If online payments are being subtracted from your balance immediately, then you are being screwed by your bank. They shouldn’t be subtracted until they have cleared.
If they’re like me and write about one physical check every six months, it isn’t a big deal.
How can any of you seriously never write a check? For example, if you hire someone to do work at your house, how do you pay them? You can’t possibly being paying them by online billpay from your bank. Are you people paying workers with cash?
My dad’s bank does this when he pays his bills through their online bill pay. I think it isn’t actually being subtracted from your balance, but it’s showing as a pending payment and therefore isn’t included in the running balance available when you’re looking for your account balance. Which sort of makes sense, particularly here, where we’re discussing how irresponsible people can be. I think it’s the bank’s way of making sure you don’t bounce the e-check they are sending out.
Personally, I hate the online bill pay feature from banks. Everyone I know that uses them ends up with a check every few months that never gets to the vendor because of who knows what. I just log directly into my account on the vendor’s website and pay with a bank debit that way. Then, I know they got it.
Literally the only checks I regularly write are to my gardener (once every three months) and my house keeper (once every two weeks). Because I only write two things, it’s really easy to keep track of those in my head, particularly since the amounts never change. Every so often I have to pay an electrician or something, but again- those are such rare situations that I don’t forget the one outstanding check to Bob’s Plumbing or whatever.
Most businesses take debit or credit cards now. That’s how I pay for steam cleaning at my house or my hair and nails at the salon (assuming I don’t grab cash ahead of time- which I do try to do, since I’d rather small businesses not eat the fee for credit processing).
I can’t remember the last time I wrote an actual check. I don’t even have a checkbook. It was at least 3 years ago. Anytime I have work done on the house or something, I enter them as an online payee and send them a check that way.
It’s basic financial management 101. Further, there are benefits beyond simply keeping an accurate balance reflecting pending and uncleared transactions. It allows you to check and see if your bank makes mistakes, which they do. It allows you to track and analyze your spending patterns. It’s also just one part of managing your overall financial situation?
How am I being screwed? I like it coming out of my balance right away. That way I always know exactly how much I have in my account. There is no waiting for something to “clear.”
Just curious and don’t get your panties in a wad, but how old are you?
Are you seriously saying that a worker is okay with you essentially just telling them that a check will be in the mail? These are usually people that expect payment immediately.
I use credit cards. If they don’t take credit cards, I don’t trust them. I live in Chicago, I can always find someone else to do it.
It is not their money. It is the equivalent of them taking a penny from all of their customers. It may not affect anyone significantly, individually, but it is theft from their customers.
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Yeah so far everyone has accepted this except one person. Granted, I know the people who usually do work for me and they trust me. In the case of the person who wanted payment right away, I paid in cash.
I check my online statement every day and compare it to the receipts from the day. I guess I just instantly check my stuff, rather than physically sitting down and writing everything out. What’s the difference and how, exactly, am I being screwed here?
Most do. Have you ever asked? Like I said, I usually pay cash or get a check right there, but my dad has several rental houses and I have to say that it initially amazed me how many contractors were perfectly happy to fax over an invoice and let us pay it at our leisure. Seriously. Blew my mind, it did. I can’t even think of one in the last five years that has said no to that (and that’s a solid 5 years of various work on 5 different houses in three different cities).
Wow, I was expecting you to say you were in your 70s.
Sure, but I find I can improve my financial situation by spending that time working instead of double-checking an automated system that didn’t produce any errors for the few years before I stopped keeping up. Works for me, heck the only reason I wrote that many checks in the past year is that I bought a condo.
I don’t see it that way. I would prefer they take it out immediately for reasons stated previously.
If you go through the effort of checking online and going through your receipts every day, why not simply incorporate a financial tracking software to the process. Also, I don’t physically write anything out. I just enter the transactions into quicken.
What about if the recipient never deposits the check? How would you ever know they actually received payment?
I highly doubt the demographics of Quicken users trends anywhere close to that age. You’re probably off by 2-3 decades in fact.