panic over!

Morning TriciaF... Not stupid at all. We can all do stuff like this.
It got me thinking though.
I have a home safe and faithfully keep my cheque books locked away in there. I am obsessive about not leaving them out, though very rarely use them.
However my credit or debit cards are scattered around in various handbags and one is just sat looking at me on the kitchen table.
Funny isn't it.

We all have those moments of losing things I think, myself more so as time goes on. Must admit though my cheque books are in a drawer upstairs but I seriously cannot remember the last time I used one.

Regarding banks checking every cheqng a couple of years ago I had to write a cheque for 5 figures. The bank quieried it, fair enough but when I went in branch to sort it they said the signature didn't match.
No it bloody wouldn't because the one they had on record was my maiden name and the account was in H and I joint names because I'd only been married 40 yrs at the time !!! So cheques hadn't ever been spot checked since.

I wanted to add the club secretary as a signature on our club account. They wanted to see his ID. He has been a customer of that bank for 50 years and has his business account there as well, all the staff know him by his Christian name!

What do people use cheques for now?

About the only thing I use a cheque for now is the subscription to my school old girls' society. It is too small to have any other way of paying. I usually keep my cheque book in my bag because I dare not put it in a "safe place" and lose it!

I pay milkman with a cheque, also WI subs, fees for upholstery and sewing classes. I have done bank transfers, but one didn't go through which freaked me out, so I'll stick to cheques for as long as they last!

I use chequers for birthday /Easter chequers for my godchildren inside cards. Also if I have to send occasional one off cheques to people such as the money to pay a Christmas meal. My daughters never use them and think it hilarious that I do. I keep my cheque book inside my desk at home.

I pay our milkman with a cheque, The Green Thumb lawn man.
Subs for 2 choirs and a few more odds and ends. I expect for some very small business's it is helpful.

Members of the club we help to organise pay for events and trips by cheque. Most of them don't do on-line banking so this is the easiest way to pay. Also, I often pay for the GC's school trips and clubs by cheque. The school don't want to handle large amounts of cash and would you want to send a small boy to school with an envalope full of cash?

I can't remember the last time I wrote a cheque nor where my cheque book is. DH wrote a few cheques for the business.

We only use cheques to pay those tradesmen, who don't have an electronic payment system set up. That and apart from hubby's golf fees.
I once paid a plumber by cheque and it bounced, as my husband had given me an old book which had been cancelled, reported lost. I was mortified, as he was a neighbour. Now I am in charge of current cheque book and keep it in a safe.

I occasionally use cheques, some mall businesses prefer them. I've just written three two for large garden items and one to a window replacement company.
I do like getting a cheque from ERNIE, in the post! ( I know it could be paid direct )

Small*

We pay our window cleaner electronically.

I have several cheque books. I pay different things out of different accounts. Generally everything over £50 to tradesmenis by cheque as I've paid green thumb and milkmen by cash and it has been denied.

I wonder if they'll ever manage to stop the use of cheques?
I thought it had already stopped in the UK but obviously I was wrong. So open to fraud.
Paying by bank transfer is probably safer, but more troublesome to set up a system on your account.
They debated finishing with cheques here (France) but had to abandon it - so many of the older population couldn't use a computer, and hated having cash around.

Since computers systems are notoriously prone to collapsing (sometimes because of outside inteference, sometimes from an internal fault) without warning, it is just as well there is an alternative way to give someone a document that says in effect, "If you present this piece of paper at the bank they will give you this amount out of my account." If cheques were completely phased out, the best anyone could do in a financial emergency would be be to scribble an IOU on the nearest scrap of paper and sign it. Not as safe.