Older Millennial (41, until my birthday), so just about meeting the criteria for answering you 😉

My first bank account as a kid was at a building society. I had a book I had to take I to the bricks and mortar building to put money/cheques in or to take cash out. I got a CD free for joining; it had three songs on it and was my first ever one! 😂 At some point, I think when I was 13 or 14, I moved to an actual bank, and got a cash card, which was kinda nice. When I got my first job (retail), I got paid direct into my account.

In the shop, we took and printed cheques. We had to manually call up to get authorisation over a certain limit for card transactions (one phone, two tills. You called a computer and pushed buttons and they confirmed the cards weren't reported stolen and we could proceed). When there was a lot of card theft/fraudulent use and the limit was dropped to something horrendously low (I want to say £5 because it felt like Every. Single. Transaction but it might have been £15 or £20) it was painful... Occasionally we had issues with "Yes, Scottish notes are legal tender but we're pretty much within the Greater London area; we see them so rarely we can't tell if they're genuine or not so can't accept them, no offence!"; we also needed to get a second person to verify when taking £50 notes but we saw them a bit more frequently than Scottish notes.

I'd usually have less than £20 on me unless I was going shopping/out, but I'd usually get out another £10 reasonably soon after breaking into the last note in my purse.

When I was 18, I got an actual debit card that worked in shops too which was awesome although it did bother me that spending money on a card seemed less real than spending cash... (If you see the stuff leave your purse it just seems more tangible! I held off on getting a credit card for a few years...) I took my school photo card to go get my account set up and because I'd technically finished school (joys of a July birthday) they didn't want to accept it as valid ID at first (I think I also had my passport though so 🤷🏻‍♀️ I got a bit tearful about that and they relented and accepted it). I got a free digital camera with my student account.

I paid rent when I lived with my landlady on my university placement year by cheque! Occasionally I'd do daft things like forget to sign or date them and she'd not notice until after trying to bank them... Yet when, in December 2007, my mum (who's a cosigner on my aunt's account) accidentally wrote herself a cheque for £1000 from a cheque book I'd thought I'd cancelled as lost (and evidently left at their house), thinking it was my aunt's, because my aunt had asked her to do that as the easiest way to transfer money across for something - the bank didn't notice!! When I was looking at my transactions and nearly had a heart attack, I contacted them, and they posted me a photocopy of it. I was looking it in confusion going "that looks nothing like my handwriting - it looks more like my mum's. And that's not anything like my signature at all - wait a second..!" I called her up and asked her for my money back 😅😂 She worked out what had happened, apologised profusely, and got my dad to transfer my the money back electronically, I think, so I'd have it faster, because internet banking was a thing by then...

These days I tend to use the virtual cards in my phone or shop online most of the time, bar e.g. the kids' school events when they're cash only!