Posted: 4/24/2008 1:36:25 PM EDT
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With the proliferation of home Internet access, accounting software, and the advent of secure on line banking - has balancing your check book the old fashioned (ledger) way become obsolete? It just seems to me that you need to monitor the account to make certain that the activity is 1) yours 2) vendor amounts charged to the account are accurate. Do you still balance your checkbook with a paper ledger? |
I used to use Quicken. I found it was duplicitous to what the bank was providing without having to download the information to a separate program. I didn't need all the fluff that came with it...pie charts, allocation of expenses, etc. |
EXACTLY!!!! |
| No it is not obsolete. Though i dont do the full on ledger, i do write down all on my transactions of the day(typically one or two) and every other week i balance this against what the bank claims happened in their online record. Mistakes can happen and this is my way of trying to catch them if one should happen. |
See....I find that with the online account information, I know MORE about where my better half spends than I did before, and I know instantly. Not that it matters. We both are financially responsible and trust one antother implicitly. As for the banks accuracy, the only time I've ever had a problem is when the teller gave me too much money on a check I was cashing. I went back immediately and returned the extra dough. They all gave out a sigh of relief as though I had just difused a bomb. Other than that...any accuracy issues have been the result of vendor error, not the bank and those have been very, very rare. |
I keep the hard copy receipts and verify them against the on line account activity. I check it every day. That way, any mistakes I might find won't sit for long. |
My bank sends the information right to Quicken as do my other credit cards, so no effort is duplicated. I can send checks electronically right from Quicken as well. The one thing that has really helped though is the transaction scheduler. I always know what is coming due. I NEVER use the bank's own website for banking. Quicken is much better IMHO. |
I do both. I check it everyday online and my checkbook matches as well. 
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Get a copy of Quicken from like 2003 or older. The current versions of Quicken are almost unusable they've got so much worthless garbage. If you have a Mac, there is a program called Checkbook that's basically an electronic register. It rocks if all you need to do is balance your checkbooks and track your other accounts. I've moved to Quickbooks which is very nice, but is complete overkill if you don't have any business functions. |
My wife and I have separate checking accounts, one joint money market account at a separate bank for our '6 month expenses' stash. It makes married life easier to have separate checking accounts, if both are working. We are both major savers, so money is not a conflict for us. |
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A friend of mine suggested a program for Linux that seems to be better than Quicken (though I'm sure most banks won't give you the information to directly download to it) and there is a Windows version as well. Its called gnucash anybody use it at all? If my transactions ever go up in number I'm sure I will keep better track of what is going on, just right now I have no reason to keep that close track on them. |
I had to migrate away from Quicken 2004 because banks financial institutions stopped supporting the download functions to some extent. I use Q2007 and find it to be very usable, although somewhat verbose at times. |