I realize I'm in the small minority of people who still get paper bank statements every month. In fact, I'm one of the last six people who still actually balances his checkbook every month with that statement with paper and pencil. So this rant won't have any impact to the vast majority of Quickbooks, Mint or whatever else online money management users. But... The first blank I have to fill out on the balancing form on the back of the statement is "Enter the ending balance on this statement". There's a blank to the right where I'm supposed to write in the closing balance from the other side of the page. Question: why don't they do that for me? I mean the whole thing's done on a laser printer, my account number, the date and page number are on the top of the balance page already. So why don't they just carry the closing balance forward and fill it in for me? I realize I'm looking at the world through web-usability rose-colored glasses, but such issues carry over to physical artifacts as well. What other examples of real-world user interfaces would be different if we applied the same usability standards we do on the web?