"Paper checks are dead and cash is dying."
When I read that headline in the Washington Post last week, I cringed.
According to the Post article, back in 2000, six out of 10 non-cash payments were made with a paper check. Today it is 1 in 20.
Or consider this: 57% of Americans haven't written a check in the past month. None. Nada. Zero. Zip.
If check writing is going the way of the dinosaur, I must be a regular Tyrannosaurus rex. I still pay my bills by check. I line up my bills on my desk and pay each of them with the swoop of a ballpoint pen. To me, it screams financial responsibility.
But soon those giant, oversized, foam board novelty checks will be the last remanent of what was a 20th century fiscal icon.
I was thinking about that at a recent Downtown Springfield Kiwanis meeting when a local merchant presented a grant via one of those gigantic emblems of generosity.
I found their use of this symbol curious because when I tried to make a purchase from the same store last month, they wouldn't take my check. A clerk informed me they quit accepting customer checks two years ago.
Hmmm, they'll give a symbolic check but not accept a real one?
I remember when merchants preferred checks. Credit card companies charge between 1.5% and 3.5% of each transaction. More than a few times, I've negotiated a discount on merchandise by offering to pay with a check rather than a charge card.
Destiny Nance-Evans, a senior vice president at Security Bank in Springfield, tells me that checking accounts remain popular. But increasingly, customers don't use them to write checks. They are using debit cards and electronic transfers to draw money from the accounts.
She said she personally prefers these types of transactions to ones involving paper checks because they are more secure. She noted every paper check has a routing number and account number printed on the bottom, and if an unscrupulous individual were to get ahold of the information, it could be misused.
Still, I can't help but think something is lost as the written check goes by the wayside.
I opened my first checking account when I was 11. My dad thought it was important that his sons have experience operating their own businesses. My brother raised hogs. I raised cattle.
I purchased bull calves from dairy farmers across Knox County, took them home and raised them on a bottle. (Dairy calves are raised on formula because humans drink their mothers' milk.)
I felt like a regular Rockefeller writing a $25 check for a Holstein calf.
My mother taught me to carefully record each transaction in my checkbook: milk replacement, feed, a pitchfork. Checks were about responsibility and accountability.
When I received a check in the mail from Bill Robinson, the farmer I eventually sold the calves off to, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Holding something tangible in my hands was a reward for hard work.
In college, my peers griped about their parents monitoring their activity by reading the cancelled checks the bank mailed home with a statement each month.
"You're writing a lot of checks to Domino's Pizza. Why aren't you eating in the dorm cafeteria?" annoyed parents would exclaim.
Decades later when I wed, the checking account became a point of contention.
Spouses have to communicate with one another. And nothing requires communication more than a joint checking account.
My wife, God bless her, has a phenomenal memory and can remember all of her transactions. But somehow, she'd forget to tell me about them. It was a recipe for checks bouncing higher than a super ball.
We experimented with separate checking accounts. But that created a mindset of "his money" and "her money" – never a good idea. In marriage, everything should be "ours."
Eventually, we tried a joint account again and learned to communicate better. It wasn't just good for the finances but for the marriage.
A young man I do business with needed to pay me and asked about sending me a Venmo payment. I told him I didn't have an account. This exasperated, college-educated, 20-something then asked how he was supposed to get the money to me. I told him to mail me a check.
He had to watch a YouTube video to learn how to fill one out.
As the written check fades away, the American lexicon will be altered. Terms like: "Grip and grin," "rubber check," "The check is in the mail" and "paycheck Fridays" will slowly disappear from our language.
Future students may ponder these words of 1960s radical Jerry Rubin: "The individual who signs the check has the ultimate power."
Will those future scholars ponder this statement or simply ask, "What's a check?"
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at [email protected].
