The greatest mystery in all of personal finance isn’t compound interest; it’s where the heck did all your money go?!
It should be simple and straightforward to look at a bank statement and figure out what came in and went out last month.
But it isn’t.
One major reason for the headache is that our banks don’t send us clear and useful statements.
Frustratingly, they send us a history of transactions that covers part of one month and part of the following month. It drives me bananas when I see a checking account statement that lists the deposits and withdrawals for half of two different months! It makes no sense that it takes two bank statements to figure out what happened in a single month.
For example, you want to know how much money came in and went out in July. With most statements, it takes two bank statements to get the full picture – and you have to wait nearly an additional month to have all the pieces. Normally, you get one statement that covers June 16th to July 15th and another covering July 16th to August 15th. How about just one statement that covers July 1st to the 31st? It’d make things so much easier, right?
Who knows why all banks don’t automatically send us – what I call – calendar-month statements. I have my suspicions but before I get all conspiracy theory on you, let me implore you to respectfully demand a calendar-month statement for your checking and savings accounts. (It’s not necessary for credit cards though).
This one-time request is a complete game-changer. Now, every month you’ll receive a perfectly helpful free tool that lets you see how much came in and how much went out in a month. Mystery solved!
Unfortunately, some banks refuse to provide this. I would personally break up with a bank that denied me this simple request. Seriously. Why do business with a bank that makes your financial fitness infinitely harder to achieve? You’ve done your bank the favor of depositing your money there – they’re making a ton of money off of it – the least they can do is make it easy to track it. It doesn’t cost them anything to provide such a simple document and you shouldn’t pay the price for their refusal to accommodate this no-brainer request. And trust me, it costs you a lot!
Being on top of your money is not hard and it’s much less complicated than it’s made out to be. Now that you’ve solved the mystery as to why this is, just ask your bank or credit union for calendar-month statements and see how quickly it clears things up for you.
