GenX American here. I’m surprised so many people here still write checks. Sometimes you don’t have a choice: a business charges a credit card fee or doesn’t take them. Sometimes utilities charge for online payments. But if you don’t have these barriers, why are you still using them? I’m all Apple Pay/card for in person purchases, online bill pay or auto pay for utilities, rent, and the like. I haven’t used a check in ages (last holdout was landlord and I converted him to Zelle). I use Zelle or Venmo for paying friends for stuff. I only use cash for things like charity events where electronic payments aren’t an option.
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One a year for property taxes. That’s it
Yes, for my job.
This is because my direct supervisor is a 47 year old man with the habits of a 90 year old man and who refuses to take or spend cash in any way that is not a physical paper check.
Dude about lost it when we paid a web developer by Zelle lol.
Very rarely. I’ve paid a couple contractors with checks but I think thats it in the last several years.
Occasionally. Mostly for house-related stuff.
I got a box of checks when I opened my first bank account around 2007. I still haven’t used up the first book.
The guy who cleans my gutters will not take any other form of payment, despite my best efforts. So like 3x per year.
No, I don’t. I use a card for most purchases. Rarely do I carry cash. My job doesn’t even accept personal checks anymore, we haven’t for years, and it’s a major retailer.
I regularly deal with checks at work since that’s how people pay large sums to the nursing home. We don’t have a card reader.
I’ve never personally written one.
I haven’t written a check in ages and I doubt you would find many consumers manually writing checks for everyday transactions.
We were paying our utilities via check mailed from our bank, but USPS issues mean that’s getting hard to do so we just add it onto your rent.
Yes. I’m not going to venmo my 8 year old niece her college fund money.
I don’t use checks. My wife does, but only for her hair stylist (her stylist is the owner of the salon, a small business, and they’re friends, so my wife writes checks to spare her the credit card fee)
[Edit:] Oh, I forgot… Every once in a while, there is some school fundraiser or similar that we’ll write a check for.
I pay my landscaper by check. That’s literally the only thing. If you look at my ledger it’s just line after line of checks to the landscaper there are no others.
I think last year I also wrote a check for a wedding gift.
It’s been at least 7 or 8 years since a wrote a check. It’s been more like 20 since I used them for anything other than paying rent.
Yes there’s a doctor that send me bills in the mail, and I have to mail the payment back to them. Also my water bill that we drop in a drop box, I use checks for that. Edit: I forgot property taxes.
The last check I wrote was to renew my driver’s license last year. In hindsight I should have paid by credit card or something
No. Even my housecleaner takes Venmo. lol
I write checks for skilled laborer types – plumbers, the guy who occasionally does yard work for us, the people who painted the house. This is like, once or twice a year. I don’t know why these people don’t request Zelle or Venmo, but apparently they like checks!
I haven’t had a checkbook in about 10 years.
I pay my rent and water/sewer by check every month. This is in a mobile home park
Only rent. My apt owners are a small company and a bit behind.
Normally for things like down payments on cars and home remodeling. Only a few times per year, max.
there’s been a couple things that flat out required either a check or a money order so yea.
Nope not in at least a decade
I do yes, that is how we pay invoices at my job.
I don’t use personal checks unless I am paying a contractor, or someone similar that doesn’t use an app. Or the amount is too large to send through an app.
Only for very specific things. Paying my local taxes. Paying at the DMV/Secretary of State. Things like that.
I have to write checks for people in financial work from time to time. They of course approve and sign
Even older people have forgotten how for the most part
Only on very rare occasions. Checked my log and I’ve written 4 in the last 9 years, one to the DMV that wouldn’t take plastic, and 3 to workers at my home for the same reason.
My main use of checks lately is for childcare. The preschool only took checks as does the after school program run by the city.
very occasionally. Usually for big ticket items where the person is a small vendor and wants to charge a credit card fee.
For work, sure. At home? Not often. I belong to a club where the yearly dues can only be paid by check or wire. I FedExed a check to my niece last summer when she needed money to fix her car because I don’t use Venmo, etc. I pay tradesmen and repair men in cash, in exchange for a discount. I’m actually unsure where my checkbook is right now.
Occasionally for like a kid’s field trip or something.
5 years ago I lived in a county where the utility company only took checks. We also had to fax communication and to set up service, we had to physically go to their office to open an account. It was insane how prehistoric it felt.
