Finding Perfect Balance In Life Isn’t That Difficult

Some people never bother to balance their checkbooks.

I make no value judgments about this. If some people want to live in their little dream worlds, where they actually ITAL believeNORM the balance printed on their ATM slips, that’s fine. Nobody ever said balancing a checkbook is an absolute requirement for Sound Money Management.

However, your balancing practices reveal a great deal about you personally. People who balance tend to be precise, meticulous, analytical and somewhat withdrawn. People who never balance tend to be creative, spontaneous, emotional and somewhat overdrawn.

Having swung between the balanced and unbalanced lifestyles, I can understand the impulses behind both. In my younger days, I never balanced my checkbook. I thought it showed a ridiculous obsession with filthy lucre; I thought it was for confirmed bean counters; but mostly, I was afraid to find out how broke I was.

This is the key to understanding the “the unbalanced personality.” If you never balance your checkbook, you can always imagine that you have far more money than you actually do. Most people who don’t balance simply assume that they can keep writing checks right up until the minute that the deputies cuff them. This is a refreshingly liberating lifestyle.

These days, people with Unbalanced Personality Syndrome are often “enabled” by the ATM, which always spits out a receipt which shows a balance $500 higher than their actual balance. Three theories exist for this phenomenon. The first holds that, due to glitches in the electronic information transmittal system, your bank has not caught up with the fact that you wrote a rent check last week. The second theory holds that, due to the fact that your rent check is still sitting on your stereo speaker, you have in fact once again failed to pay your rent.

The third holds that the evil electronic brain of the ATM is playing with your head because it knows that you never balance your checkbook.

You can get away with this as long as you keep an exceptionally high balance in your checking account. However, since this would require actually ITAL knowingNORM whether you have an exceptionally high balance in your checking account, you might want to become the kind of person who balances your checkbook.

So now you must learn the proper method. Nothing, with the exception of celestial navigation, could be more simple. All you have to do is add up all of your outstanding checks, factor in deposits not recorded, total up all of your entries in your check register and compare this with the closing balance of your monthly bank statement. If you do this precisely as instructed, you should be exactly three cents off.

Several theories exist for this phenomenon, the most plausible being that three cents is the perfect number to seriously mess with your mind. It is not enough to actually make a difference, but just enough to make you believe that the mistake is so simple that you must waste three hours of your life obsessing over it.

Often, the problem can be traced back to a mistake in simple arithmetic. Do you know how to add? To subtract? If not, then there is a strong possibility your totals will be wrong due to “guessing.”

Another increasingly common problem is the dreaded automatic fee. Banks now believe that they are entitled to yank money out of your checking account without notice, for things like service charges, per-check fees, teller fees, ATM fees, teller’s donut fund fees, the evil ATM’s donut fund fees, the evil ATM’s psychiatric fees, the evil ATM’s monthly payment to the devil. These fees continually screw up your balance. They usually amount to more than three cents, but the bank occasionally throws in a three-center as a “balance disorientation fee.”

Sometimes you will discover a much bigger discrepancy in your balance, such as $300. In this case, you shouldn’t waste any time trying to find it unless the discrepancy is in your favor, which it never is.

Why waste three hours trying to find a three-cent mistake, but none at all trying to find a $300 mistake?

How can I put this gently? If you can’t balance your checkbook within $300, you should accept the fact that you’re the non-balancing personality type. Find something more productive to do with your time, such as arguing with your landlord over whether you paid your rent last week.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review