The ‘Tubey Thing’ Is Now Called Venmo: Teaching Parents Online Banking Without Losing Your Mind

Top 5 Reasons to Help Your Parents Ditch Checkbooks and Go Digital

1.     Their beloved bank branch closed (and the teller who knew their birthday retired).

2.     No more checkbooks to balance, lose, or accidentally wash.

3.     Mobile deposit = fewer car rides and less paper clutter.

4.     You can track payments and teach them what “shred after depositing” means.

5.     You get a window into how they’re managing money before things get messy.

If you’re a Gen Xer, your parents’ financial system probably came in the mail. Bank statements, a passbook, and that sacred ledger where they’d “balance the checkbook.”

I still remember my mom at 32, newly divorced, sitting at her desk surrounded by receipts and anxiety, trying to reconcile her first solo account. It didn’t look fun. Maybe that’s why I’ve never attempted it.

I also remember the golden age of the drive-thru bank:

·       Pull up to the window.

·       Push the button.

·       Chat with the teller (a real person!).

·       A WOOSH sound followed by clear, hard plastic, tube thing coming from the sky and landing in front of our car window

·       Retrieve the tubey thing.

·       Open the tubey thing, insert your check.

·       Send it flying back through the vacuum tube like a tiny pneumatic spaceship.

·       If you were lucky—and under the age of 13—tubey thing would return with a lollipop in it just for you!

Honestly, the tubey thing was magic. I’ve reminisced with other Gen X friends, and we’ve decided that today’s version of that technological wonder is called Venmo.

Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones whose parents already bank online. They’ve got a tidy manila folder labeled Passwords (or, as one child-free couple I know calls theirs, the “Croak File”). You’re ready for liftoff when they eventually log off…for good.

But if their estate plan is “let the last checks bounce as they may,” now’s a good time to talk with them about banking for your collective future. Help them pack up those old checkbooks, label the box To Be Shredded, and join the 21st century.

When my mom moved to California, “Operation Phyllis” began. We opened her new account at our bank, added me to it, set up bill pay, called Social Security to redirect her deposits, and looped in her secondary health insurance. Every vendor, every bill, one by one, online.

Life suddenly got a whole lot easier.

Three years later, when we had to move her into assisted living, that simple online setup saved us. The heartbreak of realizing she couldn’t live independently was softened by the relief that I could pay her bills, manage her transfers, and keep everything running—from my laptop. No checkbook required.

Because sometimes love looks like setting up automatic payments and shredding the paper trail.

dōte.worthy:

• the government of australia offers a course on introduction to mobile banking on its “be connected” website.

• this article in AARP explains How to Never Miss a Bill Payment, it’s about setting up autopay so that your aging loved one doesn’t forget a payment…because just like the tubey thing, an actual physical check is not going to be a thing in the not so distant future.

dōte.note:

share a story with dōt.age about your experience helping an aging loved one set up an online system…what worked and what didn’t?