I can remember people using checks at the grocery store and have been a flea market seller then a barber, a cashier, a dance teacher and finally an accountant, still an accountant. I paid off my student loans in 5 years, and Pell Grant covered the tuition.
My younger children will have to wait for me to die to get a house, a couple of the older ones did already. Though honestly I think the prices will crash, that’s how I got in the first time, and it’s happened again since that time.
I was a city kid. In 2nd or 3rd Grade I was allowed to leave the house completely unsupervised. One of the things I liked to do was hang out by the local supermarket and ask the ladies if I could carry their bags for them. I usually got a nickle or a dime, One time an older woman gave me an entire quarter and I felt like I’d mugged her because that was so much money.
I had a toy pipe with a gun built into it. If you bit on the pipe stem a plastic ‘bullet’ would shoot out. I guess Mattel thought there was nothing suspicious about a bunch of 9 year olds walking around smoking pipes.
Sounds like the “undercover spy gear” that was popular for a while. I think there was a cigarette case that folded open and became a gun and, of course, the ink pen telescope plus the ink pen with disappearing ink! And several others as well. It was weird… we all played outside using our imagination to create fabulous worlds in the same backyard that was a grand prix track yesterday and an undersea exploration spot the day before that. A stick was a horse one minute, a cane the next, a rifle after that , and a baseball bat… hitting home runs with the bases loaded, winning the world series. Those black walnuts would sail when you made good contact!
Oldest ‘high tech’ toy I can remember. I was about 5? It was a box with a steering wheel. There was a translucent drum with a light bulb in the center. When you turned it on the bulb would light up and you’d see a road. The drum would turn and the road would ‘move’ There was a little toy car that you would steer along the road. No dead hookers.
I use checks regularly. My first job had rules for the benefits of old timers that included pensions and paid out sick time. I own a home. My retirement is entirely dependent on 401k savings. I own life insurance and have done estate planning.
I have used a check. I’m more likely to be able to get a mortgage and buy a house than to be accepted for a rental again, though I’ll likely die before paying it off. I still keep a fair amount of actual cash at home “just in case”.
I bought a few boxes of checks when I started working. I still have most of them.
In the first several years of working, I mailed in paper income tax returns. The govt would even send the blank forms out to everyone via postal mail. I think paper submissions were the norm, though electronic filing certainly existed.
Yeah it was waaaaay earlier, which I found out too when I was writing my comment. But I did start working in the early/mid 2000s, when I was 16. Even in 2000s, it was still typical to go to the public library and grab tax forms. Or print them out from the IRS website.
In elementary school, for a single grade we had these checkbooks where we’d get class points and have to put them in it. On certain days we could cash them in for prizes. Have never used any form of checkbook outside of that single year.
Only time I have ever gotten a check was because I didn’t have college financial aid set up to go directly to my bank or there was a refund or the time I got a maybe $20 check because the people running the place I live got sued.
He spun a set at Treasure Island Music Festival. There was a sick track that he opened with that he later released free on his website. I sadly lost it and haven’t been able to find it since.
I used to keep quarters in my pocket in case I needed to call home. If I didn’t have any change, I’d call collect and leave a message as my name so that nobody was charged.
If OP was calling home as a teen then 45 or under is more likely, since calls on most US payphones cost a dime up until the mid-80s, when they started costing a quarter.
I’ve received checks three or four times in my life. I’ve never written one. As a kid I had a physical paper booklet for the savings account I put my birthday money into. The only way I can get to own a house is by winning the lottery. I remember when small shops had manual credit card machines that would transfer your account details to a slip of paper. I also remember when local stores would give credit to people from the community. I get low-key annoyed when I have to use cash instead of digital payments. My retirement plan is not to retire.
I’ve received checks three or four times in my life.
This is highly location dependent. If you’re Dutch, you’re probably in your mid-to-late 30s. If you’re french, you could be 20, because people still use them pretty frequently…
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