How old are you based on economic experience or position?

vis4valentine@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 98 points –

Ill start, I never used a check. The only way I can get a house is waiting for my parents to die.

94

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.

I also know the brach manager of my bank by name. It's cause I work there tho..

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.

Vinyl, some were purchased new, but for me as gifts.

Tapes, all^+ were purchased new, most for me as gifts but some with my own money.

^+ except for the ones I recorded myself, of which three are several

Youโ€™re 47 and grew up upper middle class, likely in an affluent suburb on one of the coasts.

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.

This will blow minds.

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.

When I was 6-7 years old my friend's mom would send us to the corner store to buy her cigarettes. We would use the change to buy candy cigarettes.

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!

Look.... ok..... it's right there in my name...old. LOL

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.

This unlocked a memory for me of cigarette-shaped... I think it was gum. They came in pastel colors and were coated in a fine powdered sugar.

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 Assholesโ„ข 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, Iโ€™ve always been anxious
'Cause Iโ€™ve always been in debt
And when I was eighteen two planes flew into a fucking building
And weโ€™ve been at war ever since
We destroyed the environment
Fuck the government, itโ€™s an embarrassment
Weโ€™re all going die in debt

My career (as opposed to jobs) started in 2009 when a โ€œjobโ€ opened the possibility of interviewing for a career position and I managed to nail it. I truly didnโ€™t think Iโ€™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.

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 OKโ€™d.

Now i just avoid getting in line behind someone in their 80s ๐Ÿ˜น

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.

Oh man...i forgot those days. In college i would call my mom collect and she would reject it and call back.

55?

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.

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 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.

1 more...

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.

I am right on track to achieve Freedom 35 - living in my car and hopping from place to place to park overnight.

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".

Will be interested to hear your guesses.

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 am 56 and that dial up sound, the handshake. I remember that so vividly but was on Usenet forums not AOL.

And had a car with an 8 track player but only one 8 track recording, Deep Purple.

High school outdoor smoking area.

Landline phone "party line" not even a private line when I was really little, can vaguely remember picking up the phone and not being able to dial because someone else was talking on it, though we only had one phone.

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).

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 had to explain to my parents that as an engineer I would never be able to raise a family on a single income

One family does that. And while they have a house, they never have enough money for something.

Yeah I could probably afford a house on a single income, but not a nice one, and definitely not with kids.

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.

I had an actual piggy bank as a kid, where I collected loose change.

My parents gave me a weekly allowance for doing chores. Although they would forget about it for months on end, and when I reminded them, they'd just give me a $20 bill to make up for it.

I mowed lawns to make money in the summer as a kid. Also did some farm work when I hit my teens.

I wrote checks for a lot of things as a teenager. Even wrote a few just to exchange for cash at the bank. I had a debit card, but the ATM charged a fee for withdrawals. Checks were free.

I joined the US military at 18 years old and their primary banking institution (USAA) would only do direct deposit paychecks, since they only had a couple physical locations across the US. It seemed very high-tech at the time because everyone else in the civilian world were getting physical paychecks they had to manually cash in at a bank. I could only reach my bank through their 24-hr hotline, and I needed to fax documents if they needed any paperwork signed by me. I used to get a statement in the mail for every paycheck, but they stopped that around 2007 or so. Now they're almost 100% online.

My dad just died a few months ago and I'm in the process of inheriting his house (my childhood home) right now. My wife and I have been living with him for the past 2 years because we couldn't afford a decent house in today's market. I actually needed a blank check for the closing on the house (I'm buying out my sister on her half of the inherited property - using the money I inherited from my dad) and USAA emailed me a PDF of their checks, since I haven't used one in over a decade now.

Oh, and I'm receiving a pension now. The military did away with pensions in 2017, opting for a 401K-like program instead. But I joined the military when pensions were offered, so I was grandfathered into their old pension program. I get a direct deposit into my bank every month for the rest of my life now, and I retired after only serving 20 years in the military.

Plus, they're giving me free medical and dental for life because I'm 100% disabled according to the VA. That also includes a monthly VA paycheck bigger than my pension! My wife is also 100% disabled by the VA, so she's getting the same medical/dental and pay deal. She was medically discharged from the military though, so she doesn't have a pension. I was almost medically discharged, but I was so close to retirement and could still do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me coast to the end.

I'm only in a good place financially because of my military service. They really took care of me. Even gave me food and housing allowances on top of my regular paycheck, so I could afford to eat and rent a house wherever they stationed me. If not for my service, I would probably be stuck in the same position as every other Millennial/GenZ/GenA now.

Although it does help that I was fiscally responsible. I had a lot of military buddies who would blow their paychecks on booze, clubbing, women, and cars. Especially on cars. Then they leave the military broke and can barely get by. I was an introvert, so I pretty much stayed in my room and saved my income for decades.

The stock market can have a greater impact on my net worth than a payday.

Very true. I also have investments that I've been sitting on for over a decade now. I've been mostly ignoring them, pretending they don't exist until I reach retirement age. My cousin has his own investment firm and he's been handling financials and investments for several members of my family, so I know it's in good hands.

My first bank card was a little book that the bank teller would write amounts in when you deposited or withdrew.

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...

Exactly. My friends all teased me for still owning a cheque book in the 1990s.

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'll date myself down to a year. In middle school the coolest thing to do was go buy sourball gumballs in bulk and bring em into school to sell 25 cents a piece.

I have used a check, and my only hope of buying a house is waiting for my parents (or maybe one aunt) to die.

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.

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 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 remember watching Headbangers Ball on MTV.

Discovering Amon Tobin on Subterranean.

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.

My appetite has too been whet for this black magic you describe. I'll dig around!

I once paid for gasoline after I finished filling up, with a personal check for $18 and I remember thinking "Damn, this is expensive."

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.

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.

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.

I figured that efiling started in the mid-2000s. Nope, 1986. I was not paying attention.

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.

My mom (80) has 20 mil or so. (Dad dead)

But she cares only about partying and home renno and refuses to even buy her kids a cup of coffee.

So we wait like vultures.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict_voting_following_the_2020_presidential_election

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.