One of my college roommates would get a small stack of signed blank checks from his mother every time he went home, in order to pay the rent and whatever else came up. He kept them underneath his mattress, which we discovered when we had to move from one apartment to another and his ass never showed up to help.
And here I am, paranoid about having unsigned checks laying around because they have my account and ACH # on them. Other people's tolerance for risk always amazes me!
you simply call the bank, and tell them to credit you the money back, which they do immediately, and then they launch an investigation into the felony crime which occurred. they'll send you a couple of affidavits to sign in the mail later.
it's even easier with a credit card because the money was never taken to begin with.
and get this, with amex you don't even have to call, because they call you, and you tell them which charges you want deleted, while they send you a new card.
Eh. Usage of checks in the US always puzzled me but now that we have smartphones with direct access to our bank and it seems even weirder to still do things with checks (vs cash).
When I've used checks, it's been almost exclusively to pay bills for things that don't have an electronic payment system set up, and where I also don't want to drop $1500 cash into the landlord's mail slot for rent.
I know that we're missing easy money transfer options that other countries have had for decades, though.
My wife and I are both engineers in our mid 30s, and owning a modest home with a 30 minute commute to the city can probably never happen. The amount of old money around here is staggering. I was raised in the midwest, and can't think of any communities back there where a two-engineer household couldn't live. So yeah it doesn't surprise me fresh liberal arts grads in Boston are getting help.
Boston area? Plenty of places where a two engineer family can buy within 30 mins. Belmont, Malden, Melrose, Somerville, Chelsea, Revere, Dorchester, West Roxbury, parts of Arlington and Cambridge all should have affordable (for two engineers) housing.
$200K down and $166K annual income and you can buy the whole $1MM property. $83K/pp income seems completely reasonable for two engineers (and crazy low for two SWEs!) in their 30s.
With a combined annual income of only $85K/yr and $100K down, you can buy a $500K property. No way are two engineers in 30s making less than that... (Two train engineers driving for Keolis make more than that.) Without a 20% down payment, you need a little more income, but it's still well within reach of normal professionals who decide they want to prioritize buying a property.
