And, given the problems not doing so has created for my roommate, and that I’ve run into other folks who have said that they had never been able to do so, I figured it was a kind of important “basic” skill to review.

Now? I cheat. *g*

I have a banking program on my Psion organiser which I use to keep a record of all my banking activity – withdrawals, payments by cheque or debit card, and credits. It will take direct debits on a regular basis, as these can be set up to activate automatically, and even do these as automatic credits – for instance, if you know what the interest rate on an account is, you can set that up and it will put it in automatically every month (it isn’t always exactly right, but it’s easy to spot and adjust when the statement arrives). Also, you can set up entries for things you do frequently but not necessarily for the same amount or on the same date – I have one called ’shopping’, which is set up to be paid to Tesco by my Maestro debit card, but I can easily call it up and change it to (say) Sainsbury and Visa debit from the other account (I have two). Withdrawals of cash by debit card can be transferred to a ‘cash’ account (and then I use a cash book, my change purse, and a scrap of paper every week or month to make sure those balance!). Usefully, it also includes a ‘car’ module, which automatically calculates things when I put in an entry for ‘petrol’, and tells me how many miles to the gallon I’ve done, with a graph if I want to see it that way, and a breakdown of the average price per gallon and miles/time between fill-ups and so on.

When the statements arrive, I go to the relevant account on the Psion, and tick off each item on the statement, and hit the spacebar while on that item onscreen, which marks it as ‘reconciled’. Then I can easily see if something hasn’t been ticked off (i.e. I forgot to enter it, and have to look out the receipt or cheque stub for it), or hasn’t been reconciled (so I need to keep it in mind if, for example, someone hasn’t paid in a cheque I wrote for them).

Then, if the balances agree, I can archive off the ‘reconciled’ entries, and am ready to start again.