What's a stamp?

I hardly ever need to use postage stamps anymore. (No wonder the post office is broke!). With online banking there is not one bill I cannot pay online. My regular monthly payments like electricity, insurances and garbage I have set up to have the payment withdrawn from my checking account or it gets charged to my debit card. For things like my payment to the lady that owns our water well, I just set her up as a payee with my online banking and make a few clicks and a check gets mailed to her (at no charge to me). Recently my bank (Chase) added being able to send anyone money that goes direct to their account, even if it's a different bank, so we set up my monthly loan payment to my mom that way. I don't always see her on the first of the month so I was just having Chase mail her a payment, but then she'd have to make a trip to her bank to deposit it. Now it's just in her bank every month.

If I send anyone a letter, it's via email.  DD recently needed a stamp because a friend of hers is doing his basic training and sent her a letter (he's not allowed facebook or email, I guess) so she wanted to send him a letter back. I didn't have any stamps! So, I just took it to work, threw 2 quarters in the petty cash box and used the postage meter at work to stamp it. I didn't want to have to go buy a whole book of stamps to have sitting around, nor did I want to stand in line at the post office just to get one little stamp. It's interesting how technology changes make some things that we used to use with regularity almost obsolete.

I also remember "back in the day" how even the next town over was a long distance phone call. Now, I can call my son in Canada and it's all just part of my monthly phone service. No extra surprises each month on how much the long distance bill is. When DH and I first got married he liked to talk on the phone to all his friends every evening. Most were "local long distance" calls, but the bill would still add up each month. I hated getting that bill!