slo’s MONDAY 1/13 poll - Balancing Your Checkbook 💲📝

[slo]

I was chatting with my DIS friend this morning and we were talking about mistakes we caught while balancing our checkbooks (this is what inspired this poll) I see and talk to many people every day and have been for 36 years, and I’ve talked about balancing a checkbook with them and many don’t do it - they find out about mistakes they made after they run out of money - that kinda freaks me out and that system is not for me, but hey different strokes for different folks. So let’s have some financial talk this morning……..

Do you balance your checkbook?
If yes……how often?
If no…….do you just hope for the best or does someone else do it?
(multiple choice)



For Me…….I balance our checkbook twice a month - at the beginning of the month and the middle of the month. Obviously there are months were this may not happen, and I may skip the middle of the month, which is ok. My DH is lucky that I’m so proactive about this so he doesn’t have to worry about it

 

[Kitty 34]

I have my bank do it now.

 

[wabbott]

I do my checkbook on an excel spreadsheet, and it is auto-reconciled every time I write a check or a draft/deposit is entered.

Several years ago, my SiL (who is a whiz with excel) built a spreadsheet which keeps a running total of the checkbook and the bank balance. Every few days, I will go online and check my online bank balance vs my spreadsheet. Whenever my monthly statement comes in, I do another reconciliation.

I keep my paper checkbook up as a backup.

Many folks who get in financial trouble neglect the few minutes a day it takes to keep up with spending vs income. It's not that much work if you stay current.

I credit Uncle Scrooge McDuck for teaching me the basics of financial planning.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

I balanced my checkbook usually every time I write something on it I pay my bills once a month balance my checkbook I check my bank account online and make sure it balances to what I say I have in my checkbook because what the bank has and what I have are two different things and people never understand that because I know what’s coming the bank doesn’t
I don’t know anybody besides you SLO who keeps a checkbook most people just use their bank card and pretty much figure everything’s OK I am not saying that’s wrong I am just saying I have caught a lot of mistakes through the years made by people I have wrote checks to that cashed them for a different amount than what I wrote them for people I have used my cards with who ran the charges more than once and banks do make mistakes just like everybody else because we’re all human and if you don’t look at these things you don’t catch these things and that’s money on the table that you’re letting slip by just my opinion ymmv

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

For my "main account", I "sort of" balance my checkbook. I just take the total they give me, usually use like a post it note or something to subtract my outgoing payments the last day of the month (and keep a target amount to not go below for some cushion). It is a good thing I provided myself that extra cushion last month because somehow I underestimated my outgoing payments by .08. No harm done, because I only went below my "artificial zero".

For my "play money" account.... I just have a general idea what's in there, and just feed the account with excess from my main account from time to time.

 

[Meriweather]

I balance it once a month, when my statement is available.

 

[ronandannette]

It’s been a good 10 years, maybe longer, since cheques were a thing here. There’s no need to balance accounts because we pay for almost everything digitally with point-of-purchase debit or pre-scheduled auto-debit (for our regular bills). The account balances itself, if you will, and all that is needed is to open the banking app to see the transactions and balance, which DH does daily.

My personal account is at a different bank than our joint household account and it has a feature that emails me an alert of every transaction and a running balance. Our joint account has a widget that you can set the parameters and assign categories to regular transactions (stores, restaurants, utility companies etc.) so it then graphs spending for budgeting purposes. Easy peasy and all in real time!!

 

[TippyThomas]

I just look at the account balance. No balancing needed.

 

[Micca]

Almost everything is electronic, if I need a check for something I have to remember where the checkbook is.

 

[Moliphino]

I just check my banking app periodically to make sure there's nothing wrong.

 

[Wood Nymph]

I balance my checkbooks all the time. I also check my banks every morning to see what might have been posted. It is easy to miss an automatic payment, and this is how I keep track of what I have in the bank.

 

[kdonnel]

I don't balance my checkbook but I do keep track of the balance in my bank accounts using Quicken.

While I don't personally write very many checks, maybe one a year, I do make extensive use of online bill pay. I will often use online bill pay to schedule all the bills for the next couple weeks. As a result my balance displayed by the bank does not reflect the future payments I have scheduled and I use Quicken to keep track of my real available balance.

It is my checkbook.

I do use the reconcile feature in Quicken to reconcile the statements I get from the bank and all of my credit cards. I want to catch any bank/credit card errors early by comparing what I say I spent to what the statement shows.

 

[sarahann77]

I keep spreadsheets for my accounts that have the expected balance for the year. This way I can enter my automatic payments and ensures if I spend anything in addition to know what's extra or what could cause an issue down the road in the year. I update weekly if I can if not, when I get paid. I also just started to use a website that I can plug everything in to really keep more of a budget to know what's really extra vs just extra in one account.

 

[EACarlson]

I haven't balanced a checkbook in 20 years. As soon as online account information became a thing and checks stopped getting written. I stopped balancing. I will check the balance in the app.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

I have a checking account but practically never write checks - that's what online banking is for. I think I wrote one check in 2024. Nothing to balance. Years ago, my high was 2 checks a month - rent & college loan payment. Again, nothing to balance, online banking keeps track of it so nicely.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

I haven't balanced a checkbook in years...probably over a decade. I rely on my bank's app to keep track, but I don't even write checks anymore due to the high fraud risk. So, I don't have anything physical with a ledger. Sure, I could do it in Excel, which would be far more accurate with the various formulas that could be embedded, but the most I'll do is use a spreadsheet for some short term budgeting.

 

[Babs Johnson]

I probably haven’t “balanced my checkbook” in close to 40 years. For starters, now I only write two or three checks per year. All recurring payments are done electronically. And I don’t use an app or spreadsheet to keep track of them.

I guess I stopped bothering because I never could remember to record ATM withdrawals starting in the later 1980s so I gave up trying. I haven’t recorded anything in a paper register since then.

I just look at the balance on statements (mailed paper statements back then, electronically since about 2001) and say “yeah, that seems accurate.” I only occasionally look at the details line by line, usually when I’m very bored.

Sometimes there’s an item I don’t recognize but it’s never for a significant amount. It’s rarely worth the time and effort to investigate.

 

[lynxstch]

While I use my bankcard for almost everything, I still record everything in my paper checkbook, and balance it a couple of times a week. Electronic is great, but it's been known to have errors. I like having a record of everything written down to match the banks online statement. I may actually write about 3 paper checks a year.

 

[MIGrandma]

DH is the balancer of our checkbook. He does it a couple times a year, but checks the balance frequently online. We don’t write many checks anymore.

 

[hertamaniac]

I check my checking account periodically (probably 3X/week) for charges and balance.