Do You Still Balance Your Checkbook?

In this day of electronic financial transactions, the paper check is going the way of the dodo bird: extinct.

Sure, we all write a check now and then, for those few places or people who don’t accept payment electronically. For us, checks go to the town for the quarterly water bill, or to a medical professional when we don’t want to pay with a credit card.

But what about the check register? What are we doing with those?

I’ve always been the period who dutifully collected receipts and entered them into my checkbook as necessary — sometimes daily, but more often, once a week. Anytime I’ve had a bill online or had an automatic deduction coming up, I’ve noted it in my checkbook.

Now that I have a smartphone, I have my handy-dandy Mint app. And I don’t feel the need to put everything into a checkbook register, since most deductions happen automatically (or within a day or two). But what happens when I schedule bills to be paid online ahead of time? If I have 5-6 things scheduled, such as the mortgage payment, utility bills and car payment, what happens? In the end, I want to know what our account balance will be AFTER the online bill payment goes through. I want to make sure I don’t have a low balance.

Is there a way to stop balancing your checkbook in this case? It doesn’t seem possible. Anyone have a solution? Is there an app for that?