<p>I receive paper bills for my Visa card, my mortgage, and everything else. I still pay my bills with handwritten checks and put them in envelopes with stamps. We still have VCRs that we use to tape TV shows we don’t want to miss. We still use a landline in the house. My cell phone is very basic. I don’t own a GPS. When I want to put money in S2’s BofA account, I write a check from my BofA account. </p>
<p>I’m going to turn into my mother, wondering what all the fuss about a microwave oven is about.</p>
<p>I like paying bills the old-fashioned way too. My H does not want us to do computer banking. I also always go in to the bank and deal with a person, no ATM. I do use telephone banking features to transfer funds between accounts. </p>
<p>I have a land line. We are moving to an island that does not have good cell phone service. I only recently learned to text, and am finding that a useful too. (D will respond most of the time.)</p>
<p>I do love my microwave. Surprisingly, my D does not have one. We bought her one and she returned it!</p>
<p>Veryhappy,
You belong to the same club as my husband.</p>
<p>No Debit Card
He prints every email he receives if it has info that he might need later.
His phone (and mine, too for the moment) is an old flip phone.
He wants nothing to do with DVR
He pays bills with stamps and envelopes and keeps all of the old bills, statements in big baskets
He talks back and second guesses my navigator until we are hopelessly lost.
Two years ago I gave him an ipod. He returned it. Recently he go a free itouch and has started using it. He thinks he’s the first one to ever use one and keeps telling us about it as if we have never used one before. Like he invented it!</p>
<p>He is, in short, a dinosaur. </p>
<p>I took a class in my grad program that defines people in our generation as Digital Immigrants and people younger that say, 35, as Digital Natives. I think that is pretty accurate.</p>
<p>We still have a land line phone. My cell phone is very basic (no camera) and is over eight years old.
DH and I don’t have a texting plan so I only text when I want my kids to respond right away. We have the ol’ timey big box tv at our house and don’t have one in our bedroom. Don’t have an Ipod, Ipad, Kindle etc. My car is so old it has a cassette player but does have a single cd player too.
Don’t have a GPS. DH says that’s what maps are for.</p>
<p>I do use ATM’s and transfer money online to college S. DH does almost all bill paying and all other financial stuff online. DH has also mastered Itunes and downloads all our music from there to make cd’s for our car stereos. Of course most people don’t bother with cd’s anymore and just download the music to their smart phone and play it thru that.</p>
<p>Both our kids have smart phones that do everything and can’t believe we still live in the dinosaur age.</p>
<p>He thinks he’s the first one to ever use one and keeps telling us about it as if we have never used one before. Like he invented it!
lol- that is worse than my H, who hates computers- but * loves* his ipod.</p>
<p>I have a prof who didn’t have a debit card- or a cell phone & was building his dream retirement house which was completely off grid.</p>
<p>But I like my modern conveniences .
my GPS, my iphone, my laptop, my e-banking, my twittering…et al.
We don’t have cable- I even use my laptop to watch DVD movies.
( someday I will get a flat screen)</p>
<p>Well, we are OK with computers–just bought my first non-desktop. It’s a netbook that I am enjoying immensely. I also have two cell phones–one in a family plan with the kids & one that is for the non-profit. The latter has texting & voice in amounts I never reach via a pre-paid plan. The phones have cameras I rarely ever use. I sometimes text. I also have a landline that is useful for when we fax things to folks who don’t have or give us an email. Don’t tweet, rarely facebook, and have trouble keeping my webpage current. Have not bothered with any electronic books, ipad, ipod, itouch. Our family is NOT fond of apple.</p>
<p>We do love our microwave and only have two TVs that are HUGE & heavy (no flatscreens around here). S captures shows for us & gets them to us. He has us watch them thru the Wii that we don’t know how to use & have never used (tho the kids have & do use it). Not even sure if the EnV3 we have from Verizon is or is not smartphone, but D & I have one. S had one but sold it on eBay & bought himself a basic flip phone, pocketing the difference. </p>
<p>I keep a paper calendar. So far, I’ve only wanted my phone to have an alarm clock, regular clock, answer & receive calls & have the potential to send & receive texts. Am pondering the next phone plan we will have once ours expires in under 3 months. S & H can’t take their phones in to their offices.</p>
<p>Oh yea, we ALL LOVE GPS! It’s so handy, especially when it’s dark and/or the street sign is obscured or not there.</p>
<p>Lol, some of these posts remind me of my parents (85 years old…). Although even my mom uses the ATM now.</p>
<p>However, I do like to get my bills on paper so I can file them – I am just not confident that I will be able to retrieve the file in the event of a computer crash or computer upgrade if I want them in a few years. Although I receive mostly paper bills, I LOVE paying bills online through my bank. A few mouse clicks and it is done as soon as the bill arrives (even if I don’t want to pay until right before the due date, I can set the date in the future to send the payment). No postage expense, no trip to the mailbox, no need to purchase checks very often any more, and I can file the bill immediately so they don’t stack up. </p>
<p>Ex-H mentioned recently that he doesn’t even carry his checkbook on a daily basis any more (and he is a true dinosaur in almost every way, so this is quite a change).</p>
<p>I don’t have a GPS, but am considering buying one. We have a lot of college visits coming up for D2, and I am tired of MapQuesting directions and printing them out. Just haven’t had time to research and decide on one.</p>
<p>I have had an ATM card since 1974 and, in fact, I moved my checking account to that bank so I could get the card. I have loved it since the beginning.</p>
<p>Got my first personal computer in 1983.</p>
<p>I got a cell phone in 1992. Love it. No longer have a land line. </p>
