While I fall into the ‘keep anal retentive record of how much money I have in each account’ category, there is a different way of managing things.
My mom (who taught me her way and I rejected it) runs on a cash basis. She has an account strictly for bills, savings and cheques to come out of and the rest is the money is her money for the month or for saving for mid range purchases. It works very well for her but she doesn’t keep track of the ins and outs of the account, just how much is in there now (though she moves money to the chequing account as soon as she writes one so that it is just gone).
Every month I move a certain amount of money from my checking account into various savings and investment accounts. The amount I move depends on how much is available in the checking account. I need to know exactly how much I have, and that means I need to consider any outstanding items that haven’t cleared yet. In particular, any outstanding checks that haven’t cleared yet. I don’t write many checks nowadays, but I do write a few.
I just picked up a new check register a few minutes ago. I’m actually using two check registers at the moment – one tracks the actual amount in my account, and the other tracks spending to my budget. I use the check register as a complete financial record – it shows checks (I write about 5 a month), debits, and ATM withdrawals, which are frequent since I live primarily on cash. I also use it to set aside money for specific purchases, save up a little at a time for larger purchases, and record credit card charges so that the money isn’t spent before the bill comes in.
In the second check register I record all of my cash spending that is specifically budgeted. At any time I can tell you what my outstanding credit card charges are, every check I’ve written, debit payment I’ve made, and most cash payments as well.
Much of this information could probably be made available to me in electronic format, but I’ve been using paper for a long time and am more comfortable with it. I also do not do any online banking.
I still get a paper statement and balance it to the penny each month.
Similarly for me, except I use a spreadsheet, which automatically totals my monthly and yearly income/spending, and I have tracking codes assigned to every line item, so I can also automatically total how much I spend on food, transportation, rent, utilities, healthcare, etc., monthly and year-to-date. I also have multiple sources of income, so I track those too.
At the end of the year, it makes doing my tax return that much easier. Plus having the numbers in front of me keeps me from overspending.
And yes, in lean times (and there have been a lot of lean times in this economy), I need to know how much money I really have even if the check hasn’t cleared yet. My rent and my health insurance premium get taken out of my account at around the same time, even though I write the rent check first – I need to know that I will have enough money to cover both and still have some left over for groceries.
I still gotta wonder about computer-only systems. What if you’re out and about, or on vacation? On a day trip, running errands, I might have six or seven transactions, and not all of them planned. So do spreadsheet people pull up the spreadsheet every time before they leave the house so they know how much they have to work with? And then keep a running mental total and a wallet full of receipts until they get home?
I like having the numbers on me when I’m away from home. The register is right there in my wallet and I can write in it while the card machine is doing its thing. I might not do the subtraction right away, but I can look at the numbers and roughly figure it out (instead of having to remember the numbers and add them up).
My major expenditures are bills and I pay those sitting at home in front of my computer. If I need groceries and think I might be a little low, I check before leaving. Otherwise, if I’m away from the house, I’m just not spending that much money, since I usually have so little of it to spend. I keep the receipts in my wallet, and enter everything twice a month when I pay the larger bills. But I think the most I’ve spent while away from the house is, say, a $70 grocery bill when I haven’t been in three weeks. If I know I need a lot of groceries, I make sure I know how much money I have before I leave the house.
I pretty much can’t afford to go on vacation, so the one vacation I’ve had, I set aside the money in advance, and spent frugally while I was there. No hotels, mostly just transportation and food which are pretty easy to plan for in advance. I paid for the plane tickets before I left, and researched bus fares before I left, too. Any debit purchases, I keep the receipt in my wallet and record it later, as always.
Basically, I just plan my spending before I leave the house, and really, I would need to do that anyway. I can’t afford "unplanned’ purchases. Anything that might be truly an emergency, would have to go on credit anyway, to be sorted out after the emergency is over (and believe me, few things qualify as that level of emergency).
I keep a pretty good eye on all of our accounts, expenses and income, but I don’t keep a cheque register any longer. I do sign in to my online banking site regularly and check how things are going, make sure all the transactions are kosher, check deposits, and make payments. I don’t really feel a need for paper tracking any longer, either, but I do write all my payment info on the remittances when I pay things online - I’d hate to have a glitch just as I was making a payment and not be able to prove I made a payment.
We do the “wallet full of receipts” thing. My husband sits down once every couple days and enters all of our receipts into our spreadsheet. We actually itemize every single purchase, so if you want to know how much I spend on chicken in a month, I can tell you. For me, this is a really easy system, and I don’t think he really minds it himself.
However, we didn’t use to keep careful track and it wasn’t a recipe for “disaster”. Even if we occasionally overdrafted, I’d notice it right away and we might have to pay a $30 fee. That’s not smart fiscal management, but if it happens once or twice a year it’s not the end of the world.
The reason we keep careful track is that we’ve put ourselves on very, very strict spending limits, and we found that eyeballing it didn’t work for that. So even now our record keeping is about making sure we are within our personal parameters, not about making sure there is money in the bank.
I do get a daily email from my bank with the previous day’s transactions, and I always look over that to make sure nothing is out of line.
Absolutely this. I enter every single transaction, be it either a check (not writing many of those these days) or a debit. They all have to be kept track of and of course all deposits. I know every time I add something to my check register exactly how much money I have in my checking account. How else do you know? I don’t like to have to go online every day to keep track of my money–only every few weeks to make sure it balances with my check register.
