Thanks for the added information Yogi. I’m thinking checks may have become more digitized today than most of us realize. The image of some astute clerk sitting behind a desk with thick spectacles carefully comparing the signature on file with that scribbled on the check (maybe 50 years ago) is likely out the door however comforting the thought might be to some. Likely these checks are processed by robots. However, I have no doubt a robot very capable. Look at how good they’ve gotten at facial recognition.
One concern of mine is that if the checks fail to arrive soon I’d be loath to use one of the existing blank checks until the issue was somehow resolved. Thus the ability to pay off the invoice could be compromised / delayed even though no detectable fraud had occurred. In other words, it could muck things up.
Footnote: Still no checks as of July 9. Fidelity said they were mailed out June 20 June 26. E-Gads!

Here are links to chart deck and video ...
MFOP 2025 Mid-Year Review Chart Deck
MFOP 2025 Mid-Year Review Webinar Video

Great questions. I read Larry’s post in OT and the situation sounds like insanity. But I left Citi 15-20 years ago. It seemed then they were more interested in trying to (aggressively) sell me things than servicing the credit card account I had with them. I find Elan Financial more user friendly.
I come at the issue of credit from a different perspective than most. Years ago i got overextended with credit and it scared the *#A## out of me. So part of “recovery” was swearing off all credit. Interestingly, it was the same time that I began saving, running an annual budget and taking a real interest in investing. So even today I’m loath to use credit cards. Cash rewards don’t thrill me. I figure those are offset by a natural propensity to spend more when using credit rather than paying in cash or on a debit card.
Except for travel I don’t like to use credit cards. However, after I’d already committed to a large home infrastructure project a year ago I received an offer of 18 months interest free credit on a new card thru Fidelity / Elan. The contractor was willing to put the job on a credit card with no fee. Rather than pull the project money from investments all at once (as first planned) it seemed to make sense to fund the project with this interest free line of credit and then repay it over time. It worked this time as my investments have done very well over that time frame. And, now a year later, I’m about to pay the entire sum off.
I’ve always felt checks were very safe. Never ever had a problem with one. However in recent years, for better or worse, I’ve begun paying bills thru direct debit from my bank account. I was, however, a victim of identity theft 15-20 years ago and it may have been related to a newspaper subscription allowed to access my bank account. I’ll never know for sure. Law enforcement looked into it and believed it was a Russian based hacking operation. All they got was a few hundred dollars from one local bank checking account by running 3 or 4 bogus withdrawals. The bank made me whole. To @Old_Joe’s question - Yes, I do view checks as safer than authorizing direct withdrawals. But the difference isn’t great enough to dissuade me from using the latter.
After the above affair I subscribed to Identity Guard . They are excellent. I have a reasonably priced annual plan (pay once yearly). They are very good at notifying me of any suspicious activity, changes in credit rating, credit inquiries, newly opened lines of credit, etc.
Re “What's your perspective on the danger of hacking vs stolen checks?” I don’t have an intelligent answer. Two different birds. Neither is enticing. A “hack” implies a successful operation. But a stolen / lost check is only a first step. Any culprit still needs to make a withdrawal using such to be successful.

Thanks for the article @Derf

Hi @hank Do you find any information of value at your Fido account when checking the 'Pending Transfers' tab?

Umm … Not sure “how” I know, but, yes, it is always easy to view pending transfers, I do move money back and forth between Fidelity and a local bank and credit union. Always very quick. And every month an amount is deposited automatically at Fidelity (CMA) from the local bank that receives my pension. Fidelity gets an A+ from me in almost every respect. But this horse & buggy method of providing blank account-linked checks is one exception. I write probably 3-5 a year and only for big items like taxes, new vehicles or home infrastructure.
While @msf references “8 or 9 figure” transactions as perhaps “raising eyebrows” at big brokerages I must confess that mere 5-figure transactions constitute a big deal for this guy. :) But his comment helped me decide to move the sum - if only temporarily.

Just thought I'd chime in with support for Kiplinger. I've been getting this magazine for probably 50 years ever since my dad got a subscription for me after starting my first real job where I had some disposable income to invest. After he passed, my sister continued that tradition.
I enjoy reading the articles still.
Keep is mind that the organization has an objective...per Wiki, "It claims to be the first American personal finance magazine and to deliver "sound, unbiased advice in clear, concise language". It offers advice on managing money and achieving financial security, saving, investing, planning for retirement, paying for college, and major purchases like automobiles and homes."
It's a great mag for folks starting out and those who want some current information about topics of interest. It's not the most complete or esoteric in terms of investments, but if it gets folks on the road to saving and investing, that's a good thing.

