If you are anything like me, your days are packed full of everything from work to fixing dinner and everything in between. Sometimes this doesn’t leave us a whole lot of time to take care of the tasks in our life that are really important. One of those important items is to review your bank accounts regularly.
Below you will find three reasons why it is important to make sure your bank accounts are given special attention regularly.
Avoid Fraud and Mistakes
Let’s face it, there are a lot of bad people in the world and fraud happens. You could have left your wallet at a restaurant or a hacker could have stolen your information from your computer. Monitoring all of your transactions can help spot any unusual activity because the damage is too severe.
While it’s not very common, mistakes can happen by merchants or the bank itself. A couple of years ago, my gym had accidentally charge my monthly fees twice. Had I not been paying close attention to my account I might not have caught this error and I would have lost money.
Learn About New Products
One thing that I really hate doing is changing banks. Instead of changing banks whenever you see a good promotion, stay up to date on bank account offers available at your current bank. Many times you will see good offers on products such as CD’s. These offers are usually intended to attract new bank customers, but they are a great opportunity to lock in a great rate yourself.
Take Advantage of Automation
If you live in a smaller town there is a good chance you are doing your banking at a small bank or credit union. They might not have all the fancy features that some of the big banks have including online banking. If this sounds like your bank, make sure you keep track of all new developments in technology. If they start offering online banking this will probably include bill pay. Online bill pay is an amazing bank feature, because it lets you automate your bills to ensure they are paid when they are due and you never risk having a bill late again.
I agree with everything you said. I received a fake email from Paypal and not knowing any better I gave out the information that was requested. Someone used this information to hack into my checking account so that when I used my card I had $ooo balance. Thankfully we caught it when we did because my husband’s check is direct deposited. With the banks help we had to close accounts, get new cards and fill out fraud forms. I learned the hard way to be careful.
I have a few bank accounts, and watch them all pretty closely with Mint.Com. Any time a transaction I am not expecting shows up, I take the time to track and down and sort it out. This is an absolute necessity, if you ask me.
We review our stuff very regularly. We use Quicken to download and keep track of things which works great. We always like to make sure we keep a minimum balance so we can avoid extra fees. Plus it helps us see where our money is going.
I’ve definitely had a few times where I’ve noticed discrepancies. I usually review my bank account 2-3 times a month which coincides nicely with bill paying and moving money around after getting paid!