Community poll forum: How many checks do you write in a typical month?

Being from England, I have always been told that CHEQUES is British, while checks is American.

To DLDBlana,

It doesn't matter what country you are from, the correct way to spell the past tense of
"to spell", only has one "d" at the end, "spelled" not "spelledd", got it?
CHS

Almost check free, but two of my monthly payees still require checks. If nothing else, it keeps me from forgetting how to do it.

Most, if not all, bank and credit union bill pay services physically mail checks to anyone you designate if they do not have electronic money transfer with your payee. My bank and at least most other banks will even send one time checks to individuals as well as smaller businesses that do not have electronic transfer with your bank. Msecour, if you have your bank send your two payees a check rather than you doing it, you will save the 88 cents a month postage plus being easier to just select the payee from a list and type in how much money to send them.

I quit writing checks except for a few year for special circumstances. Earlier in this decade and for many decades before this, I would gather up all my bills around the first of the month, and then usually write them all, even though I mailed them in several batches depending on when they were due. Now, I have about 2/3 or my bills on auto pay at my Credit Union, and when other bills come in, I just go to the CU web site and enter them into the bill pay at the CU. I have about 20 to 25 accounts in my bill pay set up, and then just go to the payee, and enter in the amount, and then by using the calender that they supply on the site, I can select when to pay the bill by how long it will take to get to the payee. I took a little while to get used to doing it that way, but it sure makes it convenient plus all of your payments will be paid when due. If you have a new payee, you just enter their name and vital information in the bill pay program along with a phone number for them so that the CU can find out if they can do a Fund Transfer or have to send a check. Once I enter the information in, the CU does the rest of the work. Any bill that has a fixed amount is on auto pay, but bills that have variable amounts I do manually. It is easy if you have the payee account set up. At least at my CU, this is a free service. I would never go back to writing checks. I do keep a check register going though, so I can keep an off line version of my checking account. If you have Quicken, you can download the financial institution's records to your computer. I do this, so I can run a check of things for any range of time desired. It is much easier than trying to thumb your way though a bunch of check registers. If you are not doing On Line banking yet, get busy and do it, and you will thank yourself that you did it.

I guess I read the question a little differently. As far as I'm concerned, sending an ACH transfer or making an on-line bill payment IS writing a check, so all of you who said 1-3 should have said 12+!!!

I resisted on-line banking until fairly recently. I wanted a real paper trail and still received my original checks back. After the Check 21 Act passed, I realized I was fighting a losing battle, and embraced on-line banking. It does go a lot quicker, but I must say, I remember when the internet was considered too unsecure for such transactions. I do wonder though, the internet didn't get any more secure, so why is it suddenly ok? I guess it's no worse than giving your credit card to the waitstaff at a restaurant.

Actually, I average more than none, but less than one check per month. (Yes, you Brits, I know you had the language before we did and we have screwed it up worse than you have, but now the U.S. version of the English language spells your cheques, checks! In U.S. we write checks and we don't care you you spell it (smiley here)) If I incur a one time payment for some service, I write a check. I usually write a check for multi-year magazine subscriptions, but anything more frequent, I set up bill pay service to pay online.

I am suppose to be retired and get social security sent direct to bank. Since I am constantly traveling between the USA, Canada and the Philippines. I write NO checks. I pay storage and insurance, etc with auto pay or bill pay. I use more than one bank for security purpose and love 100 percent on line banking. I did have only one incident when I foolishly answered a Phishing E-mail which was quickly resolved with no cost to me, Thank goodnes and thank GOD. In almost 4 years I have never written a check. I did find some banks are better than other for total on line banking.

I looked into online banking many years ago. The deal was, if the bank failed to make a payment on your behalf, YOU are responsible. Forget that. Never looked back.

By the way, it's checks, not cheques, they are in color, not colour; I ride on an elevator, not a lift, and it's Z, not Zed. I don't go to the zedoo to see the zedebra play the zedither.