Don't Leave Money On The Table: Reconcile Your Statements!

Balancing your checkbook is one of the most boring things a person can do.  It's the brushing your teeth of the finance world. You know you should do it but it's kinda a pain in the butt and if you skip it once in a while, is it really going to matter?

And it's not just bank statements that need to be balanced, or at the very least, reviewed. Any statement you get that involves money should be reviewed. That means credit card statements, brokerage statements, phone bills, utility bills, etc.

Now, you don't have to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb. In many instances, you just need to look for things that seem anomalous, unexpected.

For example, I rarely look at my brokerage statements in great detail. I'm not an active trader, so there usually isn't much activity to review. I do always look for one thing - fees. I shouldn't be incurring any fees in my accounts, and I always check to make sure that is still the case. But it's always possible I missed a notification of some change and could start incurring fees, so I want to watch out for that.

My credit card statements and bank statements, are another matter. With those, I do verify every single item. During the month, I enter all my charges and deposits in a phone app called Expense IQ (formerly Easy Money). When my statement comes, I go through each line, marking off each one in the app. When I'm done, my closing balance in the app should match the closing balance on my statement.

I will admit, this can be a chore. Ninety-five percent of the time, everything matches up. But, there are times where I have found charges I forgot to enter in the app.

I also sometimes find errors in my statement - like the one today that got me writing this post. I was reconciling my credit card statement against the entries in my app and found an error: I was double-charged at a fast food restaurant a week ago.

I remember exactly when it happened. I was paying through the restaurant's phone app. To do this, my phone displays a QR code that I hold up to a scanner at the register. The scanner has a green light that comes on when it has successfully scanned my code and charged my credit card.

(Not my hand or my phone.)

On this particular day, I went through that process and got the green light, but the cashier said it didn't go through. I said "But I got the green light." He said "Yes, but I have to hit something on my screen first." Hmm. Whatever. So we did it again and I got the green light again.

Sure enough, my statement came and I saw I was charged twice on that day. A quick call to my credit card company had the extra charge removed, but if I wasn't looking at each transaction, I would have missed this.

It's tempting to think that, with automated payments or electronic billing, things can't go wrong, but they do. It's your money, so watch over it and don't leave money on the table. I can guarantee you that the fast food restaurant would not have made any attempt to refund that money to me!