As someone who was taught to dutifully do this in my check register every month when I got my bank statement, it’s one of those things that I haven’t done in about 15 years.
Instead I glance at my charges and bank account 1+ times a week to make sure I recognize everything. Once a week if it’s a normal week, more frequently when it’s an atypical spending week, and then every day or every other day if I’m traveling.
I use my credit card for everything these days and pay off any balance typically a few times throughout the month as I glance at the charges. I haven’t had a checkbook in years, and will log into my bank to generate a paper check if I have to, but otherwise prefer the spending tracking, fraud protection, and ease of putting everything on my credit card.
I tried to explain using a check register to my kiddo, and he can’t imagine how onerous that would be
We probably write fewer than ten checks a year, but I reconcile the monthly bank statement with my “check” register spreadsheet, and I still produce a monthly cashflow report that accounts for every penny in and every penny out. It’s all electronic; bank and credit card data are downloaded to Quicken and imported to spreadsheets from there. The spreadsheets are linked and income and expense buckets are graphed so I can compare things like utilities, groceries, dining out, etc. from month-to-month, year-to-year, Maine vs. Arizona, etc. The visual is very helpful. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, so I have an exact handle on spending. It made retirement planning trivial.
I shared an example of my monthly report here for anyone interested.
My mom used to have what I called quadruple entry bookkeeping. She not only kept a regular check register and online system, but had a couple of other ways she was recording everything. I guess she had her reasons but luckily I wasn’t involved in her paperwork until after she was gone.
I keep a register which I reconcile every month. Old habits die hard. There have been years I didn’t do this regularly but I find now that I enjoy the process. I pay most bills online but not autopay, so I like keeping track of inflow and outflow. We do have a few bills on autopay, and I write 2 checks a month, both to our cleaning person who doesn’t take Venmo. I remember my mom diligently balancing the checkbook to the penny when I was growing up, and I seem to have loosely followed her example, although more as a money awareness tool and because I’m probably a big nerd. I also check our investment accounts weekly and like to know the “lay of the land” so to speak.
I check my online balance daily and verify that my check register balance matches my bank’s balance several times a month. Not hard to do as I write so few checks these days.
As an accounting professor, I taught bank reconciliations for over 30 years. In the early years, the bank rec problem on unit test that covered cash was considered easiest problem of the semester. Through the years though, students began to look at me as if I were a dinosaur when I covered this material and error rate on bank rec problem climbed as students saw this skill as non-essential.
I assume a “checkbook” is a pad containing a group of checks? It’s probably been close to 5 years since I last wrote a check. I’ve never balanced a checkbook.
I also don’t keep a lot of funds in accounts for the purpose of avoiding risk of accidental overdraft. Instead I have my credit cards and the overwhelming majority of spending linked to my Fidelity brokerage account, where I keep enough short-term for unplanned expenses, which also is enough for my regular spending.
I keep very little in accounts than earn notably less than the fed rate rate of ~5%, such as standard bank accounts where one writes checks. I’d probably need to transfer funds in to a bank to support writing a significant check.
I do periodically review and track spending, cash flow, and balances in my many different accounts. I also might review how much of spending is going to pre-defined categories like taxes, housing, food, utilities, … For many years, I used Mint. After Mint closed, I did a 6-month free trial of Monarch Money. I liked Monarch’s GUI and some of their features, but it wasn’t worth the cost; so now I use Fidelity Full View.
I have caught a couple unexpected charges with FFV. For example, I saw in Full View one of my brokerages had a charge for $74 called “FEE - Thru 04/30/24 for 2 days.” Monarch didn’t show this charge, but Full View did. After contacting my brokerage about the charge, they reversed it.
I keep good track of what money is in my two checking accounts…but I don’t balance this every month. I also don’t keep the sheets of copied checks my bank sends. I don’t even keep the bank statements…check them, but don’t keep.
We have duplicate checks and I do keep those little duplicate things for a while.
And I very closely monitor what is on my credit card statements.
