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Checking Accounts
-Bank Fees
-Protecting Your Account
-Online Banking
-Analyzing Statements
-Patriot Act Compliance
-Safeguarding Money
-Is Your Bank Safe?
-Banking Relationships
-ATMS
-Debit
Cards
-Credit Help
-Taxes
-Managing Money
Mortgages
Auto Loans
Personal Loans
Credit Reports
Debt Consolidation
Credit Cards
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ANALYSIS OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT STATEMENT
Your bank will send you a monthly bank account statement,
providing you with a complete overview of your account activity
for a certain amount of time. It is very important that you
review your statement to ensure that the bank's record's
correspond with the yours. If there are any errors, you can
learn
how to correct a bank's mistake.
Checking the statement
Once you receive your statement, determine what the start and
end dates are. Obtain your checkbook and get ready to go over
every credit and debit on the statement with your records.
It is important that you go over your statement as soon as you
get it. You will be limited in the amount of time you have to
report any discrepancies to your bank. You have sixty days from
the date your statement was issued to report any errors with
ATM,
debit card transactions and all other types of electronic
banking transactions.
You will not have any sort of time constraints when dealing with
paper check issues. However, you should still look to get any
discrepancies resolved as fast as you can. it is important to
note that erroneous debits may be a sign of
identity theft.
Analyzing the account summary
Your statement is going to report your beginning and ending
balances, total withdrawals, total deposits, service fees, etc.,
in your statement summary; which is located at the top of the
first page.
The summary is a good indicator of whether you
are going to have a hard time reconciling your account. For
example, if you think you have $2000 in your account, but your
summary only reports $500, you have a problem.
It is possible that one of your deposits has not been credited
to your account, or that the bank made an error. However, it is
most likely that your balance is going to be reported higher as a
result of your writing checks exceeding the time frame covered
in your statement.
Transaction descriptions
All of your account activity - withdrawals, deposits and
fees, are going to be detailed in your transaction descriptions.
Account type
Are you aware of what type of account you have? Is it a
free
checking account, or maybe an interest-bearing one. Regardless
of what account type you have, make sure that your bank statement
reports this information properly.
Fees charged
Review all of the
checking account fees that you are being charged by your
bank. The two most typical fees include monthly maintenance and
NSF (non-sufficient funds). If there is a fee listed that does
not make sense, or you believe is an error, contact your branch.
Reviewing your fees will help you determine whether or not you
bank is nickel and diming you. If they are, you may want to
consider a new bank, or a different
type of
checking account.
Processing checks and payments
Your bank is going to list all of your canceled checks in an
order that is going to be convenient for you. Determine if your
checks are reported in chronological order or by date paid. This
will allow you to reconcile your account easier.
It is possible that your electronically processed checks will be
listed in a different area of your statement. Your bank will
probably list your electronic checks with all of your debit and
ATM transactions.
If you sometimes bounce checks, it is
important that you understand how your bank is going to process
your checks. They will either process the largest amounts first,
or the ones that arrived first. If your bank is going to pay the
largest checks first, it is more likely that you are going to
bounce a check/s. Banks indicate that they do this because they
feel larger checks tend to be payments for more important bills,
i.e. car loans,
mortgages.
Access to your deposits
Find out from your bank what there policy is for crediting
checks to your account. Federal guidelines limit the amount of
time banks can hold deposits before granting access to your
money. |
