I had never even heard of balancing my cheque book until about a year ago. I never do it and never will.
OTOH, I work for the bank so I know a bit about how certain things work (automated payments and such) and I check my account on-line every night, it only takes a few minutes and if anything is wrong I can call the bank cause we have 24/7 telephone banking.
I hardly ever write cheques either, I prefer to use debit/credit cards instead. Or just transfer the money directly.
Rick
I just looked at my checkbook. The last check I wrote was 9/14/00. I’m surprised I knew where the checkbook was.
No, I don’t balance my checkbook but I have very regular spending habits. Also, I log into my accounts at least every couple of days so I generally know what it going on.
My paycheck magically appears in checking account A. About 60% goes into Savings Account B (for further dispersal later). Balance of A, minus standing monthly expenses, goes into Checking Account C.
All my payments for the month will draw from A, with little variance from month to month. Nothing ever goes out of B unless we expressly move it to some investment or large purchase. C almost always goes to ATMs and POS purchases. When C hits zero, I stop spending money until my next paycheck.
Overall, it works pretty well.
Monday nights, at 7 pm, This American Life comes on the radio, and Podkayne Sets Her Financial House in Order. Quicken. Mmm, yeah, Quicken. If I finish before TAL is up, I let myself play Shanghai. 
I still have to write about three checks a month because three businesses, including, pardoxically, our ISP, don’t have direct debit available. You can set it up so that the funds are transferred electronically by the bank, but there’s a pretty heft surcharge.
But then there are all the debit card purchases. I have finally convinced the hubby that if it’s under twenty bucks, just use cash fercrissakes, so I don’t have to click through fifty $5-$10 debits each month.
I watch my credit card bills like a hawk, too. I never balk at using my credit card online, because I keep a close eye on my statements. The price of freedom is vigilance.
sort of.
I get paid once a month, do all my bills (and register all my checks) at the beginning of the month, put the rest in savings and maybe a week and half later I’ll see if they were all cashed. So I guess it’s a kind of bare minimum balancing.
I balanced it on my head a few times when I was short a hand to carry it, but that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to balancing my checkbook.
And FTR I am awful with money.
I use my Palm IIIxe with a freeware money management program. I made the “To-Do List” button bring up the register, so I can keep a constant, perfect record of expenditures. I use my debit and credit cards for nearly everything, so wherever I am, when I make a charge, I just whip it out and update it.
Balancer here. Mostly an exercise in futility these days because we’re both lousy at budgeting. We just recently consolidated into one account and I keep an eye on it once or twice a week online to see what’s cleared and how bad we got hit with the overdraft charges. (At this point it’s worth the hassle because the checks get paid no matter what.)
It all balances more or less nicely, so I keep it up. One of these days, very soon, we’re going to have to take a serious look at incomes and expenditures to try to come out ahead.