In my case I have a substantial amount of money put aside for once-a-year insurance premiums that is not available (except in an emergency) for general expenditures. Plus as of the first of each month I automatically deduct upcoming recurring payments like utilities. The remaining balance is what’s available for discretionary spending.
I check my debit and ACH transactions at least a few times a week against receipts. If everything matches, then we’re good to go. I trust the bank software can add and subtract correctly.
Dinosaur here. Yep, even though I don’t write a lot of checks, I still balance my checkbook every month. Doesn’t take much time, sort of satisfying to know everything matches. (And once, admittedly many years ago, I did catch a bank error.)
In fact, they are the 2nd largest bank in the US, after JPM Chase, with 3T in assets.
I very rarely write checks.
I just check my bank statements and make sure everything looks legit.
I use an app called You Need a Budget which includes an account reconciliation feature. Transactions are automatically imported but I check them against my monthly bank and credit card statements, at which point they are locked and can’t be edited. This is what counts as balancing a checkbook for me, though it’s probably much easier than balancing an actual checkbook.
“I Can’t Believe You’re Not Solvent!” would also have been a good name.
Good Lord, no. I do an online check on all our financial accounts every day, takes a couple of minutes at most. Every now and again I have to ask my wife ‘do you recognise this charge’ since all our finances are joint.
Why wouldn’t you use the internet access that is available?
I never have. I know how to do it. I’ve been paid to resolve accounting discrepancies (of a little over a million dollars–reconciled the company books to the bank statements to the last cent. Took almost two months to do it, though.) But I’m too lazy/uninterested to do it myself. I just have a rough idea of how much money I have – I check the bank statements to see if there’s anything weird, and that’s about all the effort I want to expend on that endeavor.
I have an Excel spreadsheet I made about a dozen years ago that I still use. It does all the arithmetic for me and as long as the bottom line matches what my bank app balance reads, everything is good.
I love having a steady income (Social Security), low enough expenses and enough buffer in my checking account that a once a month account reconciliation is all I need. I hated constantly worrying about my balance when I was younger.
“Trust”? 
I make all entries as if I had no online account. If they don’t match, I figure out why. There’s an old saying: “If you don’t keep track of your money, someone else will.”
LOL. They definitely message toward people who don’t have their financial shit together, and I did not have it together when I started using their software 14 years ago, but I do now, and I credit YNAB for that. I’m a little bit obsessed with that app, and look forward to allocating my dollars every payday.
I’ve got something similar. I have an Excel doc that is every month as a row, with income above and charges below the running balance row. All of my regular expenses are pre-populated, and I have a formula that decreases the daily balance by a number I figure to be my ‘regular’ spend. Groceries, dining out, that sort of thing that more or less averages out. I then manually add specific larger charges, like clothes shopping, car repair, stuff like that. I only investigate more deeply if my daily running total diverges by more than a hundred bucks from what my bank says I have.
Big expenses that I know are coming get added to the appropriate spot in a future month.
This system allows me to look at where I am over the course of several pay periods. If I am projecting that I am going to go below $1,000 the day before payday, I look at tightening things up. On the flip side, if I have a ‘surplus’ it gets moved to savings or investment, or gets earmarked against a ‘maybe’ expense I now feel comfortable pulling the trigger on.
Nah. It’s all online.
I used to every month have to open every damn statement and write a check. And balance check book. I would have a PILE of paper work after that to throw away. Thank god those days are gone, gone, gone.
My wife still does it for her stuff (separate banking/accounts). That’s up to her. She spent about an hour last night fooling around with it.
I write a check perhaps every 6 months.
I often wonder how ADHD people like me functioned before automatic bank deductions. Most of my bills get paid automatically, and I only vaguely remember a time when that wasn’t the case, my early adulthood, and, well, it was a disaster.
Our cleaning lady and our pet sitter have never suggested Zelle or Venmo, so I continue paying them by check.
Got only a couple of those, and they charge extra for credit card payments, so I’m happy to write them a physical check.
I pay a lot of bills by electronic check, through my credit union’s billpayer app. They show up on my statement as checks, but for the most part they’re electronic transfers. And even when they’re not, I just type in a few numbers and click, and don’t have to write a physical check and hunt around for an envelope and a stamp; that happens at their end.
Getting back to the OP, I’m another one who doesn’t balance their checkbook anymore. I just look over the statement and make sure everything looks familiar.
Same with my credit card - there was a time when I kept all my receipts until I could check them off against the monthly statement; now I just scan for any unfamiliar payees or unexpected amounts.
For the VERY few checks I write, they just show up online. And they get scanned in by the bank so I can look at it if I want.
Yep. That’s what I do as well. Since I pay bills on line as they are received I’m looking at my bank account several times a week. It stays balanced all the time that way.
I get a notification every time a new transaction hits one of my accounts, so I always know right away if something is off. Some l enter in manually, but they all have to be approved by me before they are officially reflected in my balance in the YNAB app. If I don’t recognize a transaction I then message my husband “What’s this?” which usually resolves it. I use the app more than he does, so keeping track of the minutia is largely my responsibility.