We keep really meticulous spending records, but I only casually reconcile those records with the actual bank statement. It’s too much of a PITA with auto transfers and auto deductions. Our household spreadsheet keeps track of all of our income and expenditures, but the bank account is never totally caught up–for example, I go ahead and put bills in the household spreadsheet, but the charge may not hit the bank until near the end of our fiscal month. Or we may get paid early because of the weekend, but our fiscal month starts on the 15th, regardless. We also sometimes run short-term shortages in our household spreadsheet (see needing four new tires + insane electric bill all at once) and I don’t dip into savings for that–I just make it up using the expected normal household surplus over the next month.
I just keep $500 or so extra in checking. Once a week I skim my charges on line and make sure I recognize everything and that my actual balance is greater than our own recorded balance.
I do really like being at a point in our lives where we have this luxury. There was a time when the $25 minimum balance in checking tied up a significant chunk of our assets!
I download all transactions into Quicken and have all my regularly scheduled transactions entered so I have a general view of what the future looks like. I log on and do the download whenever I have a few minutes - usually 3-4 times a month (last time 15 mins ago!). Everything goes into categories which is easy since Quicken remembers the category I used for that vendor last time, and if I ever need to trim money from the budget I can quickly see where a good place to start is.
This all takes maybe an hour a month, and 25% of that is the time to log on to the banks website. Setup was a little longer but it’s now easy and quick.
Me too also. I always operated on the principle that if I still had checks, I still must have money. My wife has a masters in finance and does everything to the penny.
I have an app on my iPhone that I use to track all my purchases. I don’t get a paper statement, but I do check it online semi-often. As long as I enter the amounts into my phone right when I swipe my card, it’s all good.
I used to balance my checking account years ago and it was a huge pain in the ass. I never ever ever found an actual mistake on the bank’s part. Every single time I found an error it was just my math. And even when I did find those errors it was usually some small amount. Not at all worth the amount of time I spent on it. So I stopped.
Eventually I started banking online. I rarely used checks at all and when I did I would enter it in the register to have a record of it but did not actually use it to balance anything. I just checked my balances online when making payments and I was perfectly happy that way.
Then I got married and my wife and I opened a joint checking account. She insists that everything get entered in the register (we both have direct deposit and she still enters it in the check book). Since I refused to do that she has taken over the banking. God bless her patience. She painstakingly balances the checking account every month. Much like my earlier experience has yet to ever find an error on the bank’s side. I still don’t see the point but it gives her peace of mind.
I have had banks make errors, people steel, wrong amounts from CC Companies. I seldom write paper checks. I only have one auto deduction and it is always the same amount, all other transactions, are on my CC or cash and I look at them all, especially CC statements which I get online looking for incorrect amounts or padding. I do not have enough $$$ to let people pad their charges to my CC or cyber-steel from my account. I check purchase tapes before leaving the checkout even though I watch each item being rung up. Total time = about one hour per month with 15 min for reconciling my quicken taking the most at any one time.
I track to the penny, but not every day. I reconcile every statement to the penny, using software to track all my accounts and using my bank’s websites to check things and pay bills.
Around 20 years ago I got tired of the slippery slope and the uncertainty, but before that I struggled to figure things out every time I looked at a statement.
What I want to see is software that takes care of it all but gives me supervisory rights. I want to tell it to pay my phone bill just in time, if it is within 30% of the previous one and below $200, but want the option to choose otherwise up until the payment date. And I want all this to be in my own software and not the bank’s website (because banks can’t always be trusted and identity theft can make a bank stop working right). I want it to work with multiple accounts at multiple banks. Finally, I want it to txt message my phone with updates, more or less often depending on how surprising the updates are by criteria I can adjust.
I’m actually surprised to read that I’m one of the few who still manually reconciles accounts, but I’m glad I do. A few years ago, I noticed the bank had credited my checking account $242 that wasn’t mine. I brought it to the bank’s attention and, a few days later an offsetting debit was posted. However, the following day, a $15 fee associated with the transaction was posted to my account. It took three conversations, initiation of a dispute process, and a confirming letter before the charge was reversed. Yes, it was a hassle, but that event has convinced me to continue with my bi-monthly reconciliations.
I never have and I don’t see the point. My bank account has 5 transactions a month. I use my credit card or cash for purchases, never my debit card; that’s just asking for trouble.
Exactly. I used to balance to another program for a while, but I gave it up after about a year of being fully online with banking. There’s no point to it.
I update all our accounts every few days, and balance the statements to the penny every month. I use Quicken, and I have my checking account, my husband’s checking account, my medical savings account, my business checking account, and my business invoices all together there.
With our large family, I have a huge number of transactions coming and going every month, as well as the accounts recievable/payable for my business. I enter all this into Quicken by hand (no downloading from the bank).
