Check Register
Check Register
“I can’t be out of money; I still have checks!” To avoid this infamous claim, it is important to know your balances in each and every account, including your sub-accounts.
Why? Depending on your banking institution, you may be charged for each account that reflects a negative balance. Also, being off by a few pennies may not seem like much, but if you don’t balance at the end of each month, later you may have to go through several months of bank statements to reconcile again. Not fun!
Sub-accounts are explained and further described in our book, Saving For A Sunny Day. We have used sub-accounts to divide a savings/money market account into different pieces or sections so that a certain amount of money can be added to each of these sub-accounts monthly. When the savings/money market statement arrives, it is up to you to add all the sub-accounts to make sure they add up to the balance on the bank statement.
“If you measure something, you can understand it. If you understand it, you can control it, and if you can control it, you can improve it.” The same holds true in your monthly budgeting.
The reality is that it is nearly impossible to complete & follow a monthly budget without improving your overall financial position. There are several reasons for this, so I would challenge you to do this.
First, just developing a budget for yourself will raise your awareness of what you have for revenue or income sources and then also boost your cognizance of how much you are spending each month. Next, you will come to grips with the reality of one of three facts. Either you need to boost your income sources, reduce your outgoing expenditures or, thank goodness, if you have more income than expenses, you can then save some money. Of course, this is fantastic! You just need to determine where you will store or invest those extra funds each month…
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