Poll: Do you balance your checkbook?

[WM]

I'm really shocked that so many people actually balance to the penny. On a regular basis, no less! I've just never seen the need. We keep enough in there that I don't have to worry about overdrafts, and I look at all the transactions at the end of the month to check that there's nothing really weird looking. I'm pretty confident I wouldn't notice a bank error (addition/subtraction) unless it was big. I guess I just trust the computer to do the math.

That said, we don't have a lot of transactions. Most of our spending goes on the credit card. But I pay the bills online through the checking account, and deposit remotely as well with my scanner (love USAA!). I do check the deposits to make sure they get credited as part of my end-of-month financial tracking.

 

[Purron]

I check my account electronically and balance it out everytime I do bill paying. If the difference is less than $10, I adjust to the balance the bank gives and don't worry about it. Otherwise, I do some research and get it figured out. Differences have always been my error, not the bank's. So far anyway.

 

[sn2792]

I use Microsoft Money for my check register, so it takes a couple of minutes to balance every month with the online statement.

 

[audreyh1]

I said "Yes - to the penny" - but I do it all in Quicken with transaction downloads from my financial institutions. Almost all my bills are paid electronically. I almost never actually "write" a check.

Review at least once a week.

Audrey

 

[W2R]

Differences have always been my error, not the bank's. So far anyway.

The last time I found a difference that was the bank's error, was back in 1976. They just don't seem to be as common in the computer age as they were in the age of adding machines, for some reason. I still check as a matter of habit.

 

[Nords]

I'm really shocked that so many people actually balance to the penny. On a regular basis, no less!

I think it's the financial equivalent of comfort food, a skill that I've been practicing for over 30 years.

There was a time when those pennies were pretty darn important.

 

[beowulf]

I did the manual monthly balance the checkbook to the statement thing for many, many years. Several years ago I finally capitulated to full on-line banking with bill pay. I still keep my checkbook up to date for handwritten checks (very few these days) and enter all the e-checks and debit card transactions every few days. I haven't gotten a paper statement in about 5 years - I just download the pdf file to my hard drive every month. I do check every day or two to see if the e-transactions have gone through, if automatic deposits have been credited and if all tranactions look correct.

Since opening this account in 1976 I found only one error - when someone else's pay was accidentally deposited in my account. Easy to clear up.

This is so much easier - until terrorist hackers wipe all the hard drives clean

 

[audreyh1]

I think it's the financial equivalent of comfort food, a skill that I've been practicing for over 30 years.

There was a time when those pennies were pretty darn important.

The reason why my balancing comes out to the penny is because the transactions are downloaded from the bank and Quicken does the balancing!

All I have to do is notice whether they match.

Audrey

 

[scrabbler1]

I don't have too many transactions in my checking account each month, in the 10-12 range. At least half the time, the balance shown on my statement can be found in my checkbook register, so I draw the cutoff line there (even if I made more transactions since then) and I am done. Took me about 20 seconds.

 

[Walt34]

We still write checks and balance monthly to the penny with Quicken. But then I'm married to a bookkeeper/accountant, and we're both detail-oriented people. Little errors have a nasty habit of compounding and resulting in unpleasant surprises.

The problem I have with online bill paying is the consistent refusal to accept responsibility for consequential damages. That is, if the electric company misplaces a decimal point and withdraws $750 instead of $75, I may bounce a few checks, at about $50 each for each party's bank fees, not to mention the hassle of cleaning up the mess.

Unless and until they promise to "make me whole" for their mistakes, just as they insist that I make them whole for any mistakes I make, I'll stick with check-writing.

 

[Gone4Good]

I can't imagine not balancing an account. It's so incredibly easy . . . pay bill, enter amount into Money / Quicken / Whatever, occasionally compare software balance to bank balance. Done.

 

[Fireup2020]

I am online everyday checking all my accounts. Do not "balance" per se. Once in a blue moon, something is off, and I do what is necessary to investigate and correct. Only write an average of two checks per month - everything else is electronic. All auto pay stuff comes out of my credit cards, then I pay those. There is much more excitement on my credit statements than my checking account!

