Balancing my check account [LWN.net]

Balancing my check account

Posted Sep 14, 2005 18:47 UTC (Wed) by oak (guest, #2786)
In reply to: Balancing my check account by MortFurd
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to personal finance managers (Part I)

> using a check gives me immediate control of what is going on with my
> account without depending on the bank. Balancing a checkbook is a check
> to see that I've managed my money properly, but it is also a check to
> see if the bank is doing its job properly.

At least here in Finland you get receipt whenever you pay something (food,
gas whatever) with your bank card, or when you withdraw cash with it from
the ATM.

A couple of times a month, I'll enter the receipts from my wallet to
GnuCash. Next month when the bank sends the monthly summary of all
withdraws and deposits, I'll just check whether the balance matches what I
got in GnuCash at same date. If it doesn't, I'll just check whether each
entry I'd entered to GnuCash matches what's in the bank summary. So far,
it's always been an error I've made in entering the recipe to GnuCash
(knock wood ;-)).

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Balancing my check account

Posted Sep 15, 2005 12:56 UTC (Thu) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link]

That is what I do too, but here in the US we would call that balancing the checkbook. I think is more differences in language than anything else. However, I still do have a checkbook which I hardly use. There are a couple of die hards that cannot handle an electronic payment. For example I had to start paying the building maintenance with a paper check because the management company was sending me notices for non-payment, and it was a pain to make them understand what was going on. The reason is that they are a small office that hardly has a computer so they are WAYYYY behind the times. Another one is my mortgage. If I want to pay extra principal I have to do it with a check so that I can send the for and let them know exactly how to break up the extra money. If not, they will apply it to where it is better for them (to the next payment probably). Everything else is electronic.