These postal orders, payable on presentation without previous notice, are issued for fixed sums from a shilling up to a pound, and are to be obtained at all money order offices in the United Kingdom, as well as at Malta, Gibraltar, and Constantinople. Here are the amounts for which they are issued, together with the “poundage” payable on each order: There are orders for 1s. and 1s. 6d., on which the charge is ½d.; then there are orders for 2s., 2s. 6d., 3s., 3s. 6d., 4s., 4s. 6d., 5s., 7s. 6d., 10s., and 10s. 6d., which cost 1d. each; and, last of all, there are orders for 15s. and 20s., on which one has to pay 1½d. A postal order is in the following form:—
To the Postmaster in charge of the Money Order Office at.....................
Pay to........................., at any time within Three Calendar Months from the last day of the month of issue, the sum of Ten Shillings, on account of Her Majesty’s Postmaster-General.
When one has to remit broken amounts, say 4s. 2½d., or 8s. 3d., or 10s. 9½d., postage stamps may be affixed to the face of the orders; but the stamps used in this way on any one order must not exceed fivepence in value.
Every postal order issued has this regulation printed on it:—“The person to whom this order is issued must, before parting with it, fill in the name of the person to whom the amount is to be paid, and may fill in the name of the money order office at which the amount is to be paid.” The word must is underlined in the Postal Guide; but the public having discovered that postal orders are a very convenient form of small currency, have never taken the regulation seriously. In fact, postal orders are coming more and more to be passed from hand to hand like coin, the blank spaces in the order being only filled in when it comes to the last holder.
When circulating in this way, however, postal orders have an inconvenience: they must be cashed within three calendar months from the last day of the month when they were issued, otherwise a sum equal in amount to the original “poundage” is charged for every additional three months that passes before the order is presented for payment. Suppose a postal order kept on circulating, it would fall in value every three months. A shilling postal order at the end of a year would only be worth 10½d.; at the end of two years its value would be 8½d.; and suppose it remained uncashed for six years, all you would get for it would be ½d.
Before a postal order is paid, the blank spaces must be filled in, and the receiver of the money must sign her name at the foot. Should a postal order be “crossed” like a cheque, payment will only be made through a banker.
Leaving money and postal orders—which we have spoken about fully because they are such everyday documents—we come now to speak of Insurance. And this is a subject about which all prudent people should know something.
The object for which insurance exists is to guard against certain accidents to which we are all liable, such as the destruction of property by fire, or the loss of future earnings by disablement or death. An agreement is entered into by which one party, known as the insurer or assurer, agrees to pay to another, called the insured or assured, a certain sum in the event of the particular event insured against happening.
The document which states the conditions of this agreement is called the policy, and the payment made on account of the insurance is known as the premium.