 

[HFWR]

There was a time when those pennies were pretty darn important.

I remember those days, and not longingly...

I tried using MSMoney for a while, but it seemed redundant. I use a spreadsheet to track expenses manually, but since many of my "bills" are hidden in a credit card statement, it's just easier to pluck them out myself. Takes a few minutes per month.

 

[kaudrey]

Not the old fashioned "on the back of the monthly statement with pencil and calculator" variety, at least not since I switched over to online banking. I take a look at my account 2-3 times a week to be sure all the deposits and payments are accurate and on time. I suppose this could be described as "continuous balancing".

This is what I do, too. When I can see it online 24/7, why do a snapshot in paper (the checkbook)?

 

[Khan]

I write less than one check per month. I do go online to all my accounts every day.

 

[Westernskies]

I take a quick look at my account balances (have several checking acccounts, from when the FDIC deposit insurance limit was 100K- I was moving into cash for a RE investment, at the same time acting as executor of my mothers estate and didn't want to go over the 100K limit if any one bank got into trouble.... no need for it now with the [-]current balances[/-] higher limits, but I have great relationships with all the banks, so I continue...)about once a week online, usually before paying bills. I have a pretty good idea what the balance should be, it is always about that amount; occasionally I have to dig a little deeper and determine status of an outstanding check, but not very often. Haven't balanced my checkbook since 1977; when there was nothing to balance...

 

[FUEGO]

I balance to the penny. But I have a spreadsheet that does all the math and balancing for me.

I enter transactions as they occur into my Google Docs-hosted "online checkbook register" spreadsheet that I created. I have a column where I put an "x" for every transaction that is shown on the statement. I do this once a month when they mail me the statement. There is another column that keeps track of the running account balance with all the credits and debits applied. This tells me whether I need to transfer more money in there or take money out to a money market account that earns more interest. There is another column for the value "Does Account Statement balance equal this balance"? If the value on that column for the last row equals my account statement, then I'm balanced.

Pennies are important because it should balance exactly, otherwise there could be a problem. It's not that I care about a few pennies, but rather that in the past I have ignored pennies and there ended up being errors that I should have caught.

Every time I balance my "checkbook" I smile a little because the spreadsheet makes things so much simpler vs. the old pen and paper method. And I can access the checkbook register "from the cloud" so, for example, I can record transactions that pass through the checking account while away from my checkbook or away from my home computer network. Comes in handy mostly for paypal transactions, paying for paypal shipping, etc.

I also skim the Money Market account transactions on the monthly statements to make sure I got paid the right amounts and nothing fishy is going out of there.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

In these days of credit cards (no annual fee, cash back) and electronic funds transfers, what's a checkbook?

 

[Cassius King]

I balance to the penny using Quicken. Partly because those pennies still matter right now, and it's my OCD habits.
I actually enjoy it, and spend a lot of time in Quicken analyzing numbers and evaluating expenses.
I have a "buffer" amount that I don't include in my total, but I have a couple accounts setup for auto-pay, so I check those regularly.

 

[IndependentlyPoor]

No, and I am so embarrassed.
I used to balance to the penny with Quicken, but got lazy.

 

[Nova]

I balance to the penny every month via spreadsheet. Old habits die hard. Almost everything goes on the credit cards (pay off every month and get cash back ) and I write very few checks. Like another poster, almost all of the action is in the credit cards.

 

[ziggy29]

About once a week I reconcile my online checking account statement with Quicken. But no, I don't actually enter stuff manually into a check register. That's *so* last century.

 

[Gumby]

I keep a checkbook, but I don't reconcile it with my monthly statements. I do confirm that I have entered all of the ATM withdrawals. Since my checking account never has less than ~$4-5K in it, the exact number is unimportant.

 

[Rustward]

With so many people using credit cards I guess it would be valid to ask if you reconcile your credit card statements against receipts. I do.

 

[easysurfer]

I don't reconcile my credit card statements but do skim it over for anything unusual.