Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Twenty years ago is a long time, electronically.

As I'm making room for LL to move in at the end of the month, I'm going through a lot of old documents and shredding them. A LOT of old documents. Most of them are bank statements, some of them from 20 years ago. Seriously. I have 20 year old bank statements. It seems that if I have the room to save something, I'll do it. Unfortunately I don't feel comfortable just tossing them in the garbage so now I'm putting my shredder through its paces.

Twenty years ago though, the bank still sent you checks back with your statement and you had to write checks for everything. Though I know I had a credit card, I must have preferred to pay by check, because there were a lot of them. Just to get cash, for the most part, I wrote a check. No ATM's back then.

No ATM's. Tough to imagine based on how often and what you use them for now (deposits, getting cash, checking balances). It looks like I wrote a lot of checks at Jewel (a grocery store) and got cash from them.

Now you can even deposit checks using your IPhone. I'm waiting for the APP that turns my phone into an ATM where I can make withdrawals!

One check I saved was made out to "The pathetic champaign campus parking" enforcement and wrote in the memo "way to go worms" and at the top of the check I wrote "You caught me again! Aren't you proud?!". Boy, I must have been pissed about this $10 ticket. Back in 1988, ten bucks meant more though.

More shredding on the agenda for tomorrow too as I found several files of mutual fund statements for funds in which I'm no longer invested. It may never end....

5 comments:

alexis said...

LOL! "Worms"? you kiss your mother with that mouth?

el supremo de nm said...

It's only been 20 years since we had ATMs? Wow. I was commenting about just how easy it has become to travel now that you can just pop your card in any ATM and get the local currency. 20 years ago it was travelers checks and always looking for an exchange shop.

Eric H. said...

There were definitely ATM machines pretty much everywhere, in 1984, when I started college.

I distinctly remember withdrawing $5 from them, many times.

Lakeview Coffee Joe said...

That's not the way I remember it Eric. I was still in high school in '84 and they absolutely weren't everywhere if they even existed. Later on in my college career, I remember one ATM, or Cash Station, on Green Street, but that was it. It was all checks at the grocery store or at the Illini Orange.

I do miss the ability to get $5 or $10 though. That was nice.

terri said...

I remember people talking about how plastic was going to replace cash and checks and I remember thinking, "No way." I absolutely couldn't fathom it at that time!

Huh. I'm feeling a bit like an old geezer now!