old school emergency finance guide for the terminally online

I put this guide together for those who literally have no clue how to make payments if your debit or credit card gets frozen.

Before I begin, everything I'm going to say here is common sense to anybody born before 1995. And the reason I say that is because even if you were born in '95, you were 18 years old in 2013, which is right around the time when smartphones were beginning to take over everything. However, you were still taught (or at least should have been) how to pay for things without a phone nor internet.

For those born after '95, however... different story. There are loads of people in their teens and 20s that literally do not know how to address a letter for mailing, much less understand how to pay for anything without a computer. And yeah, that is part of this guide, so let's get to it.

The situation

A day comes when the normal online way you pay decides to stop working. It doesn't matter whether you pay from an app on your phone or a browser on a computer. There's a bill to pay, you can't pay it because the payment system you use decided to break, and now you're in a state of panic.

How do you prepare for a situation like this?

I'll tell you.

Step 1. Have cash on hand somewhere.

When I say "cash on hand", that means you have placed physical cash somewhere in your living space for emergency use. It doesn't matter where it is as long as you can get to it.

The absolute bare minimum of cash on hand should be $100 in small bills. If you're not familiar with that term, small bills usually refers to 20's. This is important because some places do not accept cash in denominations over $20. In other words, have five twenty dollar bills in an envelope somewhere in your living space.

Ideally, you should have $300 to $500 in cash on hand, again in small bills. That amount of physical money should be able to cover most small emergencies for when you need to pay a bill. But, given the state of things these days, asking a younger person to keep that much cash on hand is a big ask. This is why I say if you can get together $100 in cash in small bills, that's better than nothing.

Step 2. Find out the payment mailing address for every account you have.

To make a manual payment through the mail, you need the mailing address to mail it to.

Every credit card issuing bank in the United States has a payment address, and there are usually two. The first one is for normal payments, and it's ordinarily a PO box. The second is either for fast overnight payments and/or higher security when sending a very large payment that requires them to sign to receive it. The one you'll most likely use will be the PO box.

Get the address(es), write it down (yes, actually put pen to paper), and keep it with your physical cash on hand so you actually know where it is.

Step 3. Get the account number for every account you have.

When sending a payment by mail, the account number needs to be listed on your payment. I'll give more detail on this in a moment. An example of an account number would be the credit card number printed on the card. The expiration date and CVV is not necessary. Just the account number.

Step 4. Buy security envelopes and a book of stamps.

Regular envelopes and security envelopes look the same on the outside, but the inside of the security envelope has a printed pattern so you can't see what's inside when held up to a light bulb.

You'll notice on listings for security envelopes that the product photo actually shows the pattern on the inside, because that's the whole reason you buy them in the first place.

A book of "forever stamps" is available to purchase at your local post office and most grocery stores. You'll probably be going to the grocery store to get your stamps. You can't buy stamps off a shelf because that's not the way they are sold. Go to the customer service area or wherever they issue the money orders to get them.

And speaking of which...

Step 5. Learn how to purchase a money order.

If you don't have a checking account or the one you have becomes frozen for whatever reason, a money order is how you buy something that looks and acts like a check, but you buy them as one-time purchases. Money orders are not things you buy now and save for later, because they do expire if not used within a certain period of time, meaning you buy it when you need it. Also, money orders are not free, but not expensive either.

Generally speaking, there are three places to buy money orders. Any bank, any post office, and most grocery stores.

Chances are you'll probably be buying your stamps (which you can save for later) and your money orders all from the grocery store.

How do you buy the money order? With the cash you have on hand. Just remember the money order costs extra. It should be between $1.50 to $3 per money order, depending on where you go. Banks always charge the most, the post office usually charges the least, and the grocery store is usually mid-priced (although sometimes they beat the USPS in price, depending on store).

For example, if you need to send a payment of $20 and the cost of a money order is $1.50, you're going to spend $21.50.

Putting it all together

On the money order, you write down the name of the company you're sending the payment to, and your account number in the memo field, which is usually at lower left. After that, put the money order in the envelope.

On the envelope, you write down the full payment address in the middle of the envelope, write YOUR address at the top left of the envelope, and then place one stamp at the top right of the envelope. And when I say YOUR address at top left, make sure that address matches that of your account you're making a payment on.

After that, mail the letter. The three general ways to do this are:

Mailbox at a house. You put the letter in the mailbox and then turn the little plastic or metal flag on the side of the mailbox upward. An upward flag tells the postal worker who delivers the mail that there is a letter in there to be mailed out. He or she will take the letter the next time they come by and bring it back to the post office to be mailed out.

