budget busters....checks

[judydvc]

Ok my suggestion is to stop looking at your online balance to determine what is in your checking account. You need to either use the check register and keep a running total or better yet invest in a financial software package and record EVERY check / debit / ATM transaction. This way you will know the current running balance as if everything you have debited / written has cleared., you can then plan / budget accordingly.

Right now you are playing with fire and you are going to get burned! When you write a check you have signed a legal contract treat it as such and consider that money gone from the account the instant you sign your name…

I do go by the balance in my account but I also subtract any checks I've written & payments I've made that haven't come back. I would call the person & ask. I did that when the check I gave my niece didn't come back for a month & I think I reminded them.

 

[piperdown]

For those of you with smart phones, there are several free or low cost apps that work like quicken/ms money. It has helped me tremendously.

I take about 5-10 mins each evening to balance my accounts. I'm now using the budget feature on my app, and I have a much better handle on my cash flow.

 

[ChrizJen]

I personally don't see why it's such a big deal. But I'm also another person who lives by the philosophy that once the check is written, the money is gone. It's no longer mine. And I use Quicken to keep track of my account balance instead of relying on what the bank says. That way I'm never tempted to use the money for something else...
But I'm also one of those people who may sometimes hold onto a check for a couple of weeks and then go to the bank with several checks to deposit all together.

 

[crashbb]

My sympathies are with the OP--it can be difficult when gift recipients hang on to cheques until they are nearly stale before cashing them--or call you to say they lost the cheque, and ask you to re-issue it. My DSis' kids (both in their 20s) have both done that with cheques, so I stopped giving them cheques. They get gift cards instead. The point of giving a cheque is to maximize the usefulness for the receiver, while making it easy on the giver. If the receiver is unable to cash a cheque in a timely fashion, then it is up to the giver to make a decision as to what kind of a gift card might be useful.
Just saw the PP's post about stale cheques. I live in Canada, a cheque becomes stale here after 3 months.

Actually, it is six months in Canada, not three.

 

[Dismom55]

I agree, once you write a check the money is gone no matter how long it takes for the recipient to cash it.

As for me, it takes me forever to get to the bank, the banks are not open when I leave for work, closed by the time I get to my neighborhood the banks are closed.(my workplace is not in a very safe area, so I would not dream of banking there) Many times Saturdays I forget to go to the bank as my pay is direct deposit. So, because of my inability to get to the bank I prefer to use gift cards to specific store or gift visa cards or Disney gift cards to those I know go to Disney.

I do check my balance online about once a week to be sure it is where I think it should be and nothing is out of whack, I also like to know that the bills I have paid have been paid, but that is purely nice to know, not for balance checking.

 

[malibuconlee]

I don't write checks. I only use a debit/credit card and, 99% of the time, the "charge" is deducted the same day. I find this easier because, if I forgot to write something down in my check register, a debit, a check I wrote etc then I was out of luck and might overdraw my account. However, all bills get paid online and most of them are automatically deducted from my Debit card so I know the date they are going to be deducted and how much. In addition, I am on balanced billing for my natural gas and electric so that deduction is the same every month too. Otherwise, I use cash.

Eh, I still believe it's best to keep an accurate up to date register of all "transactions" be it debit, check, deposit, etc and come into and go out of our account. I think relying on memory of what is floating out there that hasn't cleared yet is not a good way of knowing how much is in your account. But I know lots of people that will never do it.

We also write very few checks. We do online bill pay with our bank and a few things auto withdraw.

 

[malibuconlee]

I worked for several years as a bank teller. Folks like OP used to give us lots of . Once you write a check the money is gone! Subtract it and get on with it. Balance your checkbook at least once a month. The way OP is using her check book is a disaster waiting to happen. Overdraft fees and bounced check fees are killers and put you further in the hole. Sometimes people would get so messed up they would pay the bank the unravel their check book.

Balancing a check book is easy. If you get a paper statement, the back side has a great little fill in the blanks chart to walk you through it.

Once you write someone a check they are under no obligation to cash it asap. But it's not a bad idea since there are people who are not good at using their checking account responsibly and if you delay the check may end up bouncing!

I used to work in a cash office at a Wa-Mart. I think they use a service now, but back in the day at our store we used to "call" on back checks. Meaning for checks that had been returned (and the customer hadn't responded to our call/letter asking them to take care of it) I would call the bank and ask if a check would clear. Had a few angry phone calls because yes our check would clear that day, but would bounce checks that had been written more recently. Especially hard in a small town where you would sometimes know the person. I remember sitting there with management deciding weather or not it was worth my drive to go cash the check because our store served lots of small towns in a tri-state area. I sometimes drove 20 miles or more to cash a check.

 

[si-am]

I don't understand people who don't balance a check book. How do you *really* know how much is in your account? We balance every two weeks when DH gets paid and we pay bills.

We also don't like having to write down every time we get gas or go buy something at the store. That's why we use our credit card for most transactions and pay it off with the other bills. Just easier that way. Started back when we were both working and I was saving most of my check towards a house downpayment, but was the one to do the grocery shopping (we have separate joint accounts for many reasons). It was easier for me to go and use the credit card and for hubby to just pay it off.

I haven't bothered with "balancing" or using a check register since debit cards were invented.

I hardly ever write checks, so it's just never been a problem for me to use my online banking as a reliable number.

 

[SaraJayne]

I don't understand why one would consider this a 'budget buster' item. You're not spending money you don't have.

