and their use is very widespread. Usually, they're tied to a Visa or MasterCard, so you can use them anywhere where those cards would be used. It has been for at least, ehm, five to seven years, because I had one, once, and I haven't had a card of any sort in at least five years. Pretty much any bank of repute anymore (even here in ultra-conservative Lancaster County) offers online banking.
I don't deny that our system of banking is at least a bit backward, but it's not nearly so backward as you seem to think.
i'm quite fond of our banking system, since it lends itself so well to creative financial maneuvers.
VA, yes I was being deliberately provocative. Fact remains that the US banking system is still much more reliant on cheque transactions than counterparts in other developed countries, even though cheques are vastly more costly to process and manage. And you've had cheque-cards for at least 7 years -- yay USA! -- but it's not so long ago that you had to get travelers checks if you were travelling out of state. Still do, for all I know. (That's why travellers checks are included in the money supply figures in the US, but nowhere else. See, for example http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/NOTES/Chap12.htm ) Yup, still backward relative to all the other developed countries, except possibly Japan. Don't know anything about the banking system there other than it being insolvent.
kd, yes, but not only for the customers. There was that little thing called the S&L crisis, for example. And when folks start defaulting on their home loans in droves, the effect on the government-sponsored mortgage pools is going to get ugly.
Back to our usual popular-culture and political programming....
cheers,
freetles
freetles, I vaguely remember an interview with that Linus Torvalds guy, where he mentions his surprise that in the US, online bill payment involved the bank printing and (snail)mailing paper checks. Cheques. Whatever. Or at least sitting on payments for "3-4 business days" at a minimum, and sending a bunch of 'em in a batch.
Quit with the (sometimes valid) criticisms. We have the nuclear weapons.
Yeah, but we have the early warning systems in the desert that the US so kindly built. (-;
Not sure if anyone's still reading this thread, but there are some recent hard numbers in this 57kb PDF from the chicago Fed: http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/economicperspectives/2002/3qepart3.pdf
You would pick a PDF that Google doesn't have a text version of, wouldn't you?
Yes, well. . . we still have the nuclear weapons. What's the early warning system gonna do? Let you know how long you have to get to the nearest church?
We still have buildings with rusting, faded Fallout Shelter placards on them. It's embarrasing, really. Like our banking system.
I dunno. I tend to get myself in trouble with automatic debits and such, I'd rather be able to write a check for stuff like the electric bill and at least have an approximate idea of when the money'll come out each month. Otherwise, I'll forget something, and a huge domino effect begins that ends up costing me hundreds of dollars.
Well, I later found an article at the New York Fed about why "electronic bill presentment" hadn't taken off in the US, which had an HTML version. This is basically the same issue as the one Aaron mentioned Linus Torvalds talking about -- even when you pay a bill "online", a check gets printed somewhere -- but described in arcane payments system jargon that only a specialist would enjoy. Meaning people I know, not me. I'm not a payments system specialist, but some of my best friends... oh, never mind.
Oh, and you can't bomb Australia. Where else is Bush going to get politicians who'll lick his arse so sparkling clean?