My concern with not having a register of some sort would be how to know your balance? I have things outstanding all the time, I can't just check the balance online and rely on that since Chase may take a week to process my cc payment. In summary, definitely NO REGRETS and never had any problems. I keep pdf copies of bank statements (offline in multple places), but that's about all I do. Even that was much easier than sifting through boxes of cancelled checks (not to mention that most checks are processed as electronic images now anyway). I've had to grab copies of cancelled checks from online images several times in the last 5 years. Quicken summary reports suffice for her inquiries.Īll banks that I'm involved with (including Chase, as you have) have stellar websites. She, in theory, kept a checkbook but never reconciled it anyway (making it kind of pointless for her). I'm roughly your age, and started handling banking and bill paying last year for an aging mother-in-law. We also started keeping a "petty cash" envelope with a month or so of our cash needs - reducing ATM transactions to one per month at most.Įven without Quicken, I would probably not keep a checkbook. Plus, when the very rare need arises, my wife is comfortable opening up Quicken to check a current balance. That need went away as our check writing declined. Those all negate the benefit that we used to get from having a checkbook - two people writing checks and needing to make sure sufficient funds were there. Plus we've migrated to almost all electronic transactions anyway: mostly by credit card, by debit where vendor charges for credit card use, and then roughly 3 paper checks per month. Since Quicken (software) is my check register, that meets all our needs (balance monitoring, reconciliation). Can't recall how many, but at least 8 years ago. When we talked to the teachers about this they did not think it would be a problem.īeing a teenage boy he never asked for help but probably used Youtube to figure out how to make a scrawl where the first letter of his first and last name can sort of be recognized so that is still how he signs his name. The new school had taught cursive the year before so he missed it at both schools. The schools he went to barely taught cursive writing and we moved to a new school district the year before he would have had the cursive lesson in the old school district. When my son was getting ready to get his drivers licence he ended up in a bit of a panic because he had never learned to write in cursive so he did not know how to sign his name for his drivers license application. Once the checking account information was available online I stopped keeping a check register.Īn interesting things about changes with checks and signatures and millennials. I pay pretty much everything I can by credit card to get at least a 2% rebate. We only use about two checkpads a year now if that. This will also have what you wrote in the meno line which can be useful. If I ever need to look up something I can just look at the old checkpad with the copies of the checks. We have always used the duplicate checks where it makes a carbonless copy as you write the check. Without these, would you still not keep a register? It seems that most are comfortable not keeping a register and most in that group use an alternate like Quicken or Mint. Can people let me know what they think and have any regretted not having a checkbook to look at after stopping? But I worry about the ease of finding information quickly as if not certain about the date you might have to look at many statements. I am considering changing to not keeping a checkbook and a clear benefit is I could go to monthly debits for everything for example. I suppose one could just download them monthly. Chase tells me that they keep statements available for 7 years. I am completely fine using online services and frequently check my checking account. I know that many have stopped doing this and essentially no millennial types use checkbooks. I keep my number of entries to a minimum as I hate making entries and using lines and pages so i often pay for utilities say at an amount of about one year's worth, ditto my Medigap and Medicare drug plan premiums. I do balance the checkbook but most important for me is so that I can quickly scan for things I might want to see. I am now 65, but can literally look up an entry for any check I've ever written or see any direct deposit easily by date.
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