Do you still balance your checkbook monthly?

[Midpack]

Although we rarely write checks anymore, DW still keeps track of EVERY charge and deposit we have in an old school check register, and ‘balances the checkbook’ versus the bank statement at the end of each month. Every credit card charge is entered in real time as if it was a check, and she literally checks each one off when she gets the monthly CC statement. If it’s off by ANY amount no matter how small, she won’t rest until she finds the discrepancy. She’s been doing it for more than 46 years. Though she will admit the bank has never been wrong, not even a penny.

Yesterday one of her friends kidded DW about it, but that won’t change anything.

In all fairness DW also enters all the charges in a spreadsheet (that looks just like a check register table with two extra columns for budget categories) and sends it to me monthly, I plug it into another spreadsheet, and that’s how we keep track of spending vs budget. So we’d have to keep track somehow.

She’s sitting next to me now finalizing June.

I’d do a poll but I am sure respective practices are on the spectrum from reconciling every charge to none at all, and various others in between. Is DW the last of her type?

 

[GoBirds]

Virtual (manual entry) through quicken for all accounts and all transactions. Not just checking.

Manual because I use quicken for budgeting a few months ahead

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Never used a checkbook.

In my youth, I'd take the B of A receipt and just wrote whatever deduction I had on the receipt. So if I started with 4K, and I wrote a check for $15, I took that $4000 and deducted $15 and had $3985. I just kept it going throughout the month. Would have a decent long list of activity. And the next month, use a new receipt.

Nowadays I just check online.

And I feel certain we had this same thread not too long ago, I believe started by the same OP.

 

[joesxm3]

I write my checks in the checkbook, but I don't strictly balance. I look at the bank app and try to see that all the credit card, ACH and check charges look legitimate and I just copy my checking balance minus my credit card balance into my weekly spreadsheet of all my accounts.

I also have a sheet where I track deposits into checking and withdrawals from checking to my other accounts and adjust against the current balance to see how much has been spent YTD. That is the closest I come to having a "budget".

 

[audreyh1]

I don’t keep a checkbook per se as I normally only write a check or two a year. Instead I have all transactions in Quicken and updated quite frequently, and I reconcile all statements one a month whenever each statement becomes available.

Most of our bills are paid electronically. Quicken knows all these regularly scheduled transactions, and I update as soon as I get a new bill. Quicken shows me future transactions so I can see ahead how our bank balances will change.

FWIW I have several checking and savings account plus a Fidelity CMA that does some billpaying.

I think while your DW is staring at her checkbook I’m staring at Quicken on my laptop.

For credit card transactions - I keep the receipts, more are electronic these days, download transactions, and reconcile against the statements.

 

[big-papa]

Back when I did balance a checkbook the old fashioned way, any mistakes I found were almost always of my own during the balance calculations. Turns out that bank computers can actually do addition and subtraction pretty flawlessly, so I decided I had better things to do with my time. I did/do still make sure I recognize each charge but that's it.

Probably been 20 years since I last balanced a checkbook. Then again, we write a check maybe once a year. A few things are "pulled" automatically, a couple of things I "push", and the rest goes on the credit card, which is the majority of all spends. For that, I go through making sure I recognize each payment, though some can end up with some pretty obscure naming (why can't they fix that?).


Cheers.

 

[djsander]

We will pay bills today and the wife will record each bill paid even though they are paid on line and check the balance. Will repeat mid-month. We pay many expenses on the credit card and she will go through every charge and ensure that it is correct to the penny then pay the bill. Most of this is her lack of trust of computer systems, she worked as a bank examiner at one time and she was raised by her grandmother who had a big distrust of banks.

 

[Major Tom]

I have always used a checkbook register and continue to do so, to keep track of all deposits to, and deductions from my checking account. I rarely write checks, so nearly all of these deposits and deductions are electronic. Like Midpack's DW, if my checkbook register balance doesn't agree eith the balance online, I go through all the register entries and check my math until the discrepancy is found and corrected.

 

[RetiredHappy]

I don't "balance" anything. I look at my banking and credit card info online every couple of days to ensure all charges, credit cards, deposits and withdrawals look legit.

 

[pacergal]

Same as your DW, but I check and balance weekly.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I haven't used a paper checkbook in a few decades, I guess. But I meticulously track all balances in Quicken. Not just for my checking account(s) but also for credit cards and all financial accounts. I pretty much know where every penny is now and where it's going to go in the future at all times.

 

[braumeister]

I'm not a fan of Quicken, but I keep track of every account in Moneydance, by manual entry at least a few times a week, sometimes daily.

 

[disneysteve]

Absolutely. Every month. By hand. On paper. I do the same for my mom’s account every month. And yes I find errors when doing so. Usually my errors. Every now and then a bank error.

