Today, my mother yelled at me for not having my checkbook properly balanced. The checkbook in question is connected with an account I only remove money from for paying student loans. She keeps the checkbook in her possession (not sure why, to be honest), and I watch the account from my online banking.

I don’t think having the physical book balanced is a huge deal. It’s not in my possession, and almost all of the activity in the account occurs online. Here’s a list of all the action this particular account sees in a month:

• $150 Federal Student Loan payment – Paid online once a month with automatic debit for a reduced interest rate
• Amazon Payments deposits – Books sold online, Amazon transfers money to my account every few weeks
• Paypal deposits – Money from ebay sales and other online activites a few times a month
• NJ Class loan payment – Roughly $400 per month, by check (they don’t have online payments)

If I had to ask her for the checkbook every time there’s account activity, I’d probably go nuts. I should probably just get the checkbook from her, but I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t really balance it: I would likely just update the total when I write my NJ Class check every month and call it a day.

Writing this out, I see how this might seem a little stupid, but for an account that is almost completely accessed online, I don’t see a lot of reasoning to keep a perfect record in a checkbook I barely use.

Is it worth your time to balance your checkbook if the account activity is all online?