The three or four of you that actually read these e-mails I send out probably know that I’m geeky about almost everything. So it won’t surprise you when I tell you that I keep track of my checkbooks, investments and all other assets and liabilities on the computer in a program called Quicken. Last month I\u00c2\u00a0wrote two checks and paid the rest of my bills online or with a debit card. You can guess that I enter all that in a regular check register, but I also enter it on the computer every day or two. Rather than trust my addition and subtraction without a calculator, I use the computer program\u00c2\u00a0to tell me what my checkbook balance should be.<\/p>\n
So last week I was paying some bills online and was entering the amounts in Quicken as I went. One of the checks was to a company that had sent me a refund a couple of weeks earlier. Since the computer knows it’s smarter than I am, after I entered the company name, it went straight to the deposit block (the last transaction) instead of the check written block. I didn’t notice,\u00c2\u00a0entered the amount, completed the account name and clicked on enter. After I had paid all my bills and entered the amounts in my checkbook, I looked at the balance in Quicken and wrote that number down in my check register. So a $356.14 check was recorded in Quicken as a $356.14 deposit and my account was overstated by $712.28. Not\u00c2\u00a0usually a problem since I keep a balance high enough to avoid any service charge. But remember, I just wrote a check for half of Jean’s new bike.<\/p>\n
So I went to the bank today to get some cash for spending money and the bank said I didn’t have enough in my account for the $100.00 I asked for. I came right home, printed the online bank activity and discovered the error right away. My corrected balance was 35 cents. I transferred some money from another account to avoid any problems.\u00c2\u00a0There won’t be\u00c2\u00a0an overdraft charge, but I will get a service charge on this month’s bank statement. RATS!!! It’s only March and I’ve already made a mistake.<\/p>\n