If it's a cluster of mailboxes at an apartment complex, there will be a slot somewhere on the cluster just for outgoing mail. That slot should be marked with a sticker that says "OUTGOING MAIL". If you can't find where it is, ask your apartment manager to show you.

At most post offices is the big blue box, which is literally a big blue metal box that sits outside. Some have a big slot you can put outgoing mail into, others have a pull-down flap, and some have both. Either one can be used for outgoing mail. Alternatively, if you go to the post office while it's open, you can walk inside, go to a clerk, hand them your letter and ask to add to their outgoing mail.

Postmarking, and why it's important

You have a bill due next Monday, but the only time you can mail your payment out is on Friday. Obviously, your mailed money order will not get to the company by Monday. Does that mean you will get a late fee?

No. Or rather, you shouldn't.

If you look at any regular letter you receive in the mail (meaning not a flyer), you'll see the outside of the envelope stamped with a date. That is a postmark, and that date is not when the letter was sent, but rather when the letter was received for processing by the post office.

That postmark is what companies go by for determining if a payment has arrived late or not. If you mail your payment on Friday, and your letter is picked up whether from a house mailbox, cluster mailbox or post office itself, it will be postmarked as that Friday date.

What this means is that if a bill is due next Monday, you mailed your payment on Friday, but the mailed letter isn't received by the company you mailed it to until next Wednesday, that's technically not a late payment because of the Friday postmark.

I said above that you shouldn't get a late fee for paying a bill this way. The reality is that it depends on whom your sending the payment to. Most companies will honor the postmark. But some other businesses (usually landlords) may get a bug up their backside where if a bill isn't physically received by the due date, you get socked with a late charge no matter what.

If this concerns you, call the company and ask if they honor postmarks for bill payments. They will know exactly what you mean when you inquire about it, and it's a fair question to ask anyway, because you're just trying to pay a bill on time.

Generally speaking, the best way to stay ahead of the curve with mailed payments is to always mail payments one full week in advance unless a major holiday is approaching. If a mailed payment is happening any time around Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year's Day, increase your lead time to two weeks instead of just one.

Yes, you should make a test payment to try this out

For younger folk who have never mailed out a payment, it's scary stuff because there's a lot of physical involvement here. Get your envelopes, get your stamps, get your money order(s). Mail out the payment(s) and not know when it's actually going to get there (which is the scariest part). And even if the payment is received by the company and successfully processed, it's unlikely you'll be notified about it and you'll have to either go online and see if a payment was processed, or (gasp!) call the company and ask if they got the payment or not.

My personal take on this whole process

To me, one of the more amazing things is that money orders, even as ancient as they are, still exist and sell very well. There's more than a fair share of people to this day who pay most if not all their bills by mail using nothing but money orders.

Why? Several reasons, but there are two big ones.

First, most companies won't accept cash payments in the mail.

Officially, the USPS says it's legal to mail cash up to $500, and if over $500 it has to be sent via registered mail. But again, most companies won't accept a payment in the mail as cash, so it's not even worth the bother.

Second, some people just don't like banks.

Since companies won't accept cash payments in the mail, a mailed payment has to be in the form of a check (personal check, bank check, cashier's check, business check, certified check, traveler's check or whatever), or a money order.

Money orders do not require using a bank to get one. Yes, the bank obviously offers them, but most who use money orders will just go to the post office or grocery store whenever one is needed.

As electronically connected as we all like to think we are, every now and then you come across somebody who is as anti-connected as they come and pays for everything with cash and money orders. Yes, people like this spend an extra $1.50 to $3 every time they pay a bill, not including the cost of envelopes and stamps, but they're happy to pay bills that way.

Reasons vary wildly as to why some people are 100% cash-and-money-order types, but oh yes, they're out there.

Old school bill pay knowledge is good to know

I'm glad the money order still exists, if for no other reason than it's a guaranteed way to get out a payment that will absolutely work. A money order cannot be argued with because it has to be funded in advance for it even to exist.

Even if you are a Gen X like me, you really should take the time to gather the account number and payment address information for every active account you have. And you should have some cash on hand like I said above should you ever need to do the money order thing.

If you need to pay a bill, and your normal online way of paying goes on the fritz or a card stops working or whatever it is, yeah, that will suck. But you can still get out a payment the old school way with a check or money order just like you used to do and get on with life.

Published 2025 Aug 28

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