Sign of the Times

Here’s something kinda startling I’ve recently noticed about younger buyers (the dread Millennials!): they don’t have checks for their checking accounts.

Like, none.  As in they never ordered them from the get-go.

I have to believe I’m not alone in my wonderment here, that for folks from my generation it just seems weird to NOT have checks for your checking account.  Even as we’ve switched to paying all our bills online and using our debit cards for virtually everything else.

While the need for checks has dwindled and all but died away, I still always have checks in my desk drawer for the 1-2 of them I might write a year.  (It’s funny how that 250-count check order — the minimum — is way more than a lifetime supply now!)  I keep those checks because…well, by God, it’s a CHECKING ACCOUNT!

But Millennials don’t, or at least the ones I’ve been in contact with recently don’t.  (Discovery made upon requesting earnest money from a couple of different Millennial buyers.)

My interior voice:  Wait — you have to get a money order?!  You don’t have any checks?! *Slaps interior forehead*

Truth be told, this does actually make sense to me.  Why waste money and trees for something you will literally never use.  So I get it, even if it does make me feel a wee bit antiquated.  But this does also beg the question: do Millenials know how to write out a check, or is that a skill which has died out like cursive handwriting and punctuation?  They’d probably struggle with a rotary phone too.  I’m mildly curious (and perhaps a wee bit nostalgic).

Ah, the times they are a changin’…