Using the Bank: State-of-the-Art Personal Finance (from 1947)
Published on - September 12th, 2007 (by J.D. Roth) I’ve removed the entry pointing to the Dave Ramsey video on YouTube. Here instead is a different sort of personal finance video, one that is squarely in the Public Domain.
Remember what banking was like back in the olden days, in the dark ages before computers? Neither do I. All my adult life, I’ve had access to Quicken, and for most of that time I’ve been able to check my balance online. I’ve never known a time without ATMs.
Here’s a video from 1947 that highlights bank procedure by tracking the transactions of one Mr. Frank Adams, a promising entrepreneur! Though this film is hilariously dated in parts, it’s also kind of interesting:
The bank offers us many services, and like Mr. Frank Adams, most of us use the bank. For one thing, the bank is a good place to keep money. Here is Mr. Adams filling out a deposit slip. He lists cash and checks separately. The total — sixty-two dollars and fifty-three cents — is the amount he’s going to deposit in his savings account.
He takes the cash, the check, the deposit slip, and his bankbook to the teller at the savings window. The teller places the bankbook in an adding-recording machine. Into the bankbook, she punches the amount of his deposit, and the new balance, which is the total amount that Mr. Adams now has in his savings account.
Ah, times were simpler then…
Actually, this video highlights some behind-the-scenes bank stuff that either I never learned or have long ago forgotten. Does the Federal Reserve Bank really process checks? Apparently so.
Visit Howstuffworks to learn more about how banks work.
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I used to bank that way, and in fact here in Québec many people still use passbooks and there are special machines near the ATMs to update your book whenever you make a deposit or withdrawal.
I remember the first ATMs in the early 1980s; in Connecticut where I was living at the time they were called “timeless tellers,” and the one at my bank used a cat mascot, called “Tabby, the Timeless Teller.” It was all designed to reduce fear and mistrust of the new technology; a lot of people wouldn’t use the ATM at first.
My main bank has a branch that I use in an Italian section of town, and every morning at 9am there’s a huge line of older Italian people standing in line to get in, all talking Italian among themselves. None of them use ATMs, they all want to do business with living people and they do the most routine transactions at the bank window. The tellers are all trilingual, speaking fluent Italian, French, and English. Going to my bank is thus quite an experience, so I do it more often than I would otherwise.
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I think many of us take it for granted that everyone uses modern technology, but there are still a lot of people banking the old way….
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I love these old videos of banking and investment advice from the 50s. Where do you dig them up from?
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I love the language of this film. It was made during a time when many, many people were still nervous about using a bank because of the depression. This film uses soothing, reassuring language and emphasizes that the depositor’s money is safe.
When we moved to a small town in Indiana in 2000, my husband and I opted for a local bank. Much to our surprise, they were still using ledger books to open accounts. It was rather endearing to us to find an “old-fashioned” bank that still did things by hand and encouraged their customers to open a Christmas savings account (Remember those? You’d deposit money every month so that you could withdraw it at Christmas-time in order to buy presents and holiday meals. What a concept for a bank to be encouraging fiscal responsibility!)
Although I have used Quicken for what seems like an eternity, now, I do miss having a passbook. There was just something about having it in my hand and watching the pages fill up that made me want to keep adding more to it. I miss that tactile interaction. The deposit receipt just doesn’t do it for me.
Julie
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That video is pretty cool. I am wondering where to find more like it too. It’s also funny to not that the FDIC limit back then was only $5000.
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That’s too bad that you removed the video, I just finished watching them all. Thankfully a quick search on youtube will find it. (search under dumping debt)
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His $62.53 is $600 today. Must have been his paycheck for a week he was depositing.
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I read this only every couple of days or so and was wondering why you removed the Dave Ramsey video. Did they come down on you? Or did you change it up?
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The 12 region Federal Reserve Banks do process checks, but not in the way you might think; they simply serve as clearinghouses for the transmittal of checks from one bank to another.
Local example: if I deposit a check drawn on Comerica (MI) into a TCF (MI) account, the check passes through the Chicago Fed Bank on its way back to Comerica (because Michigan is in the region served by Chicago).
National example: If I deposit a check drawn on Comerica (MI) into a TCF (MN) account, the check passes first through the Minneapolis Fed Bank, then the Chicago Fed Bank, before finally making it back to Comerica.
This transmittal process is why it can take so long for a check to clear, and why bounced checks can take even longer (because the check retraces the same route on the way back!).
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