For 2 or 3 checks I can see it. We are way down at 10 - 15 a month, and many of them have long times until the check gets deposited. Still our DSL is fast, but not as fast as picking up the checkbook and looking at the register.
We keep $1,000 hidden also. I heartily recommend it as a stress reducer.
Definitely.
For us, the biggest problems in this area came during a period when we were attending a lot of weddings, and so were giving a lot of large checks as wedding presents. People are very inconsistent about depositing gift checks. Some would be cleared within a week; others would be outstanding for a few months. It took careful record keeping to keep everything straight.
Everyone that can has an address takes some form on online payment. Most bank offer a form of online bill pay where they print and mail the checks. Those can either be recurring or ad-hoc checks. You may think that sounds like it wouldn’t save any time but it still does. You only set recurring checks up once and they are sent out on schedule and you have a list of everyone you have ever made online checks out to before that you can just click and send ad-hoc checks to at any time with all their info already there. It also integrates back into the rest of your online banking so it is easy to track and automatically recorded.
I don’t keep a check register and never have. I thought it was a dumb idea before online banking was ever invented but completely unnecessary now.
I write one check a month. If you write a good deal more, I can see where relying on memory would be tricky, but I can tell you from my time at the bank that more than about three per month is fairly uncommon.
I don’t rely on online banking to tell me how much money I have, though; I simply remember what I spend, use my online balance to confirm periodically, and don’t let my balance drop below a certain buffer amount in case I make a mistake. The buffer isn’t all that much, but then, it doesn’t need to be; I’m not going to forget that I paid the rent. The day I can no longer reliably do this, I’ll start keeping a register, but until then, why bother spending the time? (As for the arithmetic comment, keeping an accurate running balance is what we’re discussing, so I don’t see how it isn’t relevant.)
I was about to tell you to read the second link in the post you quoted, when I noticed that the post it links to is my response to you making this same objection in that older thread, which objection you then retracted. So I’ll considered the matter settled. 
To any others confused about that comment, I don’t mean that joint accounts always cause problems, or even that they do so most of the time. The post referenced above explains this further. (Scarlett — please feel free to PM me; I’ll be glad to oblige.)
I just checked the checkbook register I have, to see the year on it, and the last time I wrote anything in a register was 2003. Since then, I’ve moved all my payments to online and I track those on a calendar where I can see what’s coming out of each paycheck and budget my spending/savings accordingly. I have one payee who technically gets a check, and that’s my rent, but it’s not a check written by me, it’s written by my bank and sent along snail-mail. I check my account online or by phone, to make sure the balance is where I think it should be based on auto-pays that have hit and recent spending. Even with the register being used in 2003, that was more for remembering what I wrote checks for, not for balancing my account. I think the last time I actually balanced my checking account was probably 1998.
Wow. I feel very old school. We use a check register. We have several different automatic withdrawals and a couple of different automatic deposits each month. Each gets its own entry in the register. Neither of us use debit cards, but we use our credit cards (2) and pay them off each month. Other than that, we write fewer than ten checks a month. I find it much easier to pick up the register to check on our balance than firing up the computer to log into the bank web site. Spouse still balances the register with the bank statement to the penny each month. We keep a buffer, so we haven’t had an overdraft fee in probably 15 years. If my bank wants to start charging fees for reasons they can’t explain, I change banks. (Don’t laugh, it has happened. Nations Bank could not explain why I was getting charged $7.50 a month. If they couldn’t explain it, I couldn’t avoid it, so I avoid their bank.)
Mom was in England once with a medical problem. The hospital would NOT take cash OR a credit card OR travelers checks! 
Mom had a old check squirreled away in the back of her wallet and they took it - a check on a bank in the USA! This was several years ago. Maybe they’ve changed now …
I just today got a bill for a CAT scan that was done to me in January at the hospital. The only way to pay this bill, as far as I could see. was by check. There was no place to enter credit card information. That was unusual, but it still happens.
You might try just calling the hospital that sent the bill. I had some outstanding co-pay after my visits last August once the insurance had done it’s part. I called the hospital and paid by credit card over the phone. Easy-peasy!
How do you pay off your credit card?
We’re way too much of the control freak variety to want our bank to automatically pay every month. That capability we know about and rejected. I’m not quite sure how logging on and getting our bank to prepare and send a check to our handyman is easier than handing him one, but maybe that’s just me.
I wouldn’t want the bank to automatically pay credit card bills, which can vary wildly month to month. Now we pay them on-line so there are no formal checks, but they still go into the register, which is a handy way of showing they got paid without having to log in to check.
Do you like todo lists? I do, and it might be that liking them and liking to write down checks goes together.
Yeah, I don’t do auto-pay, either. I’ve had bills come to me with mistakes on them, and I sure don’t want the payment to fire before I sit down and look at what it’s going to do to my bank balance. If I’ve had a low income month, I might make a lower payment on a debt than a higher income month. Since I’d need to do that manually to make those decisions, and those decisions rely on how much I’ve made vs. how much I’ve had to spend, I need to have a pretty accurate record of money-in and money-out. If I didn’t keep a register of some kind, I’d still have to calculate anything that hasn’t shown up on my online bank balance yet, so I might as well just do it consistently to start with.
Also, at this point the bank thinks I have about $7 more than I think I do. I haven’t had time to go back and try to figure out why (and I’d have to do some serious digging at this point, I haven’t actually balanced my account in years), but it’s sure something I keep in mind.
I rarely use cheques - maybe one or two a year - so a register for those alone wouldn’t make sense for me. I login to check my account balances online a few times a week and check that ATM cash withdrawals and expected debit and credit card transactions are correctly reflected (I also keep the receipts for the card transactions and bin them once they show up in the online statements).
With regard to expecting regular bills, I keep a high-level budget and on payday transfer a float to the account I use for bill payments (plus a bit extra for contingency).
Ditto for me - this is exactly the system I use and have used since 2001. I also keep a spreadsheet for payables so I can I can track what’s coming up and easily review what I paid in the past.
I should also mention that I actually have two checking accounts. One is at a credit union and this is the one that I write checks against and track with a spreadsheet. Checks (or electronic funds transfers in some cases) and deposits are the only transactions on this account. I do not have a ATM card on this account.
Second checking account is with Bank of America and this is my ATM account. I don’t even have paper checks to write against this account. I have a small direct deposit into this account. And when I say ATM, I mean only ATM cash withdrawals. I never use it as a debit card - only for withdrawing cash. I don’t bother keeping track of this other than reviewing the monthly statement (which I don’t even keep).
I cannot use auto-pay for more than a few things because my income is not steady. I send my invoices out on time, but people are peculiar about when they choose to pay them.
Yes, but in electronic form, maintained by the bank (that way the bank and I are always in agreement so there is nothing to “balance”), and I am able to view it anywhere I have internet access (which is more places than I would be able to view a hard copy sitting in a desk drawer at home).
I don’t use paper checks for anything, so there is never an outstanding draft that’s going to surprise me. The instant I pay for something with my check card, it posts to my online register. Why should I do it when my bank is willing to do it all for me?
My credit card is with the same credit union as my checking account so I just move money from column A to column B and viola: credit card paid.
I’ve been burned one too many times relying on the online version, even if I haven’t written any checks. I don’t tend to actually do the math, though. I just keep track of receipts and check them against my account.
I don’t understand how the online version can be off, but it can be.