Ill start, I never used a check. The only way I can get a house is waiting for my parents to die.
I’ve written checks at the grocery store to get cash. My high school had a smoking area and we drank wine coolers at lunch. I wasted a lot of time in AOL chat rooms and downloaded songs overnight - the screech of dialup is burned in my brain. I’ve bought new albums, 45’s, and cassettes and played my mom’s 78s. I owned a car with an 8-track player. I own a house and wish i could afford to move to a smaller one.
55?
53
I once paid for gasoline after I finished filling up, with a personal check for $18 and I remember thinking “Damn, this is expensive.”
The optimistic nature of the 90’s were the best times that ever were. Economically or otherwise. Then this asshole crashed some planes. Then this other asshole officially ended the 90’s by declaring War On Assholes™ in 2001.
My first proper career (as opposed to just having a job) started in 2008, which made me nervous. While I somehow ended up on the better side of everything, the developments of macroeconomics kept me perpetually nervous about my personal finances.
Your first paragraph reminded me of a song verse,
[Verse 2] Fuck yeah, I’ve always been anxious 'Cause I’ve always been in debt And when I was eighteen two planes flew into a fucking building And we’ve been at war ever since We destroyed the environment Fuck the government, it’s an embarrassment We’re all going die in debtName of the song?
My career (as opposed to jobs) started in 2009 when a “job” opened the possibility of interviewing for a career position and I managed to nail it. I truly didn’t think I’d ever have a career due to lack of credentials (higher ed completion). Luckily, you can be self-taught in my industry and boy am I.
I’d say this puts you in the early 40s.
Very much correct. 41 to be precise.
I am right on track to achieve Freedom 35 - living in my car and hopping from place to place to park overnight.
Old enough to have used a cheque, pay with credit cards and a carbon copy click-clack machine, pay for tuition and getting paid pocket money in coins.
I’m young enough to be unlikely to ever own my own home, unable to officially retire until age 67 and likely unable to live on a pension by the time I’m eligible.
I forgot the carbon CC devices! I’ve used those, too.
I worked at a pizza place in high school and we actually still had those carbon copy credit card things for when the machine wasn’t working. I’m too young to have seen them otherwise.
I used to get sandwich bags of weed from a guy that was a “DJ”. He would weigh out 3.5 grams on a triple beam scale stolen from the science classes at a local high school. Also, I could smoke cigarettes at high school in a special shed.
I know the manager of my bank branch by name.
I have a silver certificate.
I used to have to go deposit my weekly pay in cash at the bank, as a teen.
I bought a graphic hoodie off the Internet by mailing a paper cheque to a PO Box.
Bonus round:
My music collection included CDs, but also cassette tapes and vinyl.You’re 47 and grew up upper middle class, likely in an affluent suburb on one of the coasts.
Less old, less well-off, much much less coastal.
35, lower middle class, landlocked?
Are your vinyls ones you purchased brand new, before other forms of media were available?
If no, same question for the tapes
I was too young to purchase cassettes (though they were a vibrant part of my childhood I spent every penny of allowance on penny candy and saving up for game carriages) but I am definitely old enough to never be emotionally ready to part with those mini cloth binders full of CDs.
My first paycheck paid for a Sony Walkman that played disks.
I also know the brach manager of my bank by name. It’s cause I work there tho…
I bought a graphic hoodie off the Internet by mailing a paper cheque to a PO Box.
This reminded me of when I first bought something off eBay. I mailed out a check and crossed my fingers.
Have used maybe 2 cheques, bought a condo share but a house is a whole other matter. That said I don’t think it’s impossible, the main issue is just stability, if I had a partner who earnt as much then it would still be tough but not impossible.
But you can absolutely own your residence OP - just look for smaller places, in cheaper areas, and jobs that would offer a good salary : cost of living ratio. You’ll probably have to start with a condo in a HOA, etc. but that’s better than renting.
Old enough to have used checks (barely), young enough to have access to a metric fuckload of free educational material online to cause me to side-eye the student loan industry before getting sucked into it.
In grade school was taught how to write cursive so I could be taught how to use it when writing checks. I was taught that cursive was more resistant to fraud because someone would be comparing writing styles when clearing checks.
My cleared checks were returned to me by the bank so I would be able to keep record of the transactions.
My 1st bank had 2 branches and would mail a double sided newsletter to me every month. They had a play area for kids in their lobby since the line to wait for any of their 10 tellers would get long on payday.
One side of the bank was the smoking section.
Sometimes if I was in a hurry I would use their drive-up. It had 3 manned stalls, but would use vacuum tubes to send and return checks or deposit slips for the 2nd and 3rd stall.
50? Or as young as 40 if you grew up in one of the tobacco states.
Yup. I forgot to add that when debit cards became a thing you basically used them as a 24x7 bank teller, usually only at the bank. Sometimes your bank would have an atm at its own stand at the grocery store.
Oh and the delays at the grocery store because of slow check writing or getting a check OK’d.
I might be an outlier for my age / generation (also UK located)
I managed to land myself a job good enough to pay rent and save enough for a house deposit, which I bought five years ago. I am still paying my student loan back.
I have had to use a check to pay rent and will never vote in a presidential election because elections are rigged and there’s no fucking point. The American dream is dead.
If voting doesn’t matter, why is one side working so hard to stop people from doing it?
It’s all part of a game the psychopaths play to give us a team to root for. I think we desperately need some sort of tribe to belong to, like football teams or countries or political views. While this is going on and only normal people divide themselves, the people with power and money drain them dry economically until they revolt.
By that logic, they should be working to lower the voting age and get more people involved.
Election Day would be a holiday.
I don’t know about lowering the voting age but at least one party is pushing awfully hard to get more people involved in voting with like voting by mail and other initiatives like that.
I shit-canned about 20 years with active alcoholism, but then made a fairly good showing in the following 15, I’d say I’m probably 10 years behind. Thankfully, my current job has a real pension, rather than a defined-contribution plan. I should be ok, assuming the city is.
Are you approx. 50 years old?
Mid 40’s by birth
There is no cash usage. All my transactions are monitored by the bank, a massive corporation who sells my data to other massive corporations, and the government. My insurance is adjusted based on my spending habits. My social credit will soon be adjusted based on my digital currency usage (within my lifetime).
When my friends and I walked home from school, we’d always check the bushes behind the church for empty bottles. The refund from one glass bottle was enough to buy 4-10 pieces of candy from the pick’n’mix jars at the grocery store.
