Welcome to the new year, my friends. The best thing about this fresh, new 2025 is that you don’t have to remember to write it on your checks like in the past, because nobody writes checks anymore.
I know I’m going to get irate emails, so I’ll make it easy: Send them to mfisher@scng.com.
But I repeat: Nobody writes checks anymore. If you are among this dying breed, I implore you. Embrace the 21st Century. I don’t really want to hear about how you’re too old and don’t want to learn new tricks because (a) you’re not a dog and (b) you’re still alive and probably have at least some of your faculties intact.
I have friends who still write checks, proving of course that I’m a bald-faced liar. But in my mind, while I love them, they’re so mired in the past they might as well keep chamber pots in their bedrooms and watch cable TV.
Now, I admit that I didn’t embrace the future of technology with any great enthusiasm. I get easily frustrated. Trying to get those little shrink wrappers off literally anything I buy these days is about the maximum amount of aggravation I can take in any 24-hour period.
The only reason I ever ended up with a smart phone at all was because my newspaper forced all its reporters to get one, so they could keep electronic leashes on us all the time.
I already had some nearly obsolete flip phone, so I had grown accustomed to the idea of talking to people anywhere, even on top of a mountain.
But the day our bosses made us line up and get Android phones assigned to us thrust me into an entirely new world that seemed alarming and oh-so-wrong.
“What the hell is wrong with this thing?” I started yelling to anyone within earshot about nine seconds after I’d signed for this piece of company property. “I keep trying to make a call and I keep getting disconnected.”
Looking back, I suspect I was hitting the “off” button accidentally with some part of my body. Meanwhile, I was infuriated that I’d been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern world of the smart phone, which seemed like a dark and demonic place to live. Finally, one of my more intelligent colleagues explained things to me.
“Marla, stop thinking of this as a phone. Think of it as a tiny computer that has a phone inside of it.”
This was a concept that had never occurred to me. Oooh. A tiny computer I could hold in my hand. Even though I quickly embraced the idea — mostly because I could look up movie times without spending 20 minutes listening to a robotic voice telling me every flick that was playing — I had yet another fit when the bosses upgraded us to iPhones.
“I don’t want an iPhone, I like my Android,” I griped loudly to anyone who made the mistake of coming near me. But, once again, I had no choice. And I soon realized that the iPhone was intuitively easier to use for people like me, and became a convert.
It seems like the blink of an eye before I was doing everything on my phone, including banking, making travel reservations, doing research, listening to audio books, grocery shopping, making restaurant reservations, checking movie times, messaging my doctor and hundreds more. Yes, and watching cat videos.
If I couldn’t figure out how to do something, luckily I have two young adult children, who could always show me in nanoseconds, usually while rolling their eyes.
And one of the things I embraced with great enthusiasm is mobile banking. That’s right. You can send me money probably about 10 different ways on the Internet. Feel free to do so any time. And I can pay my bills by doing absolutely nothing. They just magically pay themselves (although unfortunately still with my money.)
So when one of my friends writes me a check, it takes me a minute to remember what that means. Let’s run down this scenario: You owe me $25 for lunch.
When you get home from lunch, you search for your checkbook, find it and then realize you need a pen. You get the pen and fill out the check, tear it out and record it for posterity or the IRS, whichever comes first. Then, you open your desk and find an envelope, look up my address and copy it onto the envelope. You put your return address in the corner. Then you find a stamp, lick it and stick it on the envelope. Are you following me so far?
Then, you go outside and leave the check on the mailbox for the postal carrier to pick up.
So that took what, 10-15 minutes? If you found everything right away, that is. That is time you’ll never get back, my friend.
By contrast, if you used electronic money transfer, you would have opened the phone app, typed in my phone number or email, wrote $25 in the amount category, noted “thanks” and hit “send.” This took seconds.
Even my grumpy old plumber now has a Zelle account. So, before you write me that irate email, think to yourself, “I can do this. I can live in the 21st Century. And I never have to buy a postage stamp again.”