Once you familiarize yourself with the business of banks and how they operate with your money the next thing you want to do is responsibly maintain your accounts. This is something I had to learn because I would always find myself spending more money than I had in my account because I didn’t keep a record of what I was spending. It was because of this I incurred a lot of overdraft charges and non-sufficient fees that were costing me more than my actual purchases. It wasn’t until I finally got control on my spending and the way I handled my account that I realized how important it is to responsibly maintain your account.
Balancing Your Checkbook
The first thing to keeping track of your account is to balance your checkbook. When you do this you are always aware of how much money you have in the bank, as well as what transactions will be posting to your account at a later date. That can be tricky as we sometimes forget certain transactions because they don’t instantly show up on our account. Therefore, if we post our transactions in our checkbook as we perform them we will always know what has already posted and what hasn’t.
A good way to keep an accurate record of your accounts’ balance is to use the account ledger that comes with your checkbook. This way you can enter the date, the vendor, the amount of the purchase, and whether you wrote a check, or used your debit card. You also want to record your withdrawals from ATM’s and deposits to be sure your balance is as accurate as possible. Once you enter in this information you can then subtract the amount of your recent purchase from your current balance. If you stay on track with this process you will always know how much money you have remaining in your account. I also use this process to look at the amount of money I am spending. A tip is at the end of the month review your purchases and how much money you are spending on what. This way you can do away with frivolous spending and find ways to put extra money in your savings.
Monitoring Your Account
Alongside recording your transactions, you also want to keep a close eye on your actual account. If you prefer to check your account online you can go to your banks website and setup an online account there where you will be able to have access to your account 24 hours a day seven days a week. If you would rather monitor your account over the phone your bank provides a phone number you can call when you would like to speak to speak with a live representative or even access your account through an automated system, for times when you call after hours. Whichever way you choose to keep an eye on your account you should always make an effort to check it at least once a week. This way you can compare the balance in your transaction ledger with the balance the bank has and be sure they are the same. Another important advantage to keeping a close eye on your account is in the case someone else besides yourself gets a hold of your account information. When you pay close attention to your account and the transactions posted to it you can easily catch a fraudulent transaction and alert the bank immediately.
Bank Mistakes
In the case of a transaction not being fraudulent activity and it being the banks mistake you can also alert them in timely fashion if you are regularly checking your account. If you happen to come across a bank error the best thing to do is to call in to the customer service number and speak with a live representative. That way they can view your account and make the proper notation so that your account can be corrected expediently.
All in all you want to pay close attention to your spending, the transactions posted to your account and how it all affects your balance. This will help you to keep a close reign on your finances and assist you with improvements to it in the future.
Photo by: scitech
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