I’m not going to go into the wasted paper of monthly bill/checking statements as that seems to already been touched on, but I’d like to focus on one thing: how many people I know that have absolutely *no idea!* how much money they have in their checking/savings accounts. My best friend uses her debit card arbitrarily never sure if she has enough to cover whatever CD or rock magazine she’s buying.
I used to have a mental rule (not enforced, obviously) that everyone in life should have to learn two basic actions: driving a standard vehicle and knowing how to balance their check book. The former still applies but I’m waning on the latter with the advent of online checking accounts. I swiched over to ING savings in 2006 and soon after they came out with the Electric Orange checking. All of a sudden, every transaction I made showed up within about 15 min, and that money is already shown deducted from my account. The exact amount you have is always within your reach. All of a sudden I didn’t have to balance my checkbook anymore. I used to love that, but holy cow!
There are alot of people who still don’t believe money is real until they are holding it and smelling it-and that’s important. You have to sometimes go back to cash for awile to realize what it is exactly you are working for. But as for security issues, I have never had a problem online and worrying about something like that is wasted energy. How often are real banks robbed every day?! 🙂 How often are people mugged every day?!
And with online banking your incur a phenomenal interest rate. I love going to ING frequently just to see what interest I got that day alone. And it pays out at the end of every single month…ahh, just more money in the bank 🙂 And there are a ton of free ATMS’s surprisingly, they are on a system called the Allpoints network which includes most of those gas station and drug store dial up ones.
One thing I do shy away from in the digital era-automatic bill pay. People should still be responsible to track when they decide to let it out.
ANYWAY…ONLINE BANKING IS FANTASTIC! YOU GET GREAT RATES, NO ATM FEES…AND ITS ALWAYS OPEN!