"in 2004 they released their Kiplinger 25. their top 25 mutual funds. they update it from time to time. only 1 bond fund still is in the list from 2004. none of the other 24 survived. most funds don't even last 5 years on the list. how useful is that list really to a buy and hold investor?"
Although I don't track the Kip 25 closely, I've noticed there is a lot of turnover within the ranks.
The list's turnover diminishes its utility for long-term investors.
I subscribed to Kilpinger's many years ago.
The magazine's quality has really deteriorated over the past 10 or 15 years.

re the Kiplinger 25. in 20 years there have been 121 mutual funds listed in the kiplinger top 25. the avg life of a fund in the list is 4 years. 28 funds didn't last a year on the list.
you are right, the quality of the product has gone down IMO and when my FIL passes away i will likely never renew. he likes getting it for me so i don't tell him to stop. I also think about the book "Dow 36000" by Glassman everytime i turn the page and see his face and article.

Copper and pharma tariffs. Damn. How many times did 'he' fall out of the highchair???

Bogle praised Danoff in common sense investing and his work with contrafund. the guy who taught me about investing was a american funds wholesaler in the 80's and early 90's. he said the biggest thing to remember is that all of these long time funds that exist today still, were funds that existed in a sea of other mutual funds listed in catalogs with phone numbers attached and no other data except 1, 3, and 5 yr returns. advisors were no help usually, would just put you in funds that wholesalers gave them the best deals on..(he said they would incentivize advisors to place investors in american funds beyond the loads and 12b-1 fees) He said the ones that invested in contrafund, fidelity growth, various trowe price funds, Growth fund of america etc very early on are the winners because those funds did great. He said they stand on the corpses of hundred if not thousands of mutual funds and fund companies the went belly up.

The S. Korea and Japan threats are total idiocy: the tariff beatings will continue ...

These tariffs are going to hurt South Korea and Japan, although they’ll hurt U.S. consumers even more. So why didn’t Korean and Japanese negotiators make big enough concessions to satisfy Trump?
Because there was nothing for them to concede. South Korea has had a free trade agreement with the United States since 2012, so most U.S. exports to Korea face zero tariffs. Japan, like other wealthy nations, has very low tariffs on most goods. Neither country, then, was in a position to offer big tariff reductions, because their tariffs were already minimal.

And read on: there's plenty more stupid Trump crap to ridicule.
Note also the illiterate letter and the entertaining Steely Dan musical coda.

The winner was announced today.
Exemplary Stewardship: Dimensional
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/announcing-winners-morningstars-2025-awards-investing-excellence

The winners were announced today.
Outstanding Equity Portfolio Manager: Will Danoff, Fidelity
Outstanding Fixed Income Portfolio Manager: Bryan Krug, Artisan Partners
Outstanding Allocation Portfolio Manager: David Giroux, T. Rowe Price
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/announcing-winners-morningstars-2025-awards-investing-excellence

And it goes way beyond that. For instance, corporate execs and corporate boards are making decisions that benefit themselves, as shareholders, board members or to secure their jobs.
And all administrations are some degree of self-serving. It comes down to the degree of ego and greed. This administration being possibly the worst ever.

Any time we get more, it's a win; it doesn't matter if it's 5% or 20%.

If you truly

do "get more", that is a win, but it's not that simple, of course. Get more from whom; who's footing the bill? What did, or does, it cost elsewhere? Did the gain accrue to something worthwhile, or did we simply cut something we didn't want in order to buy something else we wanted? What's the net goal? Again, I'm at a loss to see how 'we the people' have actually gained anything!?

And this! Isn't that the truth! A $37 trillion dollar deficit hanging over people's kid's heads. And a tax bill that adds to it significantly. A likely scenario where ignoring climate change, ruins things for everyone's grandchildren.
And people exclaim, "I got a nickel", thinking that they are "winning". Best to pretend that the deficit never comes due. Or that 3 decades of solid science is simply a "liberal myth".

Any time we get more, it's a win; it doesn't matter if it's 5% or 20%.

If you truly do "get more", that is a win, but it's not that simple, of course. Get more from whom; who's footing the bill? What did, or does, it cost elsewhere? Did the gain accrue to something worthwhile, or did we simply cut something we didn't want in order to buy something else we wanted? What's the net goal? Again, I'm at a loss to see how 'we the people' have actually gained anything!?

The goalpost just got moved to August 2nd from July 9th. So much wins if so many deals are being made! Where is BS1000?