It’s how I pay rent, my landlord is very old-school
Only when I have to
Taxes, utilities, gifts.
Yes. Mostly for horse stuff, a lot of small equestrian businesses don’t take cards but I don’t want to just hand them hundreds of dollars with no paper trail.
No, I don’t even own them, and many places don’t accept them anymore.
My husband still pays every monthly bill with a check. I just shake my head at him.
I write one a month for the water bills because the fee for using a debit card is 10%. I have multiple properties, so I quite one check for all of them.
I have to pay my HOA with a check because they don’t accept payment any other way. It’s a small community run HOA with a bank at a credit union who doesn’t accept Zelle.
Oh yeah lots of places only take checks, they wanna avoid the credit card fees
My wife does occasionally, she handles most of the bills. I wrote one last month for the down payment on a new vehicle. It was the first time I wrote a check in maybe…. ten years?
Pretty rarely. Usually only if I hired a local contractor to do some work for us, and they don’t have an easy way to process credit cards, if I pay them immediately after they finish the work.
Yes- my rent – which had been autodeduct but the new owner disliked that- sucks because they dont deposit the check for weeks
Only check I write any more is to my landlord, for some reason he prefers a paper check. That’s it
Sort of. I use my banks bill pay feature to cut and send checks for my water bill. It’s a small town so the other payment methods are cash in person at town hall and a credit card system that has fees.
Probably been 10 years since I last wrote a check
Yes but not as much as in the past. Our HOA has a portal you can pay your dues on, but it charges you whereas mailing a check there is not fee. Most everything we buy we use our visa card to collect points and pay the balance at the due date.
I keep a blank check in my wallet for emergencies and a checkbook at home for big “cash” purchases. Much easier to use a check to buy a new HVAC system than to carry that much in cash. I could use a credit card but paying with check gets me 10% off.
My annoying sewer bill is my only bill that has no online payment method. They also refuse cash, so a check it is.
I (50M) haven’t written a check in over a decade. I pay everything online. My rent is paid with a bank transfer from my account to my landlady’s account.
The fewer online services that have my financial information, the better.
Appliance repair guy, masseuse, yoga classes, school and property taxes, tax lady, gifts, reimbursing family members if I don’t have cash, etc. Everything but paying regular bills 😄
As a parent, a lot of school stuff it’s checks only, like fundraising drives, field trips, etc. School fees I still pay by check because otherwise they shove the credit card cost onto you and I am cheap and not paying that. A few things they take cash for but it has to be exact, like send in $7 for your kid to get a t-shirt for the upcoming band parade but I rarely have the exact amount so I just send a check.
Many local home repair contractors will not accept anything but cash or checks where I live. Our plumber only takes checks, for example.
really big stuff where I want a paper trail, like my rent, yeah.
Ironically I have written more checks in the past two weeks than I have in the last ~20 years.
Pretty much anything over ~$3k and you’re getting a check. Not going to Venmo or Zelle anyone that amount. If they’ve got to wait a few days to get the money, that’s a problem between them and their bank.
Yes, pretty much only for self employment taxes to the IRS
As a millennial I have never written a personal check nor do I own any. The handful of times I’ve needed one (paying income taxes to the state of Missouri, getting a passport etc) I’ve had to get my dad to write the check and I just give him the cash.
Yeah, but not in stores; always cash or card there. I pay my trash bill with them, medical bills, stuff for my kid’s school (like field trip fees, etc.), property taxes, my water bill, and contractors.
Why do so many redditors care so much about how other people pay their bills?
I carry my checkbook. I write a check maybe, 2x a year?
My brother’s birthday, I write him a check cos he doesn’t do venmo, and then again for him and my parents since they don’t do venmo etc either.
That’s it.
Although, I did have to write a check for some house insulation stuff iirc a few years back cos they gave a discount if you paid by check or cash.
Yeah I write a check to my wife every month for the total amount of my truck payment and a loan payment. She then does some sort of magic with it where it gets posted to her account via the internets.
I prefer depositing checks on banking apps over Venmo & Zelle sometimes. And I refuse to set up Apple Pay I just don’t have another app in me
The only time I write checks is to my lawn mower guy and for my yearly HOA fees. I do have the option to pay the HOA online, but the way they have it set up is a giant pain, plus there’s a fee. Other than that, pretty much everything goes on a credit card for the points, which I pay off at the end of each month..