I still do things the 'old school' way, even though I pay bills electronically. I keep a register and balance my checkbook every 2-3 weeks. I NEVER use the bank's balance as the benchmark for how much money I have...I use the register balance.

This is especially important because many of the bills I pay get set up 2-3 weeks before they are actually paid. I subtract it out of my register balance upon set-up, so the money could be sitting there for weeks before it gets paid.

Same here.

Once you write the check in the register, the money is gone out of the account. Doesn't matter whether the check has been cashed or not.

No wonder this country is in a financial crisis. People don't even know how to keep a check register or balance a checkbook?

 

[SaraJayne]

Eh, I still believe it's best to keep an accurate up to date register of all "transactions" be it debit, check, deposit, etc and come into and go out of our account. I think relying on memory of what is floating out there that hasn't cleared yet is not a good way of knowing how much is in your account. But I know lots of people that will never do it.

We also write very few checks. We do online bill pay with our bank and a few things auto withdraw.

Even though we write very few checks (other than to the school! ), we always record debit transactions/bills paid online in the check register.

 

[bumbershoot]

if i had to balance a checkbook i would be in real trouble.

But you wouldn't be in trouble, because balancing a checkbook takes into account that some things haven't come through.

Right now you are playing with fire and you are going to get burned!

I agree.

DH likes to do this sort of thing. It's why I'm in charge of the money now. Two $800 dollar mistakes, one of them being because he refused to balance the checkbook, thought a check had been cashed, and felt that "gosh, we have so much more money this summer than I thought we would" until the healthcare provider called us and said "why haven't you paid me yet, it's been since Spring?"

Painful lesson for us both.

Gosh I have a check that my grandpa wrote to my DD back in April or May that I still haven't cashed. I don't often go to the bank as it is out of the way and I'm not making a special trip for a $25 check. Never thought of anyone using the balance in the account as a way to judge their finances.

Please go deposit it. Or just tell her that her gift isn't worth a special trip. Either one.




Forgot to mention...I don't use registers, I use notebooks. Registers were just too small for me.

 

[Azrael]

I think it is still a bit too early to start questioning why the check hasn't been cashed. I would wait until the end of this month.

 

[Dorisk3]

Ok my suggestion is to stop looking at your online balance to determine what is in your checking account. You need to either use the check register and keep a running total or better yet invest in a financial software package and record EVERY check / debit / ATM transaction. This way you will know the current running balance as if everything you have debited / written has cleared., you can then plan / budget accordingly.

Right now you are playing with fire and you are going to get burned! When you write a check you have signed a legal contract treat it as such and consider that money gone from the account the instant you sign your name…

This- exactly right. Don't worry about when someone cashes the check, that money is gone and treat it as such.

 

[Sagginit]

oh i know the money is gone, i do write down all the checks i write, but i only use a few a month if that. most months i only use a rent check so because i had so many gifts to give in the last two months i have had a few extra checks. i always have more than enough in my bank account so i would never bounce a check so i am far from playing with fire. its just with the actual checkbook method i would have to write down all my online transactions in it. i wish with all the technology i could enter this information into my bank account myself and they just reconcile it if there is an error.

i was always taught it was rude to hold on to a check for longer than necessary which is why i'm so shocked that people hold onto checks for so long. i wanted to pay my landlady with two checks so i don't have to have the up and down every month for money that isn't mine but she refuses to take more than one check, my last landlord never had a problem with it so it never occurred that we would have to pay like this. my roomate also wants bills done a certain way so i have to go with, people are funny when it comes to money ya know

i guess for me its a budget buster b/c i don't budget every last penny. i put money into savings every time i get paid based on a budget, but then anything extra i put into savings after all the bills are done. this worked for a long time but the checks are throwing my system all out of wack. i tried using the mint but i found i was always under my budgets anyway and it was wasting my time to go in and re-categorize things. even with a spreadsheet you can make a typo that can throw things off, but i rarely have an error with my online banking which is why i prefer to use that instead of manually balancing things.

 

[crystaldawn]

We write very few checks anymore like many ppl here. Although I can understand it is annoying when they don't clear I still consider the money gone from my acct... and balance my checkbook accordingly. So even if they don't post for 6 mos, it's still not a budget buster for me... it just LOOKS like I have more money in my acct than I do. If you know that those specific checks haven't cleared make note of it somewhere.

Honestly I have a habit of holding on to checks because I do not go to the bank very often. I have direct deposit and a debit card that works at atms that are closer to my house than my credit union. I have a stack of checks in my car right now to deposit (one is from April) and I just keep forgetting to deposit them.

 

[ah1126]

I know when I got married it took a little longer to cash some of the checks depending on how they were made out. It took a little time to get my name changed, and to get the proper ID to cash the checks. Maybe this is the case?

 

[abcboys]

We always write everything down and consider it gone when we write it. However, it drives me nuts when people don't cash checks within a considerate about of time. I balance the checkbook every week and checks that haven't been cashed get deducted from the final amount that the online banking says I should have to see if they match. After I while I may forget about that check written months ago and can't figure out why my register does not match.

To the person holding on to the check from April or May please go cash it. It would have driven me nuts by now. Usually after a long period of time (several months) I assume the check is not getting cashed and I add the amount back in the checkbook.

 

[Arielle22]

I use Quicken and download transaction from my bank. I then add in any checks that I have in my register which haven't been cashed yet (I only track checks in the register).

I love using the system and use it to budget also.