Did you think the resolution would be quick? Only if you are naive. It's a process that will take months-years; after all, changing the world takes time.
Any time we get more, it's a win; it doesn't matter if it's 5% or 20%.
Just like Amazon and Apple. If you want to sell your products on their widely used platforms, you pay something. The US markets are similar.

Can one get different checks for different accounts?
The brokerage account number is embedded in the checking "account" number as the last nine digits, with X=5, Y=6, and Z=7.. So each brokerage account gets its own checkbook.
I have a Schwab checking account. Once I had a double credit card payment which was a over draw. Chuck turned to my Individual account & took enough money to cover the over draw.
At Fidelity, one can link accounts (whether external bank accounts or internal brokerage accounts) to a CMA account (and only to a CMA account) for overdraft protection. Like @sma3 I'm not fond of linking accounts this way because if one account is compromised, the overdraft account is compromised as well. Obscure fact - you can't link community property accounts to a CMA account.

Old_Joe.
That’s actually kind of funny.
For the past six months, you’ve posted hundreds of times about politics, often insisting it ties into investing—which, yes, is the focus of this site.
But let’s be honest: your posts have mainly highlighted how bad everything supposedly is.
When the S&P 500 was down, you were quick to say “I told you so.”
But when the market rebounded? Silence.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for you to stay consistently on investment topics and educate us on what to do.
And please—stop calling others names just because they share opinions you disagree with. That’s not discussion.
So ask yourself:
Am I a troll? Or maybe... it’s you?

@hank Patience grasshopper. When I opened a Schwab checking account I called Chuck as I thought the checks should have arrived in that (?) many days also. Now I have two check orders sitting in my file cabinet. I'm still working on the first order.
Still $25 k is a tad more than I carry in that checking account!!

This is one reason why I do not like linked CMA accounts, and especially do not like debit cards linked to a brokerage account. ...
Fidelity allows you to "freeze" your brokerage accounts to stop all transfers. It is easily reversible
Can you "freeze your CMA the same way?
We use a local B and M bank ( also locally owned) for all our checks and bill payments. They pay almost zero interest, but we don't keep much in there at anyone time. ...

A CMA account is just another brokerage account, albeit with a different fee structure. So it gets frozen along with all your other brokerage accounts when you freeze them (I asked Fidelity a couple of weeks ago.) You can also write checks against any Fidelity brokerage account, it doesn't have to be a CMA account. So one can have checkbooks at different Fidelity accounts just in case one runs out of checks with one account.
Years ago, Fidelity offered a free Amex Gold card for Premium (and Private Client) customers. It could be used as an ATM card, but with an important difference. It was not a debit card. It was a charge card. When used as an ATM card Fidelity would automatically pay off the ATM charge nightly. So it received charge card protection. At least that was my understanding.
With bill pay (from both "regular" and CMA brokerage accounts) I don't find much need to write "real" checks anymore. We got a reorder of checks 17 years ago and still have around 150 checks to go. (One doctor of mine charges for credit cards but accepts checks and cash(!).)
Finally, Fidelity doesn't raise an eyebrow at any sort of movements that "mere mortals" make. Perhaps they might wonder about an 8 or 9 figure transaction; maybe even that much wouldn't show up on their radar.

At Hank. In 1970 I was a substitute teacher in the (not) suburban Detroit schools. $ 37.50 per diem. Food seemed expensive but gas was cheap.

That’s an extraordinary per diem for 1970 !

This fixation on the trade deficit is bizarre. The notion that we a "sending our money" elsewhere, ignores what we have gotten out of that - an unbelievable deal on products that the people want and/or need. If I want to buy a product made in another country, with the money that I have earned, who should be trying to make that more costly or difficult? The GOP led government? Once again this is "command economy" BS telling me where and how to spend MY earnings. Where to direct my business.
We have a healthy consumer, we buy things, that is not a problem. An iPhone made here may (or may not) be as good as the one's we purchase now (same with a TV or anything else), but we ALL know that it will cost three times as much. This means that you buy the U.S. made iPhone and don't have the other $1500 to spend on anything else. It all goes to Apple.
The onset of globalization has been extremely beneficial for our economy, since it began. Turning back the clock on that is likely to be harmful, not helpful to the average family.
No one is "better off" because the things that they buy are three times as expensive. We already have problems finding enough workers. The one's who aren't working are doing so for a variety of reasons, none of which is an overall shortage of jobs. Many places are growth restrained due to labor shortages. Indiana is a fine example, they have been under 5% unemployment for most of the last 20 years, often under 4%. They are in the 3's now.
We do not have the workforce for this nonsense. The whole thing appears fantasy driven.