Checkbook Balancing Hacks: Tweak Your Balancing Act This Holiday Season
My husband can’t balance a checkbook to save his life. I tease him and tell him he needs the practice, so he should give it a go but he doesn’t see it that way. It’s fine, really, that the task falls to me. I mean, it’s only a once a month job, right? But things are all fine and dandy until the checkbook won’t balance and I find myself taking way more time than I have to get my calculator and the bank statement to agree.
Arrgh.
Life is busy, especially so during the holidays. And money moves in and out of our banking accounts at a faster pace: checks written to charity, checks received as gifts, ATM withdrawals…all in addition to the usual monthly transactions. So here are some checkbook hacks to jump-start the new year, ones that will hopefully save you time and frustration. Because even the math nerd in me would rather do something else than crunch endless checkbook numbers:
- Now this is unconventional. My first piece of advice goes against what our parents and accounting teachers taught us, so buckle your seat belts: do not record those checks the day you write them.
- Next, pick your poor accounting teacher up off the ground, give her the smelling salts. Once she’s come around, read on.
- Here’s the reason for #1. Those checks don’t clear the bank the day you write them. Plus many of us have the “carbon copy” slip for each check that provides a hardcopy receipt. So instead, record checks in your check register the day they clear your bank account. Why? Keeping your debits/credits in order according to date cleared instead of date made matches your bank statement and account activity, and keeps you from having to search your register for those cleared transactions.
- Balance once a week. Now the math doesn’t seem to add up on this one. Messing with the checkbook weekly rather than monthly doesn’t seem like a time-saver, but it really is. Don’t wait for the bank statement to arrive. Instead, if you have one, consult your online banking site once a week and record in your checkbook the cleared items from the past seven days. Then balance and underline the balance in your checkbook so you know you’ve done your math for the week. This process can be done in minutes with fewer transactions to manage and if you don’t balance, you are not sifting through an entire month’s worth of banking activity trying to find the error. Balance more often and save time in the end.
- And if you don’t balance? Say you missed entering a transaction. Your entries aren’t out of order by weeks or a month, but just by a few days. When I used to balance monthly I hated having missed, for example, an ATM withdrawal from October and later entering it in my check register after the start of November. It’s messy and confusing. Keeping those weekly transactions together in relative (if not exact) order keeps them easier to locate if necessary.
We are all busy, so use these checkbook balancing hacks to save you time and frustration. So, as only a math nerd would say,
Happy Balancing!
