Money Troubles

It might be my age. I have become one of those people that show a palmful of coins to staff in the store (no longer a ‘shop’) and ask them to take out what they need. Despite living here for all this time, I am almost too embarrassed to admit that I am not very good at trying to work out what is a ten cent coin or a five cent coin. And they have strange names like nickels and dimes. A one cent coin is called a penny and looks suspiciously like the pennies that I am used to. At least I can spot that one since it at least it is a different colour (or ‘color’).

Until recently, all of the notes (oops, a ‘bill’) have been the same color and size. Trying to figure out whether you have a one, ten, twenty or fifty dollar bill has been a matter of checking each one. I have not been lucky enough to worry about figuring out a hundred dollar bill. It seems that the newest notes now have different colors but they remain the same size and predominantly green  so in a hurry I still have to check the denomination on each one.

Cheques (okay, ‘checks’) also caused us some problems in the early days. It was nerve wracking figuring out how to write a check to make sure that it was made payable to the correct person, showed the correct amount in figures and was signed in the right place. Okay, so in that respect they aren't that different to UK checks except in one important aspect – they aren’t crossed ‘A/C Payee’.

In my ignorance I hadn’t really paid that much attention to why this appears on UK checks and I suspect most Brits don’t know either. What it means is that it can only be paid into the account of the payee so no one can take your check for 8 million pounds and pay it into their own account. Not so in the US. You can pay a check made payable to someone else into your own account provided the payee has endorsed the check on the back.

If only we knew this before we paid in our first check. Within a week of Stephen taking possession of our first American car, someone drove into the back of him. Fortunately it was all covered by our auto insurance (and he wasn't hurt). He had to pay the body shop and then reclaim the cost from the insurance company. They sent him a check which he paid into his bank account. A few days later, he received the check back in the post with a letter telling him that it had been rejected because he had not signed it on the back and charging him ten dollars for the privilege of returning it. Apparently even if you deposit a check made payable to you into your own account, you still need to endorse it. It’s a pity that the Bank that he works for did not think to tell him this as part of our relocation information!