When I was in grad school, I balanced my checkbook often and kept a monthly budget list that I ticked off. It was important because my balance was always only just enough to get through the month and the timing between depositing paychecks and my outgoing checks was important.
Then I graduated, got my first job and my income went up by a factor of four, but my expenses didn’t. Once I realized I was always going to have a hefty surplus in my checking account, I stopped balancing anything and just checked periodically for charges I didn’t recognize.
Oh that does sound much more complicated. I spent a little time at a winery and we had a wine club, which meant alcohol taxes in all the different states. Of course, they are all different. That was very difficult but it was in trying to reconcile all that mess that I discovered the fella I replaced had been stealing. That makes 3 crooks I uncovered at 3 different jobs. I can catch a damn thief.
I do get a good amount of pleasure when I succeed in fixing up a mess. I once spent about 3 weeks or so reconciling a years worth of unreconciled bank statements for a new car dealership. There were hundreds and hundreds of entries.
I can see it. It gives me great peace of mind to know exactly where I stand financially. Never any surprises. And since I save for inevitable expenses (car repairs etc) we rarely get surprise expenses.
balanced to the penny weekly. That’s the only way to catch something in a timely manner like a paycheck error or worse. And I did catch a payroll error this year that I would have missed because it’s all done electronically.
My brother is retired now, but he was an auditor for a big company. He was really good at his job. He once caught a woman who had accidentally charged something on the wrong credit card. It was a $90 item and led to her firing (zero tolerance).
His biggest catch involved a guy who was accepting bids on jobs from an accomplice who submitted high bids. The inside guy would accept the bid, the accomplice would then hire the lowest bidder. The difference was their profit. They made 12 million dollars before my brother caught them.
He was so well known that people feared him. When he came into a town he would be preceded by locksmiths who would change all the locks as an intimidation move. His degree was in chemistry, with a minor in statistics.
I briefly lived with my Aunt and Uncle a few years ago, and we both have the same style/brand of credit card. One day he says to his wife, “Honey, you’re not, um, having secret therapy, are you?”
Sure enough, we got 'em swapped. We just added up the totals and cut the other person a check for the difference.
My late aged MIL used to live in a independent living place. Many of the residents had bank accounts at the nearby bank branch. And had CCs from the same place. They often went out on group outings to lunch, 10 or 15 old ladies riding on the facility’s van.
Four elderly ladies at a table with 4 matching credit cards all ordering about the same priced meal and all having bad eyesight was quite the recipe for unexpected charges later that month when the 4 cards and restaurant tabs came back shuffled and nobody noticed.
As the family bookkeeper I got to fix that a time or three. It was so cute, because they were all both mortified and mystified. No mystery I could see.
