Up until about 8 or 10 years ago I entered everything in the checking stubs. I even used Quicken to keep up with it.
It seems now with all the electronic purchases, ATM’s, plus automatic payments. My check is auto deposit and I don’t even get a pay stub from my employer. it’s becoming almost impossible to track every single transaction. Or at least, it seems that way to me.
I’ve kept a minimum $800 dollar balance in my checking for years. I call every few days and use the automated telephone system to double check my balance before making any large purchases. I haven’t had an insufficient funds charge in at least 15 years. I have goofed and know it because my balance drops below my minimum. But, never below $300. So I wasn’t in any real danger of getting hammered by the bank goons. What is the charge these days?? $40? $50?
Still, there’s a part of me that feels the need to track every penny. My parents still use Quicken to track and reconcile their account.
If I might ask, how many people here still enter all transactions and reconcile every month?
I use my debit card for everything and with online banking I just have to look online to see where my money goes. There’s kind of a running total I keep in my head so I know I won’t overdraft or anything like that.
I answered in my wife’s name. When we got married, I kept track of my balance to the nearest $5 (1964 vintage dollars) and she insisted that it balance to the penny. She still does 46 years later, but she does it. In fact, she insists that when I enter a check, I do it in pencil since I am too prone to arithmetic errors. Oh, and she will not use a calculator for the task. It keeps her off the street.
I used to, but with electronic banking I can log on at any time and check my balance and see exactly which checks have cleared and which haven’t, so there isn’t much point anymore.
I do. I can open up quickbooks and tell you…to the penny, how much I have in my checking account, savings accounts, credit card balances, mortgage balance, LOC. I can even tell you how much is in my house’s escrow account.
I do. Sure, I use my debit card a lot but I still write a lot of checks. I keep a running tally in one of those check registers. Yes, pen and paper. And I do the balance when I get my monthly statement.
My check register is always more up-to-date than my online banking interface.
With online availability to my checking account, I balance it at least once a week. In fact, I don’t even look at the paper statements anymore, and am about to cancel them.
Every withdrawal, whether check, debit, or debit as credit goes into my check register, as do all types of deposits.
I’m pretty anal about it, I guess, but that’s just the way I am.
With so many other ways to pay, I virtually never write a check. (I pay most things via credit card, and my credit card via direct debit from my checking account).
So, only very rarely is there any discrepancy between the balance at the ATM and the funds I actually possess.
When I was younger, before all this newfangled stuff came along, I regularly balanced.
When I first got my checking account I very carefully kept track of my balance for about 2 months. However, keeping track of every debit card transaction and every ATM withdraw was nearly impossible and “my” balance almost never perfectly matched the bank’s online balance due to delays in the system, holds placed by gas stations, etc. I quickly realized that the amount of dedication and energy required to tally up every single card transaction just wasn’t worth it. I check my transactions online ~weekly to make sure everything makes sense, and I always keep a minimum balance to make sure I don’t overdraw.
I don’t see the point. I check my checking account several times a week and my credit cards a few times a month. If anything looks weird, I investigate. I keep a comfortable buffer in checking but – other than my mortgage – practically everything goes through the credit cards anyway so I’m really at no risk for overdraft. I also withdraw very, very little cash as I simply don’t need it.; maybe $20 a week in farmer’s market season at the most.
I still track my account to the penny, even though I probably don’t need to: I keep a very large cushion in it at all times. I’m just anal about financial things.
I do, but if my figures are off by less than $1 from the banks, I just accept their figures and go on with life- in other words, I sometimes round off. Which of your choices match this?
Back when I still had checking, I didn’t, but I wish I had. Some retailers around here still do not deposit their checks (or at least take out a hold) in a timely fashion. Now with the cards, it’s really no big deal anymore. In fact, you’re better off going by what the bank tells you online, with the holds that are sometimes larger than the amount you paid.
Now, if I can only get better so I can actually get some money that doesn’t go towards bills, I’d be really happy.
I used to enter all the trans in my book and reconcile to the penny with the bank statement every month. With the advent of so many automatic transactions, reconsiliation became stupid difficult. And my own book figures were useless for providing an accurate running available balance unless I checked online to find out what auto-whatevers had gone through in the last few days. So my book figures where useless for the only real purpose they had.
So now (last 5-10 years) I just leave enough in there that I’m not in danger of overdrafting, then skim their monthly statement looking for surprises. And no, I don’t feel any guilt about doing it this way. Their computers are at least as good at math as I am; the only risk is unexpected / unauthorized transactions or the occasional mis-coding of an amount.
