Just this week I’ve had two instances where monitoring my bank statements carefully is paying off. Well to be truthful, one of these instances is a case where monitoring my statements carefully is paying off and the other is an example of why I should have been monitoring more closely. 🙂 Here are my top six reasons why you need to monitor your bank, credit card, and mortgage statements carefully.
1) To catch double charges. In the first instance this week, I noticed that a concert venue where I bought tickets for a show this Friday night charged me $170 for the tickets on 11/6 when I purchased them… and then for some unexplained reason they posted an additional (and erroneous) charge of $158 to my account this past weekend… no idea why. So of course I called them to make them refund me that money!!
2) To catch fees that start popping up. In the second instance this week, I opened the online statement for a checking account that I have had since 1997. It’s in my hometown, I’ve had it since high school, and basically I have just never gotten around to closing it. I haven’t used it in over a year. It now has $6 less than it used to have. They apparently started charging a $3 per month inactivity fee and because I haven’t opened the statements in a couple months I missed the memo. Bye bye $6 (and maybe more- not sure when I’ll get there to close the account).
3) To make sure no one is making fraudulent charges with your account
4) To make sure that any extra payments (such as extra mortgage payments) are being applied correctly and as expected.
5) To find good old-fashioned bank errors. These days the hubs and I deposit checks using the Capital One app on our mobile phones. But back in the day when we were mailing in any checks to be deposited in our online bank, we would regularly see the bank inadvertently depositing money in the wrong account (we have three accounts with them).
6) To make sure that free things are indeed free. Has anyone else had the experience of being promised free checks from the bank representative and then seen a charge show up later?
Has anyone else out there saved money (or prevented money from being lost!) by monitoring their bank statements carefully?
Photo credit: 401(K) 2012 @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/
One time I got charged $50 or $75 from a furniture company for extra pillows that I ordered but then cancelled. They didn’t take the charge off (honestly think they just forgot or it wasn’t processed properly to begin with) but I was able to get it taken care of quickly once I discovered it. That’s free money right there!
Good thing you caught it!
Not just bank statements but everything else as well. When we sold our house a few months ago, I found an $800 error on our HUD statement….in our favor! It always seems like I find some kind of error. Someone’s simple mistake can cost you a lot of money if you don’t read stuff over =/
Agreed!
I always look over bank (and credit card) statements! The biggest culprit – fees! After I switched to a CU, that’s come down, but the habit remains!
Oh I know- fees drive me crazy. And they never exactly do a super fabulous job of advertising the fees, so I often find myself surprised by these things…
Good stuff here Dee! I always get worried about being double charged. Like when you swipe your card at the cash register and it doesn’t take the first time and you have to swipe it again. Makes me nervous every time.
I totally hear ya. I hate it when the cashier screws something up and then has to “refund” it to you and then charge again. That one always causes some paranoia for me.
Wise list, Dee! You should call your hometown bank and see if they’ll refund the charges/give you a break till you get into town again. We’ve done this type of thing with a few banks before and they’ve always been willing to at least reduce the charges.
Thanks! I actually called them this morning and their solution was to write a check to myself for the remaining balance and deposit it into our other account. So then the next time I go there I can go in and close it. But since the balance is zero they won’t be able to charge me any more fees between now and then 🙂
I make this a habit now after AT&T charged one of our phone lines a service we don’t remember ordering (cause there was no need for it) for months. That was money down the drain! Never again. Not only do I review our phone bill now, I also make sure to go over bank accounts and credit card bills closely.
Oh no! What a bummer. It’s hard when you just sign up with something like that because it’s a new bill to you and it’s sometimes hard to know what all the charges are for.
Great advice. I recently was looking over one of my credit card statements only to find out that, somehow, I managed to sign up for Hulu Plus twice. That’s right, I had 2 Hulu Plus accounts for more months that I want to admit. Oops. I have emailed Hulu Plus to see if they can refund the charges for the 2nd account but haven’t yet heard back. Thanks for the great tips on why we should be checking our statements!
Oh bummer! I hope the Hulu people will give you a break there!
I have had issues with my mobile deposits as of late. No idea why, but the number has been wrong by a couple of cents each time. I think I am going to go back to the old-fashion way of depositing checks!
Oh that stinks. We love our mobile deposits because we have an online bank- so there is no brick and mortar location where we live. We haven’t had any problems with the mobile deposits yet that I know of, but I’ll have to keep an eye on that.
When I was on tour and staying in different hotels every night I would get double charged ALL the time. I can’t imagine how much I would’ve paid in wrong charges if I hadn’t been checking every day.
That’s really scary! I wonder how many people that happens to who never notice????
I’ve recently switched to no-fee banks, so thankfully I have stopped having too many fee-related items to catch on my bill. I really need to watch my statements more closely though – I am sure there are things I have missed in the past.
Good call on the no-fee banks!
It’s definitely worth checking for all those reasons you outlined. Good job you saw that the concert venue had taken another payment – so much as well! I check my bank account daily now but have not always been like this.
I know, I seem to have become a little more paranoid about this in recent years- I check our main account daily too!
Ahhh, those darn fees! So frustrating. I got a “not enough money in your account” fee once that went from $0 to -$25 due to the fee!
Bank fees are pretty much the bane of my existence. I will go a long ways to avoid paying them!! Even though I’d had this account since 1997, I wasted no time in getting the rest of my money out of there ASAP and that account will be closed as soon as I can get it done.
I have absolutely saved money by looking my statements over. I’ve caught a fraudulent charge and at least 3 or 4 miscalculations on the bank side of things. It’s definitely an important monthly task!
It’s scary how often mistakes like that can happen!