Rude to not cash your cheque promptly

[Sibley]

Define "promptly" then. What's acceptable, 3 days, one week, two weeks?

My roommate transfers her share of the rent to me every month. It takes 5 days between when she transfers and the money actually clears my account. Her bank is at fault here - one of the smaller ones that doesn't have the capability in place to do it better.

[partgypsy]

Yeah well I was so dumb I didn't even know there was such a thing, otherwise would have done it.

[ShoulderThingThatGoesUp]

I was selling a house, and the property taxes went up substantially because of the improvements they noticed. Fine, it's probably fair, I sent in the interim tax checks.

The township didn't deposit them for months, to the point where the taxes were going to be deducted from me at closing because nobody could certify that I had paid them. I had to call up the township and make them search through the evident piles of checks in one of their offices, find mine, and deposit them. Then I had to get them to send me a receipt, because the county wouldn't certify them as paid for a few weeks. Infuriating.

[Sibley]

And person to person money transfers are awesome.  I am waiting for the day when we can do this here.

While it's not a common feature provided directly by banks in the US, you can do it easily with a 3rd party service like Venmo or Square Cash

Cool, thanks for the ideas.  I haven't used either of these services, but will check them out.

Chase does it, and PNC Bank (midwest at least). I think US Bank does as well.

[Sibley]

My crappy local credit union allows P2P payments with a name and email address or mobile number. So does Paypal.

That said, doesn't anybody keep some kind of account register anymore? Or do you just trust your bank that much? Maybe because I opened my first checking account when debit cards were relatively new and deposits could take up to six days to clear, I never trust the balance on the ATM screen to tell the whole story. (Yes, I remember keeping a handwritten check register and being thankful for carbon-copy checks so I didn't have to write it down at the cash register.) Record the check, subtract it from the running total (or have Quicken/Mint do it for you), go on with life.

I know many people don't balance their checkbooks. It kills a little piece of my accountant heart to think about it.

I'm an accountant, and I know I'm anal. I have a handwritten check register. I also use Quicken. I also use excel.

All my bills are electronic or auto, except my car loan. I'd prefer to do that online, but the website is stupid and won't allow me to track it as I prefer. So I pay with a check so I get the monthly statements with the details.