Tips for Balancing Your Checkbook
Katia's Blog
- Posted:
3/22/2009
Balancing my checkbook changed my life!!! I'm not kidding. I never used to keep track and would try to do "mental math" to estimate how much money I had, or I would check online. The problem is sometimes some debit/credit card charges would not be applied yet, or if I was trying to figure out in my head, I would always forget to calculate one or two expenses and end up overdrawing because I was not making very much money at the time. Then I would have to pay the overdraft fee, not to mention once those other card charges came through, I was overdrawing even more and paying more than one overdraft fee.
It does take some initiative to keep track of it, but here are some tips that really work for me:
1. Carry your checkbook with you. This way as soon as you get a receipt, you can immediately balance, or stow it away IN the checkbook so you don't have to look for it when you are ready to balance. I have a small paperclip in mine that holds the current page of the register and also collects receipts so I don't lose them.
2. If you have a cell, get a phone with a calculator. Most of them come with them now, but if you don't have one, you can download an application for probably $3 or less.
3. USE a calculator! Even if you are a math whiz, it is easy to make a mistake. Usually I am only a few cents or dollars off when this happens but it's much less stressful if you get it right the first time with a calculator.
4. Use idle time to balance. Waiting in the doctor's office, or on the bus/train/subway, or during a commercial break from your favorite TV show. It is hard to "make the time" to balance but in reality it doesn't take much time at all and this way you feel like you are making good use of your idle time.
5. Subtract any "auto payments" you have at the beginning of the month. I do this for the accounts I have set up to automatically deduct from my account every month- cell phone, closed credit card accounts, organization memberships. This way even though my checkbook balance might be negative (though my account is not) until I get the next paycheck, I know I am not spending money that isn't there. I keep a post-it note in my checkbook with each regular monthly bill and its amount.
Hope this helps someone :]
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