Heh... holy war, take two...
I don't disagree with your decisions or perspective, SW. What works for you works for you, simply put. Being a different person, I sometimes make different decisions. When I switched to my credit union years ago, they had a policy where they would automatically take money from savings and put it into checking if you had an overdraft. At no charge
It took me a while, but a friend explained that's why she *never* kept money in checking... all in savings, and the CU would take it out when needed.
They've changed over the years... they now charge $3 for each adjustment they need to make. But it's one adjustment per day... if I have ten checks, they add 'em up and charge me $3. So I no longer keep everything in savings... but don't get dinged badly if there's less in checking than is needed.
Noting your location stating Ireland, I have no clue if there are CUs over there. S'pose I could google it to find out, but I'm lazy right now
So like I said... choices that work for you... just fine.
As for the lady taking forever to balance her checkbook, I have an issue with that as well. And there are ways around it (of course
).
I confess I haven't written in a check register for years... at least a decade, and almost two. When I started using Quicken (and its predecessors) for finances, I realized I was doing the same thing in two places... and making *more* mistakes in the checkbook. I stopped writing in the checkbook, switching over to duplicate checks so I don't have to remember what was written.
BTW, when I first started using accounting software (Moneycounts, way before Quicken), I found a mistake in the first three months. My bank at the time had not cleared a deposit I made. First reconciliation, no big deal. After the second, when it was still outstanding... big question.
Brought my receipt to them and in essence, they said, "We had this deposit and couldn't figure out who it belonged to. So we kept it over here, waiting for someone to ask for it."
I did. Finally. Had I not known, they would have kept it forever. Yet another reason it pays to get and keep those receipts, annoying though it might be. At the time, that was only a $40 deposit. But based on my bank account at that time, that $40 could have been the difference between a dozen checks bouncing (or not).
Sounds like Cerek has to take it up a notch, just to be sure he's armed and prepared for anything with his ex. Sad to say, evidence is sometimes weighed, and not actually read. In either case, he would be covered
And finally, I'm like TL. Cash purchases... meh. Don't care, unless I might need to return it. Credit cards and checks... yep.
Onward! No one's right, no one's wrong... and everyone has a take on it