 

[Midpack]

Never used a checkbook.

In my youth, I'd take the B of A receipt and just wrote whatever deduction I had on the receipt. So if I started with 4K, and I wrote a check for $15, I took that $4000 and deducted $15 and had $3985. I just kept it going throughout the month. Would have a decent long list of activity. And the next month, use a new receipt.

Nowadays I just check online.

And I feel certain we had this same thread not too long ago, I believe started by the same OP.

Not me? Maybe you're thinking about this Do you balance your checkbook?

 

[Montecfo]

I balance everything in Quicken. But I do not match recepts or keep them (except medical for HSA).

It is for tracking, not budgeting. We have not had a budget in decades. Also useful for when did we redo the kitchen? When did I put brakes on the car? What did we pay to stay at the Battery Carriage House in 1992? That sort.

I consider regularly discontinuing this practice but have not really found a workaround that seems responsible.

 

[aaronc879]

I have always used a checkbook register and continue to do so, to keep track of all deposits to, and deductions from my checking account. I rarely write checks, so nearly all of these deposits and deductions are electronic. Like Midpack's DW, if my checkbook register balance doesn't agree eith the balance online, I go through all the register entries and check my math until the discrepancy is found and corrected.

I thought I was the only one who still did that in 2026. Glad to hear i'm not alone.

 

[RunningBum]

I use a spreadsheet to balance my checkbook. That way I know when I have to pull more from my VG account. In many months all I have a credit card payments, water, electric, and a check for the house cleaner.

 

[Plantman]

I check and balance mine every morning.

 

[OldShooter]

When the monthly statements arrive, I download all accounts (checking, IRA, Brokerage, etc.)to Quicken and review all transactions. Most are automatically categorized as they are from vendors I have dealt with before so all I have to do is to type in the item purchased or the service billed. Very difficult for for a scammer to get by that screen. The few new vendors get extra attention.

I do not recommend Quicken at all. It is a slimy bunch but I have been using it so long that my number of transactions locks me in. Starting up with this type of thing. Do not select Quicken.

 

[Midpack]

There are probably more Quicken users than I realize. Like the above, we have so much history with our own homegrown Excel spreadsheets, I can't imagine changing now. Let's us customize exactly as we please.

If spreadsheets hadn't been invented years ago, I can't imagine how I'd keep track of our finances. I've been using spreadsheets since 1980 (SuperCalc-VisiCalc-Lotus 123-Excel/Numbers/Sheets)...

 

[MarieIG]

I no longer balance my checkbook. Most of my withdrawals are electronic payments of credit cards.

I record all physical checks, tax payments and check my account daily. I probably do way too much math in my head.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Not me? Maybe you're thinking about this Do you balance your checkbook?

That must have been it!

 

[big-papa]

There are probably more Quicken users than I realize. Like the above, we have so much history with our own homegrown Excel spreadsheets, I can't imagine changing now. Let's us customize exactly as we please.

If spreadsheets hadn't been invented years ago, I can't imagine how I'd keep track of our finances. I've been using spreadsheets since 1980 (SuperCalc-VisiCalc-Lotus 123-Excel/Numbers/Sheets)...

I was a quicken user eons ago. But then they released a new version that couldn't read data from the old version and it was buh-bye to quicken.

Cheers.

 

[frank05]

Haven't used a checkbook since I abandoned Quicken about 10 years ago. With faceid on my tablet with apps, I can quickly check all my accounts on a daily basis. Write about 6 checks a year so there is rarely anything pending. Even when I balanced my checkbook, never found any issue that was the bank's fault. All of the balancing issues was my fault and I don't miss it.

The financial companies web views are good enough for me to check our investments and I allow Schwab to roll up all the accounts across institutions.

 

[scrabbler1]

This is what I wrote in the linked thread from a few years ago:

"I still keep a paper checkbook registry as I have since I first opened the checking account back in 1983. However, 2 big things have happened over the last 41 years to make balancing that registry every month less important after I receive my monthly account statement.

The first is when I bought my first PC back in 1995 and created a spreadsheet to mimic the paper registry. In fact, it's an expanded registry which not only categorizes my cash inflows and outflows (like Quicken, perhaps), but also links to a skeleton version of my income tax forms. Very often I would enter a transaction into the spreadsheet but forget right away to enter it into the paper registry which became relegated to a back-up. Most months I could find the statement period's ending balance in both the registry and spreadsheet, making the balancing procedure very easy.

The second is when I added online banking back in 2014. This allowed me to monitor my banking activity whenever I felt like it. I could then match the account activity in the online banking to the spreadsheet, an easier task than finding the checkbook and registry itself as I wrote fewer and fewer checks (now down to around 10 per year).

I use the statement balance as a monthly checkpoint to see, along with the rest of my investment portfolio, my total portfolio's value."