I use online banking and check to make sure my transactions all went through properly every few days. I pay for pretty much everything using a debit card, I don’t like carrying cash. But I would never use a check register. My mom tried to get me to do it when I was a teenager and it all seemed like a big boondoggle when the website has redundant information.
I also never overdraft. I did a couple times in college and the fees were enough to convince me never to cut things that close again.
My statement closes on the 25th of every month. However, I have several bills from the 25th to the end of the month that are autopaid; they total about $600.
I keep a separate paper chart showing all of the monthly bills, dates due, exact or approximate amounts, and whether they’re paid manually online, by autopay, or by Mr. S. When the bill is actually paid, I check it off.
I’m self-employed, so checks come in irregularly. Most of the time I can “pay” my autopaid bills well in advance by simply subtracting them out in the register. However, I don’t like to subtract that $600 worth of bills before the statement closes. That makes balancing a headache because then I have to add those amounts back in to make the balance as of the 25th accurate.
So what I do is this: In mid-month, in my register, I write a big SUB with a big star, and subtract out that $600. Then I circle those amounts in pencil on my bill-paying chart. This way, I know that I’ve allocated the money and won’t spend it.
On the 25th at statement-balancing time, I write in ADD with a big star, check off both the SUB and ADD lines, and add back the $600. Then I balance the account. Now I can go ahead and “pay” those individual bills by subtracting their amounts, erasing the penciled circle, and checking them off, and they will show up on the next statement, nice and neat.
Yup. I’ve discovered that almost every single debit card transaction I make shows up on my bank’s online banking site within minutes. And of the two checks I write each month, the rent check is paid to my roommate (he’s the primary renter, and he writes the single check to the landlord) and he usually deposits it the same day or the next and it rarely takes more than a day or two to show up on my online banking record; the second check, to the comic shop, is only around $40-$50, and while the store owner holds onto the check because he only makes a deposit once a week, he’s told me his system — I’ve been his customer since 1987 — and I know exactly when he’ll be depositing my check.
Additionally, I’ve managed to cut my “unnecessary” spending dramatically, so I rarely worry anymore about overspending or having overdrafts. Though I didn’t realize how much I’d cut my spending until I got ready to do my Christmas shopping back in December. Work had been kind of slow so I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to spend much on gifts. So a week before Christmas I logged into my online banking to see how much money I had, and I was utterly astonished to discover I had $2200 sitting there in my account.
I kept an up-to-date register until about five years ago; balanced my checkbook every month, always to the penny. Since I switched to online banking I don’t bother, since I can check my balance any time, on my computer or on my phone. One reason that this works for me is my affinity for numbers: I have a pretty good sense of what recent transactions are doing to my balance, and I know what automatic payments are coming up, so I don’t really need to check it every day.
I pay all my bills by checks except for the mortgage, which I pay on line. And we use the debit card for daily purchases. So of course I keep a register. I like to keep current with my balance. At any given time, my register is more accurate and up-to-date than the bank’s on-line information. Thus, my register is always 100% correct, and my on-line balance never is.
If you bank online, you can pay ALL your bills online. Writing checks is time-consuming and seems silly in comparison with the convenience. You can still keep a register if you want, but I don’t understand why people use checks for anything except rent these days.
But the payee gets his/her payment immediately if you write a check. For some sporadic purposes, that’s a very useful thing. A lot of my kids’ school expenses are paid by check for that very reason.
I’ve had problems with payees not cashing checks sent from the bank’s online billpaying service, also (mostly doctors, for some reason). Whereas if I mail them a check, I know it’ll get cashed and credited to my account.
We still write 4-5 checks every month. I’d like it to be fewer but there are times where it truly is the easiest way to pay.
Oh - and the checks are an excellent reason to keep a register. Some of the payees don’t cash their checks for weeks or even a month or two. By having them in the register (Quicken), I can see that I’ve got x dollars today but have y dollars outstanding, so better not spend more than (x - y).
It takes longer to type in the check info, IMO. Even if it’s saved by my bank every month, I would still double check everything, which would take at least as much time.
I use a check register, and only make payments by check or cash. I am not good with credit, and get lazy about tracking debit card use, so it works the best for me. I have not overdrawn my account in almost 15 years.
I can’t imagine being able to budget properly without tracking that information. We live “paycheck to paycheck”, in that all of our money is spent to zero every month. We have disposable income, but since we also have debt, that money goes to the creditor every month. I sit down at the 1st of month, write up a budget, and send the balance to the creditor. Not having everything written down would quickly spell disaster for our financial plan.
I keep it, though my official source is Quicken. But it’s good to be able to look in the checkbook and see how much money you have before writing a check.
I use credit cards for most purchases, but pay off the cards each month. Twice a month, I write checks. I don’t pay electronically; my bank charges more for them than my cost for writing the checks, and several of my monthly bills don’t have electronic transfer anyway. I also don’t want any automatic withdrawals because they could occur when I don’t have the money to cover them (I can be pretty low near payday).
The only banking I do electronically is transfer money from checking to savings.
I don’t keep a register, per se, but I do check my bank statement online several times a week. I write so few checks that I can keep track of those fairly easily, and the organizations I write them to are pretty good about depositing them quickly. Virtually all of our bills can be paid online, so the money is gone immediately and I have two confirmations that they were paid – one from the company, and the other on my bank statement. I don’t do the bank’s online bill-pay because there is too much chance for something to get hung up, and I’ve had some payees complain that the checks from the bank look too much like junk mail. So I just do it myself, and when I can’t do it online, they get a check. It’s simpler that way, at least for me.