How Do You Pay Your Rent?

With money, obviously.

Every month, after gently reminding my roommates to Venmo me money for rent, I take an half hour out of my day to go pay my rent. I walk to the bank, stand in line for longer than I’d like and leave with a cashier’s check to send to my landlord. I’ve been paying my rent this way for at least six years and have never thought it strange.

“You realize that by doing that you’re basically sending cash through the mail,” a friend said to me upon learning this strange habit.

“I guess,” I replied, though I hadn’t thought about it that way before. “But it works. It’s always worked! It’s fine.” Laboring under the delusion that what goes into a mailbox will certainly reach its destination in a timely fashion has worked out for me. To this day, that remains true. I’ve never had a problem. The check goes into the mailbox, whoosh, and it’s gone.

For me, it makes sense: budgeting around the ungainly lump of cash in my checking account while waiting for my landlord to shuffle to the bank gives me undue amounts of stress. In the past, I’ve never accidentally cut into the amount of money set aside for rent, though in leaner years, I’ve found myself pretty close. Money lingering in close proximity that I’m not allowed to spend is never a good thing; this method makes sure that I don’t accidentally buy a plane ticket with the money that my landlord is expecting for rent.

In an ideal world, I would walk to my landlord’s house with a paper bag full of crumpled bills, shove it through the mail slot and leave. This is not how the world works. And so every month, I get a cashier’s check, send it to my landlord and go about my day.

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