I don’t think I’ve balanced my checkbook in 20 years since I mostly pay bills online. Very true about common names. My husband has a common first and last name with no middle name. He receives calls from people looking for relatives, has supposedly committed crimes in states he has never visited, and received transcripts from college for people with far worse grades!
I occasionally write a check, but I don’t balance my checking account either. The banks website does that for you. Even puts a nice picture of the check on there for you. Most of my bills I pay online or by automatic withdrawl. I set as many up to my credit card as I can so that i get cash back (gotta pay 'em anyway, might as well get a savings on them!).
I doubt my kids balance theirs, but I still balance mine… Love to see when I forget to write a deposit in my check ledger. Its like found money I do pay virtually all bills on line, and often set them up for payment in advance, so I like to keep an eye on it.
As others have said, the bank does that already which I view online, so I don’t keep my own running tally or balance it. If there’s something missing or wrong, I would notice it. A couple years ago, S wrote me a check (room and board) and I deposited it in my account. Except, he uses the same bank, and of course our last names are the same, and the teller erroneously subtracted the amount from my account instead of his! Since I check my account online every day, I saw the mistake, contacted the bank, and they fixed it the next day. (in pre-online days, I would not have known about the errant withdrawal till the statement came.)
I actually only balance at year end. Just do every account in January as part of preparing for taxes… I do still get paper statements and open them as they come to take a glance. My banker at Wells Fargo told me recently that they have a limit on how long you can report fraud to them and expect them to cover it… I don’t remember the exact length, but I feel like it was something like 30 days after you receive the statement. I am not aware of any legal obligation on their part to eat the loss in this situation (there are protections for credit cards, though). So I have been looking at my statements more lately.