I am not normally a risk taker, so I am a little embarrassed to admit what I did last month. First, I had a headache and took a Tylenol, then operated some heavy machinery. A few days later, I bought a new DVD player and installed it without first reading all of the safety instructions. Then last week, for the first time since September 1971, I didn’t balance my checkbook.
My bank reconciliation rebellion didn’t happen overnight. There have been signs of an internal struggle for several months now.
For example, you know how when you write out the amount of the check (“thirty-six and 35/100”) you draw a squiggly line to the end of the blank space? That prevents the person you write the check to from writing in “and one million dollars” in the empty space. Last month I stopped drawing that squiggly line. It suddenly seemed pointless. Besides, I don’t have a million dollars in my checking account.
I also stopped using ATMs. This angers my bank because fees are a major profit source. But I decided to boycott cash machines after getting frustrated once when I went to use my card at a different bank’s ATM. A little message came on the screen saying that my card wouldn’t work at that machine. Then the next month I saw that my bank charged me $5 for trying to use my card. Great - it costs me money to find out they won’t give me any money. I was going to call and complain but I’m sure there is a fee for that too.
Then I became disillusioned with our interest-earning checking account. Currently, the interest rate I get is .0000013%, compounded monthly. We earned $1.27 in interest last year. For this privilege, I pay $2 per month.
I made the actual decision to renounce reconciling last week. I was concerned about our spending and decided to look at our monthly budget for 2007. I use Quicken to track our finances and reconcile our bank statement. When I enter a check into the computer, I specify what kind of expense it is out of over 100 categories. Unfortunately, I have gotten lazy because the only budget categories that showed in the 2007 budget were House Payments and Miscellaneous Expenses. I printed a copy of the report to discuss with my wife.
“Look, honey,” I said. “We need to be careful. Let’s see if we can stay within our budget this month.”
“Sure,” she replied. “What have we been spending too much money on?”
With great solemnity I announced “We need to cut back on Miscellaneous Expenses!”
So I no longer will use Quicken to do my budget or to reconcile my monthly bank statement. I know that the only way to be sure you don’t bounce a check is to always reconcile your account and record all of the checks you write. But I am going to try a new approach. I won’t reconcile my checking account, but I will keep a higher balance to make bouncing checks less likely. And most importantly, I will never write a check for more than $1,000,000.
David LeSueur lives with his wife in Littleton.