The short and simple annals of my checking account

I used to balance my checking account regularly, until I had surgery in 1992 and missed a month.  The following month, when I attempted to straighten out the various zigs and zags of my financial history, I got a headache and decided to wait until the next month and do a giant balancing act.

You know what happened next.  It got away from me entirely and I started making furtive visits to the ATM machine to see whether I still had any money.  As I am a pretty prudent spender, I usually did.  Then the bank started charging me a dollar for each peek at my account, and I stopped looking at it.  Or the bank statement.

I actually had another checking account at another bank, to which I deposited little windfalls--reimbursement of my expense account, rebate checks and little surprise sums like birthday checks from my mother.  When this mounted up enough, I would spend it on vacation.  I looked at this bank statement, as there was virtually no activity so it was easy to figure out.  Until they lost over a thousand dollars of my money.  I was able to straighten this out at great length and with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So now I can look at my account online.   I don't have to talk to anybody, either on the phone or in person, and frankly, the fewer persons I talk to, especially if they are in call centers in India, the better.  I still don't reconcile my checking account--what is there to reconcile?  It's all in there.  I deposit checks and keep receipts, but mostly my pension check is deposited directly into my account, which is the closest I've ever come to understanding the concept of grace.