1y ago

Do you have trouble balancing a checkbook?

I've never been able to. I've tried:

Keeping receipts, text file on laptop, trying to keep track... too absent minded. Forget one receipt, it's all off.

Bank app on phone? Phone stolen last year, wary.

Weekly visit to atm to check balance? Forget pin, can't remember, locked out of account.

Paying for everything with cash might work, but unsafe neighborhood. And I forget where cash is, random $20 bills found in bizarre locations months later.

At my wit's end. Any adhd people experience similar?

25 comments

Do you have a computer? Online banking does it all for you now.
I don't use any banking app on my phones. Web browser on my laptop is all I need for online banking. Purchases and deposits are listed in chronological order and the balance of the account is shown.
Just be sure that your computer is up-to-date on security patches and it should be all good.
- Why use app when they have a website? You can also use the bank website on the phone too without needing an app.
- Don't have internet where I live. But your suggestion sounds way helpful.
  
  …how…how do you post on Lemmy?

I have literally never balanced a cheque book in my life and I’m 40. I’ve never even seen one, let alone have any idea what to do with it. Is it an actual physical thing? Or is that a euphemism for budgeting?
- Both. They were physical things, but now many can be digital. My parents were born in 61', still to this day they keep their receipts and every night when they get home they jot down everything they spent using their checking account. If something doesn't line up they know something is wrong or missing.
  I know people who have had their card numbers stolen and only used once or twice a month for small amounts, like convenience store/gas station type of deal. Many people can overlook a sub $20 purchase once a month at a gas station, especially if they are a cigarette smoker. I always figured the risk seems way to high, but the number of times my partner has me use her card for something now is crazy that it is never checked. Alcohol, tobacco, food, doesn't matter. They check an ID and I use the tap function which bypasses even entering a pin/zip code some places.

Banking apps generally require you use a biometric ID or enter a password to open them. If your bank's app doesn't, find a new bank.
OTOH, you shouldn't need to rely on an app to keep your phone secure. I recommend setting your phone to require a PIN or fingerprint to unlock it. Then having your phone stolen isn't a security risk.

What year is it where you live? 😂

Here's how I would approach this problem:

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Dedicate 110% of my time to writing code to analyse every transaction and categorise it, and export to whatever format is required.
Use it for about 2 months, maintaining the code and adding different categories.
Quit using it after 3 months because my habits changed and just deal with the ambiguous financials indefinitely.

I hope there is better advice here.

You say there's no internet but we're using a banking app at one point. Do you mean no home service, but you have cell service? If so, you can use your phone's web browser to do online banking, or use your phone's hotspot to enable a computer.
Failing that, the weekly check with your pin is the next angle of attack. I make my pins and passwords based on a rule. That way, it doesn't matter if I forget it, I can use the rule to recreate it. For instance, let's say I bank at Citigroup. To make a pin, I take the first 4 letters and convert them to numbers using a standard keypad. Citi becomes 2484, although I'll just remember to type in the first 4 letters of the bank.
This is a simple example rule, and isn't secure enough for my standards, but once you've defined a rule, you just follow the recipe, and you'll get the same pin every time. For my actual rule, I have clarifying rules like "always use the full name", and rules to create secondary pins when something demands I change one.
These rules stay the same no matter what thing I'm doing, and I find rules that make sense to me are far easier to remember than numbers.

Yes.
This is why ADHD leads to OCD, though.
Set aside a time, every day, to do financial care. We are our own worst enemies because everything is always fine in the moment. Make a production out of it, and get the mail, balance the checkbook, and plan your bills over the next month. Maybe roll self care into the process. Use your fun goals of the day as your reward.
Your current checking account is only for receiving pay save distributing funds to your other accounts. One account is for paying bills. You put in the amount you will pay, THEN you pay your bills. Check and reconcile before paying more. Your leisure money goes into a prepaid card.
Have a false bottom in your billpay account. Start with $20. Work up to a larger amount, like $200. Keep a record of your bottom amount.
When you get a big enough amount saved, use it to open a savings account for the sole purpose of catching errors in your account. If your bank doesn't offer that, consider changing to one that does.

I log on to my accounts regularly to look at balance and history. I put all passwords into KeePassDX/XC so I can get to my pin if I forget it.
My whole life up to about 8 years ago, I used a checkbook and I was always able to keep it balanced by regularly comparing what I had on my register to what came back in the monthly statement. I was able to track down where I was wrong and put a little check mark next to the verified balance.
I finally gave up this routine because I almost never write checks anymore (like once a year or so), and I'm convinced (after a few decades) that the bank gets it right. I review my spending regularly to keep my expenses as low as possible and avoid getting too profligate.
Paying for everything with cash makes it harder to manage your spending since you have to track it manually. That said, I don't use my debit card for purchases because I am paranoid about privacy on the one hand, and I don't want to be tracking my balances quite that closely. Instead, I withdraw some cash with the expectation that it will last about 2 weeks, use that for day-to-day stuff, and use my rewards credit card for most significant purchases.
I keep track of my card balance loosely to ensure I don't over-spend and pay that in full each month. Unfortunately, it's easy to track my purchasing history on the card if someone somehow gets access, but at least I get cash back to apply when needed.
By alloting myself a certain amount of cash, I don't worry about tracking every cash purchase. I track at a higher level whether I should spend or not, and curtail whim spending based on cash on hand and how long since my last ATM visit. I review my credit card balance for similar reasons - how much can I legitimately pay at the end of the pay period? Keep the balance below that at all costs.