<p>Started using email and internet so early that I was one of AOL’s first 500,000 customers. That was 1994, I think.</p>
<p>Have bought books from Amazon.com since 1995. (I have the mouse pad they sent me as a thank you gift for being such a good customer that year, too.)</p>
<p>Started paying bills on line as soon as my bank offered it. Put all the business’s bills on line too, which meant we didn’t lose any information when we had our huge business fire. In fact, all our inventory info was online and on two different servers, which was good, because the insurance company was able to pay a lot faster.</p>
<p>My goal is to minimize the amount of paper coming into my office. I’ve eliminated all paper statements and pay everything online that I possibly can. I access brokerage, HSA and bank accounts online and have everything set up so transfers from one to another are simple. I’ve opted out of all Direct Mail (<a href=“http://www.dmachoice.org%5B/url%5D”>www.dmachoice.org</a>) and catalogs (<a href=“http://www.catalogchoice.org%5B/url%5D”>www.catalogchoice.org</a>).</p>
<p>I have a smart phone but its GPS is terrible. I’d love a good GPS but it’s not in the budget at the moment.</p>
<p>I confess that I don’t know how to work the TV remote effectively (not entirely my fault - all the letters have rubbed off) and the DVD/VHS player has been unplugged for years. We play DVDs either through the XBox or the Mac Mini that are hooked up to the TV, both set up by my sons. I can also stream Netflix on the Mini. I’m waiting for the technology to be available cheaply that will give me a single piece of equipment on which I can watch TV, play DVDs, stream movies, listen to CDs & mp3s, and surf the Internet, with a single remote that makes sense.</p>
<p>There is too much going on, too fast. I will master what I need to – after all, I do use a computer, ATMs, texting, FB, some other things – but I don’t know how to pick and choose what’s most important.</p>
<p>Had a cell phone since 2000. Still have my landline, because power outages are quite frequent in my neck of the woods.</p>
<p>Use computers daily since mid 1980s, but in no rush to get a facebook account.</p>
<p>Move funds electronically between my brokerage accounts (have been trading stocks online since 1998), but do write paper checks to pay for my garbage, etc. bills.</p>
<p>Got my first personal computer in 1983.
If I remember right, a friend of mine used to sell them back then @ parties like they sold Tupperware & Avon.
With tape storage ?
I didn’t get my first computer( Apple llsi- it was a pretty good lil’ computer) till 1990 when older D’s school did a bulk order & H was being forced to use them at work- I thought if he had one at home it wouldn’t be so difficult. ( it actually wasn’t the hardware that was the biggest pain- although he still is the kind of person who pushes on the keyboard to make it go faster :rolleyes: it was the OS his company used.)
I remember being so excited when system 7 came out! :D</p>
<p>i made it an effort to modernize as it came along or it would be too hard later- for my work i have to do all modern computer charts, i have to do licensing on the internet, i have to receive information on emails only,etc. i choose to be modern to remain young and increase my synapses and wiring for my dementia prevention plan. have only laptops, stream netflix, online banking, cells only. KEEP THOSE SYNAPSES FORMING!</p>
<p>I still use the landline because I want to limit my use of cell phone. It’s not good for my brain to use cell phone. I pay most bills online from the same computer in my office. No wireless for online banking.
However, I save all of my savings/401K/IRA statements in paper work and file them religiously.
I’ve learned that sometimes banks/brokerages are sold or bought out and we have no paper trails. This method allowed me to recover some money through class action lawsuits. The brokerage was closed and I still had proofs past 10 years.</p>
<p>dmd77, I’m pretty much the same.<br>
I was the 2nd in my field and DH was probably 4-5th to do our dissertations on a computer (mainframe) at the large university we went to.<br>
Got our 1st PC in 1983, too. No hard drives them.<br>
Don’t remember how long I’ve had a debit card (probably since our bank offered them), but I never use them other than for the ATM (just came in handy on current trip to Europe).
Still have a land line, but only because we need it for our DSL.
Have a flip phone (because I carry it in my jeans pocket and need it protected) but it has GPS and unlimited data (which I don’t think they offer).
Travel a lot and do EVERYTHING travel related on-line. Am now staying in a B&B in Europe that I found and reserved on-line.
Pay all bills either via credit card (if possible to earn miles) or on-line. Pay cc bills on-line. Started that when I needed to pay S2s tuition and wanted to wait till last minute before it was due.
Microwave (purchased in 1984) is one of my most prized possession.</p>
<p>Ah yes, the dissertation! I remember my husband and I using two typewriters to make the corrections for his Master’s Thesis (1981). I remember using press-type for making all of the figures and tables. It was so laborious–everything is so much easier now!</p>
<p>For those of you who are still wondering why some of us use a GPS instead of a map: we found our GPS invaluable when we were forced off of a highway (accident) late at night in an unfamiliar city. No problem, the GPS quickly got us back on track. It would have been pretty much impossible with a map (city wasn’t big enough for an insert). This was not an area you wanted to wander around late on a Friday night. I love maps but even I have found these little devices to be great. Need to find a Target on a trip- there it is, right on the GPS.</p>
<p>Other than that, we love our DVR, and IPODs. We always use an ATM and pay our bills online. We buy lots of things (batteries, computer cords, hard to find plant) off of Ebay, paying with Paypal. I love my Nook. I remember when my sister didn’t want to pay at the pump; now I can’t imagine not doing that.</p>
<p>I pay bills online but I do like to receive them by paper. Why? So that if I should die or have to go into the hospital for a while, H (or whoever) can know for sure what bills are due and how much they are.</p>