I don’t write near as many checks as I used to, but I definitely have to write some. As I mentioned, if I didn’t write a check for my real estate tax, personal property taxes, I’d have to take cash down there in person. That line is brutal. So that makes 6 checks a year right there. Until not long ago, our utility bill was the same way. We have doctors in town that don’t have online payments. It’s either a check or call/mail in your credit card number. I try to avoid the latter. And most contractors don’t take credit cards either.
Thankfully all of the weird schools checks are done now. M
My kids don’t write checks except for weird things like car down payments. And they had to check with me first to make sure they were doing it right. But they also live in higher tech places than ours.
I keep the duplicates and the registration with tax stuff for a year or two, then think it out to just the register.
I talk more about this on retirement thread… but really at this point the actual “balancing” (adding deposits, subtracting checks and debits) is not important - just my Tradition. The big benefit is gathering up my monthly checking account tally (cash + checks + autopays + Visa payment) . We’ve been tracking the monthly total for many years - it helped a lot for retirement planning. In retirement, we use that info to plan our finances.
We don’t write many checks, but doing the balance alerts me to things like a niece not having cashed her graduation check. Or this month I caught a goof on my scheme for check deposit for Colorado_kid. (LOL - I’d be better on follow thru if my kids replied to my text questions.)
For anyone whose property tax options are still cash or check, I’d recommend checking the fine print every time you get a new bill. Over the years, my options have expanded to include online payments (credit card with a fee, or bank draft with no fee). I’m not sure how long those options were there before I realized it. I still have one that only allows credit cards (with fee) to pay online, but that’s still worth it for me.
I actually bought a car a few weeks ago for our college sophomore daughter and I used my debit card! She’s several states away and it didn’t occur to me to bring a checkbook and the salesperson recommended calling my bank and asking for a one day extension on my debit card spending limit. I did, and bought a 20k car with my card.
It seemed nuts but way safer than a wire which is what I thought we would need to do.
I didn’t know that was an option! Not sure if the kid’s bank would have done that at the time. Our bank is a pretty small hometown one. But they now have more worldly options!
I still have two checking accounts - 1 is mine only from before I got married and the other is a joint account with H. I never balance my account, just look at the activity online as needed.
I do balance the joint account. Like most of you I rarely write a check but there’s lots of autopay type activity that runs through that account. H “likes” to see that the checking account has been reconciled. He is very good about entering ATM withdrawals or birthday gift checks from my mother. I could probably make up activity and he wouldn’t know the difference as long I show his direct deposit paychecks.
ME TOO! Very satisfying to see that “$0 difference”. I do everything in Quicken so most months it reconciles pretty easily. It makes me feel better, knowing I’d catch a weird fraudulent transaction since I have to look at everything.
My husband pays our property taxes online. I count that in our monthly tally… with a comment in the roll-up spreadsheet.
Although the reconciling is not critical, I do like having the paper checkbook register. (Alas, credit union has changed online systems a few times… old info gone.). If I pay a medical bill with Visa I put an FYI entry in the checkbook register (in case another bill comes afterward). Not necessarily the most logical system, just works for me.
I have a high yield checking account that pays 6.25% on the first $7,500 in the account. I monitor my account to make sure the daily balance never falls below $7,500 because I want as much interest as possible. I have another high yield account with the same credit union - it’s not as high a percentage as the checking account, but it is higher than the rate for money in the checking account in excess of $7,500. To maximize interest, I manage my accounts very carefully. I move money back & forth between the two accounts constantly. That’s part of the reason I don’t feel a need to reconcile my personal accounts … but I do enjoy reconciling bank accounts. I have been treasurer of numerous organizations because I enjoy that sort of thing.
We log the paper check amounts in the paper register, and we have budgeting software that we use to track the checking account and the different savings accounts. Almost all bills are autopay—maybe a dozen or so checks a year for random things such as repairs. DH does the “balancing” every few weeks but we both have online access and can and do check for odd things all the time. The balancing is more like reconciling it into our budget software such that I can do the longer term planning. We like to know how much we spend on what& how it changes overtime: it helps ensure we are saving maximally at different intervals of the year. We started the habit in order to payoff the $300k in medloans as quickly as possible after residency, which we did, and we have continued to monitor though less tightly than those years.
