Nothing like clearing the clutter to provide a trip down memory lane. During a recent purge of the desk. I filled a bag with carbon copies of used check pads.
“Why write checks with carbon copies?” you ask.
“Because we often forget to record every check,” we answer. After trying to recall yet another check, I ordered checks with a carbon copy for each. Eventually, we started using credit cards when shopping and write one monthly check for all purchases.
We considered no longer using carbon copies until we discovered their safety net. As my husband balanced the checkbooks, he discovered a check we had sent in the mail that did not match our records. He pulled out the carbon copy and called the organization, “We have a problem. We wrote a check for much less than the bank paid on it. Our carbon copy of that check says we did not make a mistake.”
The receiving organization began investigating that check as well as another one that we found later. The carbon copy helped save us money.
So yes, we toss the pads of carbon copies in a drawer to keep for a while, but the time had come to cull them. I spent an hour flipping through check pads for dates. I tossed most into a pile to burn.
I probably should have done the same to our shoebox filled with check registers, but I can’t. They record a financial glimpse of our past.
I mentioned to my husband, “we only have one register from our first ten years.”
“I tossed those years ago,” he said.
I wish now that he hadn’t.
We do however have all the check registers for the last 40 years of our marriage plus the one partial year from the early 1970s. That sufficed to remind me how things have changed once I quit purging and began remembering.
The registers reminded me that in the early 1970s we filled our car’s gas tank for about five or six dollars. We pay more than 10 times that now. Back then, gas cost about 25 cents per gallon, and we grumbled about the rising cost of gasoline. Now we pay more than 10 times that and grumble about the rising cost of gas.
I thought we paid at least $100 in mortgage on our first house. The register said, “$62.80” per month for the old home in need of repairs. We lived in that house through ten years of renovations and a salary about a fifth of my husband’s current Social Security Check. We said “no” to a lot of things back then: eating out, television, a phone in the house and steak.
I see checks recording that moving into a recently built house in El Dorado quintupled our monthly house payment and kept us saying “no.” The year we got the mortgage was the year interest rates soared to double digits. It was also the year I discovered garage sales. All the salary increase from hthe new job went to pay the higher mortgage payment.
It is all a matter of proportion and perspective. In the 1970s our monthly phone bill hovered around $7. To keep it there we got up early, called family just before daytime rates went into effect and talked for an hour at the night time rates. It really shocked our budget when AT&T closed that loophole without forewarning us. My monthly cellphone fee now costs five times that of the old landline fee.
Weekly school meal tickets were $3. Last month eating lunch with my grandchild cost $4. We paid cash. I still wonder why we didn’t pay cash the day my husband wrote a check for 52 cents for “milk.” Whatever the reason, for now we have a record of his stupendous purchase and nowhere near as many carbon copies of checks they record.