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Don’t know how to balance a checkbook? Learn how in seven easy steps!

It’s become an issue of national attention that the majority of today’s high school graduates don’t know how to balance a checkbook. Perhaps we shouldn’t wonder why this is so. Practical skills, such as knowing how to balance a checkbook, are not emphasized in the school room, yet by the absence of such knowledge, kids are falling into poor credit scores and a whole bunch of hassles as a result. Such a simple exercise can wreak havoc with both kids and adults who never learned how to balance a checkbook. Here’s the foolproof method on how to balance a checkbook and keep your finances straight.

We’ll start with a clean slate. You’ve opened a checking account with a $100 deposit. You write checks against that amount, make deposits, use the ATM to withdraw funds and also pay bills online with your checking account debit card. At the end of the month, you receive a bank statement. The amount differs from your calculations. Now what? Here are the seven easy steps on how to balance a checkbook.

1.Start with your beginning balance. In this case, you deposited $100 to your checking account.
2.Add in all your deposits. Most often, this consists of your paycheck. However, you may have received monies from other sources, such as cash receipts for babysitting or tax refunds. Keeping accurate records is key. (more…)

When you want to get just about anything, you are going to have to have a credit check. You probably already have an idea about the state of your credit, but did you know that if you keep trying to get credit in place after place, you are only going to make your credit worse? Whenever you apply for credit somewhere this shows up on your credit score as a negative mark. This is why you have to learn to say ‘no’ to the hard sell when someone is trying to make you apply for something you don’t want, or something you know you don’t have the credit to have.

Whenever you apply for a credit card anywhere, that company will do a credit check. This will appear on your credit statement. If you have one or two of these, it might not hurt you too much, but if you have many, it is going to appear that you are desperate for credit, and that is going to make you look bad. When you are tying to rebuild your credit, you have to think about every thing you do. If you get turned down after one credit check, work on paying off more debt before you try again.
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