balancing your checkbook

wtf who does this

people who don't know how to use computers?

your bank does it for you online iirc

i did balance my checkbook for a while back in 1999, though.

I used to save the receipt at the gas pump so that if at the end of the month the numbers didn't match, I could call up the bank and go A-HA!

I didn't need it for expenses or tax purposes, so now I just push the little "no" button when it politely asks if I'd like to have one.

I do not do this.

Balancing your checkbook is one of those crucial life skills that you need to know.

So there you go. http://www.wikihow.com/Balance-a-Checkbook

If only there was some way of this being calculated automatically and seeing it online.

I am an old checkbook-balancer who goes online a couple of times a month to see if there's anything I missed in my archaic method.

I didn't get a checkbook until 1998 and by then First Union/Wachovia/Wells Fargo was doing online balancing, so I gave up after a couple of desultory tries. For a couple years it horrified my parents.

i guess another key factor is that, other than monthly rent checks, i don't use my checkbook

Same here. Maintenance fees. I went fully online in 2012.

Well into her late eighties my abuela would exercise her brain cells squaring her balances. She'd call the bank in a panic if she was off by 34 cents.

Totally a relic of bygone ages when vastly fewer transactions took place.

In my childhood, if your grandmother sent you a $5 birthday check, and you forgot about it for a while, we were told it would mess up her balance because her bank statement wouldn't reflect the amount until you cashed it. So if you forgot about it for two months, she'd have to remember that there was a discrepancy between her statement and her calculation of the balance.

I do look online reasonably often, but not because I think "my records" are better than the bank's. Just want to look for something fishy, like a purchase I don't think I made or my wife made. There would be no way to keep up with all the auto-paid bills, online micropurchases, and miscellaneous fees.

Related (and still relevant) question: bar restaurant receipts where you they charge you for the check amount, then you write in a tip, which they process as a subsequent transaction.

Does everyone copy the tip and total over to "your" copy of the receipt, and then save it for later reference, and protest if it shows up differently in your account? No. You take your copy and you crumple it in your pocket. You use it as a bookmark. Months later, you throw it out when you're cleaning out the car.

For me it's a trust issue. I've waited tables myself, and I am inclined to trust that any bar or restaurant I go to is going to be honest. Technically they COULD enter a hundred-dollar tip on an $8 check, trusting that I wouldn't notice and wouldn't be able to disprove them (because I crumpled up my copy and threw it away as soon as I could). But they don't. Living as if they MIGHT is a small and nasty way to live.

I think I wrote one check in 2015

some transactions take longer to clear than others -- even credit card and online ones -- it's a mostly archaic "skill" for the modern individual when it comes to purely personal stuff, but the concepts are very useful

I feel that keeping up with my acct via a checkbook register helps me get a better grip on where my money's going.

the software designed for this -- in terms of "auto-detecting" what categories your expenses are -- can produce hilarious results, fairly useful, but definitely flawed

some of them are egregiously bad at detecting categories

I used to use a website to aggregate and track stuff and their categorization was good, but Quicken bought Mint, drove most of the competitors out of business, and at last I checked, decided not to invest any time improving that feature.

I kept a balanced checkbook all through the 90s and into the 00s, partly to keep track of where my money was going and how much was available, but also to make sure that the bank wasn't making any mistakes. In 15 years the bank made one mistake -- 10 cents, not in my favor. I never reported it and gave up balancing the checkbook shortly afterwards.

Aside from misc school stuff for the kids I write one check a month now, for the water bill, because they charge a convenience fee to pay online. It's just a couple of dollars but it's the principle.

Every past attempt to rigorously balance my checkbook/bank account has been a glorious failure, occasionally leading to overdrafts and the like. Because I invariably forget to record things. My memory operates much better when I don't have to rely on a spotty external recording system as a backup (see also: eight million aborted attempts at using a planner, that thing back in my schoolin' days that used to drive my study partners nuts where I hardly ever took actual notes).

(I think this is an unconscious ADD coping method/circumvention mechanism.)

So does anyone really copy your tip over to the duplicate every time you sign a bar or restaurant check? And then compare online the next day to see whether they charged correctly?

I don't, however, due to various frauds committed on my account in the last year, I have an email sent for every transaction that posts, and I do look at them, and I usually know pretty quickly if someone changes a tip. It has yet to ever happen.

