Banks are going digital. Branches are closing. Everything's moving online, and if you can't keep up, well... good luck accessing your own money.

For younger folks who grew up with smartphones surgically attached to their hands, this is great. Convenient. Efficient. For everyone else, particularly the senior citizens who've been banking since before the internet existed, it's a special kind of hell.

Banks aren't being difficult just for fun. They're dealing with regulations, security requirements, and the constant threat of fraud. Every password requirement, every verification step exists for a reason: to protect customers from scammers.

But here's what banks forget: security measures designed to keep out hackers also keep out grandma.

So when she just wants to pay her electric bill, she first needs to own a computer or smartphone, know what a browser is, navigate to the correct website, understand password requirements, and successfully type on a tiny keyboard with failing eyesight.

It's like asking someone to split an atom with a paring knife.

Let me paint you a picture of a typical call:

"Okay, first you're going to need to open a browser," I say, optimistically.

"What's a browser?"

And we're off to a fantastic start.

I once had a 74-year-old woman call in wanting to pay her utility bill. She thought she could just tell me the details over the phone and I'd process it for her. You know, like banking used to work.

"Why can't you just do it for me?" she asked.

I explained she'd have to go through online banking. She sighed a sigh that contained decades of frustration with a world that had left her behind. "Okay. What do I have to do?"

I told her to open a browser and type in the bank's web address. She typed it into Google's search bar instead. Now she was staring at search results, ads, and a few sketchy phishing sites that looked close enough to cause problems.

"Which one do I press?" she asked, paralyzed by choice.

Neither of us was feeling lucky.

After finally landing on the bank's website, she clicked the enrollment page. It asked her to choose between TIN, Passport Number, or SSN. She assumed she needed all three. Decision paralysis. Full stop.

Then came the username and password.

"I made a user ID, but it says it's not acceptable! NOT ACCEPTABLE! What am I doing wrong?"

She didn't follow the requirements:

For someone who's never created an online account before, those requirements might as well be written in ancient Sanskrit. And God help them when they have to do it all over again because they forgot their password three days later.

When banks push customers online without adequate support, they're not just causing frustration. They're creating genuine hardship.

Seniors who can't access online banking miss bill payments, incur late fees, and can't monitor their accounts for fraud. They become more vulnerable to scams because they're stuck using systems they don't understand and don't know how to protect themselves.

And here's the part that should embarrass banks: this demographic has money. They're not broke college kids. They're retirees with lifetime savings, pensions, and Social Security. Banks are actively alienating customers who actually have assets worth banking.

Banks could fix this if they wanted to. Simplified onboarding. Larger text. Patient, one-on-one help at the branches that still exist. They won't, because it costs money.

So we'll keep having the same conversation:

"What's a browser?"

"Well, let me start from the beginning..."