Do You Balance Your Check Book?

[USCGamecocks]

Does everyone here balance their checkbook?

I seem to spend when I do, then check online periodically and see how much money I have left.

Am I the only one with this bad habit?

[rstlne]

I do that. It's not that much work. I keep a running tab in a notebook and once a month, I reconcile it with the bank statement.

[yourbeginnings]

I just download all the transactions into Quicken every couple of days. One of the downsides is that the bank/merchant could have posted a transaction incorrectly.

[hermione]

I don't. I think I may have balanced my checkbook a few times in the very beginning. But I started using my debit card from the beginning and often just thought "I'll balance it later" when I was using it. And I never did.

Nowadays, I only write checks for taxes (income, property, sales and use tax) a few times a year and use my credit cards for everything else so it's just a matter of making sure I transfer enough from my savings to checking account when I pay my credit card bills or write a tax check.

[Kathryn]

I don't. In any given month, we write 4-5 checks and have 10x that number of electronic transactions, and likewise the volume of checks we pass in a month is less than 10% of our cashflow and probably about 1/4 of the cushion we keep in our checking account at all time. So, at any typical point in time, we might have a couple hundred in uncashed checks floating around out there and so "actually" have a couple hundred less available in the checking account to spend, but this is not enough to matter in the grand scheme of things, and it all sorts itself out in the end.

I don't actually tend to look at my online checking account balance as a useful indicator of how much we have to spend--it's up and down all the time on a day to day basis (in fact, it's been on a $9,000 roller coster ride in the past 3 weeks!) depending on where we are in the cycle of paychecks coming in/bills pending or bills coming due/paychecks pending. So the fact that it is not quite accurate by some small percent due to uncashed checks isn't a big deal.

[Lynnae]

I briefly glance at my bank statements. I balance my checkbook against the online balance once a week.

[Confuzius]

I use debit card and online bill pay and am rather meticulous with my checking of the balance.
I'm 25 and have never written a check. Only used them to get direct deposit at jobs and such.

[USCGamecocks]

Wow, good to see that there are more people out there like me. I thought I was being careless, somewhat I am but it's good to know that I don't have to track every penny but just spend frugually instead.

[ajeh]

Since November 2007 after I experienced my first overdraft charge I have been balancing my checkbook religiously. I use clearcheckbook and it's been great. I like the fact that I do not have to share any account info and I can update it from my computer or mobile phone (mobile internet, sms, IM).

You can separate your spending into groups for charting where your money goes. Clearcheckbook also offers very handy widgets for a quick transaction add or glance at your balance (Google or Dashboard - if you're on a mac.)

[jdp]

I don't have checks. I check my online banking once a week or more frequently if I've been debit card spending (rarely happens). I do save debit receipts until the item clears my account in case of discrepancy.