I don't balance my checkbook but this day of debit carding makes spending too easy. I realized I spent over $2000 last month. All those concerts/movies/trips really added up.

(that's $2000 not including regular bills).

Dont ye have cards

yarp but most of my shit is online purchases and I done memorized my numbers eons ago.

the only check I write each month is to my damn landlord cos that is the only way she allows me to pay (unless I wanna get a money order, which fuck that)

I do this.

(juts out chin)

You wanna make something of it?

i don't get it, is the checkbook balancing on your chin?

I also balance mine (oddly enough I spent a half hour trying to figure out where I went wrong last night). I do it to check on the bank, and to make sure I don't get an overdraft. I have maybe 8-10 transactions a month, so it should be easier now, but many of those are automatic debits that I forget to keep track of.

So does anyone really copy your tip over to the duplicate every time you sign a bar or restaurant check? And then compare online the next day to see whether they charged correctly?

I copy the tip over, but I don't check the next day – just within a week or two when I go online to reconcile the bank's activity record and my own.

i mark out bills / auto withdrawals / ebay pay after deliveries, that kind of thing, in apple notes, one for each paycheck, referring to the previous month's note as needed, and then i divide the remainder up into a per diem for food until the next paycheck. it doesn't help me save or improve my finances but i stay afloat and my anxiety about forever-debt stays somewhat manageable.

i also check my balance almost daily, minus out all the 1 dollars for pending coffee transactions etc, and divide by how many more days i have until the next paycheck, just to make sure i'm not spending too much.

I wrote two checks tonight, and got out my little envelope of Forever stamps that I bought in 2007!

Freakin' local exterminators!

I feel like w/ stamps this is how it goes each month:

Go to post office to drop off check (cos I'm out of stamps)
Go to automated machine, which will only sell me minimum of three, buy three
Remind myself to put two other stamps somewhere easy to find for next month's check so I can just walk it to the mailbox
Lose both stamps over the next 4 weeks
Repeat

I need to just put the things in my wallet

pest control must be a satisfying thing to have come up on your to-do list.

I havent used a cheque since the early 2ks and even at that point it was only to pay rent, and was way archaic even then. Even in the old days it was cash or nothing really. Ive never written a chqeue in my life to pay for a grocery run or a dress in a shop. Is that something people do? It seems absurd to me.

And yeah, ones online account keeps track of everything especially if, like me, you basically pay for everything you can via EFPOS.

i want to say that the golden era of checks coincided with the golden era of suburbs in the u.s. but that's likely not true and / or misleading. now i want to know more about the history of checks.

There was a hell of a long time in the USA when the working class never had checking accounts. I think they became more common in the 1950s and going forward, so there probably is a fair synchronicity with the golden age of suburbs, though I doubt there was any causal connection unless you dig a layer or two deeper to find it.

i use ink to pay everything cept the phone/web, baby

keeps me aware of what i'm spending

xp maybe one common link is banks finding more sources of revenue in middle / lower classes. it took me by surprise to finally read about how and where credit cards were invented, just because i had completely avoided learning anything about that history until now.

i just go out in public and fling stacks of money into the air and then walk into shops and just take fistfuls of whatever i want

Funny how checks really started to die off right around the time* they started doing away with the "19___" as part of the date.
__________________________

* Late 1999-early 2000

pest control must be a satisfying thing to have come up on your to-do list.

More like I was on *their* to-do list.

😮

well then how nice to be remembered by the pest control dude

i use ink to pay everything cept the phone/web, baby

keeps me aware of what i'm spending

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Thursday, March 31, 2016 11:28 PM (Yesterday)

Everyone at grocery stores and restaurants must loooooove you.

lol I know people who still have checks with 19__ and they have to cross that off when filling them out

It's weird how much time I used to spend on shit like writing out bills and balancing the checkbook and now I don't even think about it. Phone, cable, and mortgage are all automatically pulled from the account every month, and power, water, garbage, and other one-offs get a check sent by my bank through their bill paying service. Once a month we write a check for daycare and that's about it.

checks are great. you can backdate them.

xp to whoever upthread: Most of the time I tip at restaurants/bars, I tip in cash, even if paying with a card. It makes it easier for the server/bartender.