1/6/2024 0 Comments Electronic checkbook registerFraud cases are on the rise, with the Federal Trade Commission reporting $8.8 billion in losses in 2022, based on 5.2 million reports. All these provide opportunities for someone to hack your account or steal your identity. Typically, you have only 30 days to catch these errors and bring them to the attention of the merchant.įraudsters are out there: We regularly make ATM withdrawals, use debit cards and credit cards, make online purchases, file for tax refunds online. Merchants make mistakes: While companies are basically honest, there’s human error and electronic processing errors, and there may be hidden or undisclosed fees that get charged to your account. Everyone makes mistakes, but by balancing your account regularly, you can prevent mistakes from becoming catastrophes. With a little planning, you can easily limit your withdrawals to ATMs provided by your bank. Thing is, overdraft fees are totally avoidable if you track your spending and balance your account regularly, and most banks charge ATM fees only when you use an ATM provided by another financial institution. While the costs dropped during the pandemic, the costs were rising once again as of Q3 2021. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported that overdraft and non-sufficient fund fees totalled $15.47 billion in 2019. You make mistakes, and mistakes are costly - to you: Overdraft and ATM fees are a big source of revenue for financial institutions. And because you typically have only 60 days to catch an error in your account, you need to maintain a regular schedule of balancing your account. Reconciling your checking account helps you discover mistakes and rectify them quicklyīanks make mistakes: They process hundreds of thousands of transactions a day, and even in this electronic age, banks make mistakes - and it’s on you, the account holder, to bring mistakes to the attention of your bank. While you don’t have a formal check register to balance, you still need to reconcile your records with your bank statement for a few key reasons, two of which follow. Then the bank sends us a monthly statement for our records. Our paycheck is direct deposited into it, our debit card is linked to it, and we pay our bills online from it. While most of us no longer carry around checks and record expenses by hand in a check register booklet - some of us rarely even write a check - we still use a traditional checking account as our primary bank account. You corrected any errors, like deducting the amount of the check you forgot to write down and subtracting bank fees charged to you, and reconciled your account. You’d also keep track of deposits and withdrawals you made during the month in your check register.Īt the end of the month, you’d take your checking account statement and your check register and match up your entries with your bank’s records. When you'd write the check, you'd note the date, amount and merchant in your check register. You’d write a check the merchant would take to the bank with his other deposits, and the bank would cash the check, deducting the money from your account. In the days before the ease and convenience of credit cards, debit cards and direct deposit, people carried a checkbook (a stack of checks along with a check register journal). Most of us dread the task… if we do it at all. Balancing your checkbook seems like an old-fashioned task, but is it still something you need to do? We live in a time when you can keep your calendar on your phone, carry your debit card in your back pocket, download a personal finance app to keep track of your spending on the go, even sign important documents electronically.
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