It sits there on my desk \u2014 like a beached whale. The world\u2019s biggest business checkbook. Must be at least 8 feet long, and its faux-leather hides the fact that it is really a stone tablet. To lift it, I need a forklift. To use it, I need a lobotomy.
\nMy new world brain struggles with old world accounting. <\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t we just pay bills online like normal people?\u201d I ask my mother. No \u2026 I plead. I sound like a 5-year-old who wants a piece of candy. \u201cPLEASE!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I\u2019m told. \u201cThere\u2019s something not quite right about paying bills that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
And I get the idea she can\u2019t quite figure out what is not right, but that it must involve a banking conspiracy, or the mafia, or a possible alien invasion.
\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s killing me \u2014 literally KILLING me \u2014 to write out all these checks and then \u2026\u201d and I have to keep myself from gagging \u201c\u2026 address all these envelopes. I feel like I\u2019m in the 1990s. If people find out, I\u2019ll be ruined!\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother is recovering from a hip break and a fractured knee. They\u2019ve sidelined her, and I\u2019ve stepped in to take care of some financial tasks for her and our family business \u2014 a piece of commercial real estate we own in Tampa. She runs it \u2026 by paper. Only paper. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not particularly difficult. I actually welcome doing. It\u2019s nice to help out and a great learning experience. But I also feel like I have moved from the computer age to the Stone Age. <\/p>\n
If there is one thing my mother and I don\u2019t see eye-to-eye on, it\u2019s old world accounting versus new world technology. <\/p>\n
I don\u2019t write checks unless someone has come to my house, pointed a bazooka at my head and then had to put the bazooka down to literally force my hand to write one. I\u2019m an online banking nut. I can\u2019t fathom the idea of sitting down and balancing a paper checkbook. Is this not why the Lord gave us spreadsheets?<\/p>\n
But I have had to adapt to my mother\u2019s system \u2014 one rooted deeply in pencils, bookkeeping paper \u2014 which looks like a bad shirt pattern from the 70s \u2014 and adding up lots of stacked numbers the old fashioned way: with sweat, wild-dog howling, never-ending erasing and the loss of bookoo brain cells. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not natural,\u201d I tell her. \u201cDid you know the U.N. is actually considering outlawing paper accounting because it\u2019s more cruel than sweat shops?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has worked for me for all these years, and it won\u2019t kill you to do a little math,\u201d I\u2019m told. <\/p>\n
But I think it WILL kill me. Or at least addressing all of those \u2026 gag, gag \u2026 envelopes. I\u2019ve turned into a financial Neanderthal. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting it done somehow. It\u2019s taking all of my strength, but I\u2019m making it work \u2026 thanks to a few God-given spreadsheets working hard behind the scenes. (Now if only I can figure out how to print some 21st century address labels.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It sits there on my desk \u2014 like a beached whale. The world\u2019s biggest business checkbook. Must be at least 8 feet long, and its faux-leather hides the fact that it is really a stone tablet. To lift it, I need a forklift. To use it, I need a lobotomy. My new world brain struggles with old world accounting. \u201cCan\u2019t we just pay bills online like normal people?\u201d I ask my mother. No \u2026 I plead. I sound like a 5-year-old who wants a piece of candy. \u201cPLEASE!!!\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d I\u2019m told. \u201cThere\u2019s something not quite right about paying bills that way.\u201d And I get the idea she can\u2019t quite figure out what is not right, but that it must involve a banking conspiracy, or the mafia, or a possible alien invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,561,559],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-nutshells","category-family","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1369,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}