I've literally never done this. Sounds like hell.

Doesn't your bank have a website or app where you can check your balance?
I'm not sure if I'm in a really different situation from you, or if I'm totally misunderstanding this, but what are you actually trying to do? Are you trying to do the math of how much you spend to find out if you have any money left??
Why not just look at how much money you have?

Depends on how active you want to manage your cash, but I've found YNAB to be godsend. It's designed for limiting money use as well, not just balancing, but I'd recommend giving it a look.
Edit: it's helped me massively with impulse spending as well.

I don't know why people are giving you a hard time about "Balancing a Checkbook". Recording and reconciling transactions (which is all balancing a checkbook is) is a core personal finance concept which still applies, even if you never, ever write checks.
Why should you track your finances? Well, for starters, you won't really have any control over your money unless you know where it's going. Not to mention people with ADHD --myself included -- tend to struggle with impulse control which can make us prone to reckless spending habits.
What system you use will depend a lot on your goals and the complexity of your personal finances. My personal finances are a monster and I'm super anal retentive about everything. I also have to manage the books for our family business.
I use good old Quicken Desktop. It's old as shit and has some bugs but nothing I can't work around. It also does everything under 'one roof' and it lets me generate conventional financial reports (i.e. Budget Vs. Actual, Income/Expense, & Balance Sheet) right out of the box. I couldn't find a single other personal finance suite that could do that.
Your situation probably is not nearly as complicated as mine. There are numerous other personal finance software options out there. Most of the good ones, in my experience, aren't free but if they make your life easier and help you achieve financial security then it's money well spent.
One of the main advantages to using a dedicated personal finance app is the many of them can download transactions from your online banking automatically. If you can't or don't want to use an online solution, you can use spreadsheets. Or, hell, even a columnar pad from the office supply store will work.
A couple pointers:
Don't worry about immediately logging transactions. It's hard to keep up with that. Do it when you can.
Dedicate time to sit down and get caught up. Whether it's once a week or at the beginning of the month (when you would normally reconcile the prior months bank statements).
I have yet to find a solution that is completely automated. Some personal finance tools can do a lot on their own but you usually have to configure them and then make sure they're not introducing errors.
Don't worry about the receipts. Seriously. They're a nice-to-have but they're not that big a deal. I make sure to always get one but I literally have a huge box of them sitting in my office that I'm sure I'll eventually get around to scanning and filing. ...Right about the time my kids all graduate from high school.
Remember that personal finance is about one thing and one thing only: putting your money to work for YOU. Your goal is to get the most value for your money and make sure that it's going to the places you actually want it to go. If your system isn't giving you what you want, it's fine to change it. It's gotta work for you.

I am married (kinda sad I know) to the feeling of my phone, keys and waller in my pocket.
My keys are attached to my belt loop via a carabiner.
Notes: In the cloud. Both Obsidian.md (synced from local) and OneNote (directly)
Banking PIN: Have written it in my phone. I know where as well (hidden in plain sight). Also memorized

I download the CSV of transactions from my bank. If I make amazon/walmart purchases I make a note in my phone of the date and what it was. If I forget to make a note I just try an remember what I got.

I use Tiller. It auto imports all my transactions. I go through and categorize all my transactions once a week. I rarely use cash.
But spreadsheets are one of my hyperfocuses so it works for me. I love spreadsheets. If you don’t, it probably won’t work for you.
I know you said it’s a sketchy area, but it sounds like “envelope budgeting” might be your only solution if you don’t do spreadsheets. I think YNAB and similar services can do digital envelope budgeting so maybe look into those?

My wife has ADHD, and we've had to work for almost ten years to find something that worked well for us.
We currently use Mint, which automatically imports all of your transactions from your bank and credit cards. We have a simple budgeting system--things are either "fixed" or "general" (where fixed expenses are the same each month, everything else is general). Mint is getting merged with another service soon, but it should have similar features.
If those methods aren't working for you, you could try an envelope method. When you get paid, you split your money between different envelopes (either physical or digital) and then you don't need to worry about tracking your spending. Need groceries? Check the grocery envelope. It's easier to see what you have to work with, if that's helpful for you (my wife had some success with this, but we couldn't practically do it with cash and the digital option felt too abstract for her).
Best of luck!

If you have an iPhone, check out MoneyStats. It helps with all this stuff and allows forecasting any arbitrary timeframe. I would never be able to keep up without something like that, the stress has and would kill me

Use MoneyStats, never have to worry about that stuff then

25 comments