<prompt> Human: I hear the term balancing your checkbook and it confuses me. If you use your credit or debit card for purchases, pay bills online and use Mint or online banking to check your balance, why would you keep track of everything in your checkbook? I feel like as long as you use your common sense, stick to a budget, check Mint on a weekly basis you should be fine.Is balancing your checkbook a relic of a previous age without online banking, or is it still relevant?  <response>: My mom still does it, but she writes a lot of checks. A big part of the balancing mindset comes from the delay in bill payment; checking your balance at the bank isnt reliable if you have checks floating around that could be hitting it at any time. Due to that, it was necessary to keep your own record of what your balance should be, including those checks and such, in order to make sure everything is hunky-dory. An additional component for some people may be that keeping a record lets you catch errors made by the bank.Personally I do neither. I just keep an eye on my balance through my banks website; since I never write checks or do pre-ordering any purchases I make show up right away at least as a pending transaction. I can certainly understand why people would keep track themselves, however. 