Our accountant claims that electronic banking saved his marriage. At the end of each month he and his wife used to fight about who would do the bills, which in their family meant writing some 50 checks and reconciling 50 from the month before.
Then the couple signed up for electronic banking, and poof! Better than marriage counseling.
Electronic banking may not enable you to fire your therapist, but it can make your life much easier. Used in conjunction with a personal finance software program like Quicken or Microsoft Money, electronic banking can automate simple things like a cash advance loan in a few minutes of your time.
These days most banks are equipped to link to personal finance software; check with your bank before you purchase a program. Once you've installed the software your bank prefers, just follow directions -- the program will walk you through the steps necessary to set up a link to the bank. The bank will assign you an ID number and password, and that's it.
Set up automatic reminders of when the American Express payment is due. Choose bills whose payments never vary, such as the cable bill, and tell the program to transfer funds to the cable company automatically on the same date each month. The software will reconcile your online checkbook for you, monitoring the funds the bank subtracts from your account. Every time you log on, whether it's every morning or once a month, the bank downloads information on your account's activity, updating your database.
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