Those of you too young to remember dial phones, or even corded phones, may not know what a pain balancing checkbooks was. You had no way to go online and see which checks had recently cleared. You got a monthly statement showing which checks had cleared as of several week ago, and which deposits you had made. Then you marked in your checkbook register which checks and deposits were on the statement. Then take the balance from the statement, add any deposits not yet cleared, subtract outstanding checks and see if you were lucky enough to have it match what your register claimed. If not, check every arithmetic operstion in the register, verify that you recorded the amounts correctly, and you did not fsil to record a check. If the register went from check 2948 to check 2950, hmmm...
This was before ATMs and similar paperless transactions. You have no idea how impressed a young lady in my car was about 1978 when I said, "Let me get some cash out of the bank," at 7:30 PM.
Yea, a rare date. I was adequately good looking, well-paid and too polite (or clueless) to recognize an opportunity. I had a young lady out to dinner. She invited me to her place where she changed into "something more comfortable" a not very sexy nightgown. She had me lay down on her waterbed to see what it was like and she hovered over me and in retrospect waited for me to take the hint.
I was not a bad boy who mistreated women by treating them as casual sex objects, so I was pretty much free of second dates until I met my wife at a Bible study
A girlfriend (yes, mentally ill, hence a second date, the result of a double blind date: blind date arranged by a blind girl). She had a checking account that always had overdrafts and not for the reason satirized in a bumper sticker of the time: "I can't be overdrawn. I still have checks left." Many (most? all?) checking accounts of the time charged a per check transaction fee. Hers was $0.35 per check. She did not know this.
Once enough of the charges accumulated to take her to 0, every check, no matter how small, caused another overdraft. Once I explained this mystery, her problems, at least her accounting problems, were solved.
So, how do young people balance checkbooks? (My son does not even have a checking account; possession of a checking account used to be a sign of adulthood.) Nothing like the old days I am sure. My wife balances the old-fashioned zway with the advantage that she can see which checks have recently cleared rather than rely on a three week old statement. It strikes me that there must be a way to do this that is less cumbersome.
I envision what I call the top-off method for very rich people. You put $100,000 in checking; when your current balance gets below $20,000 you transfer money to get it back to $100,000.
Advantage: no need to balance checkbook or keep a register. Disadvantages: you have no idea if someone has figured out how to loot your account except regularly reading the transaction history; the difference in interest rate on checking and your investments means you are forgoing some income. But once you have 3-4 million dollars, the difference is less than $50,000 per month.
Can anyone think of a more clever name than top-off checking?
