The Empowerment of Online Banking

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When it comes to personal banking, I can’t help think about how much better it is today, thanks to technology. Having seen the online revolution firsthand, I can tell you from experience thamy financial life is easier now.

Consider for example the simple act of keeping a checkbook in balance. In the old days, the bank would mail (yes, with a stamp and everything) your statement, along with any canceled checks.  Now, if you have been a good student of record keeping, you knew at all times how much you had in the bank, and there were no unexpected surprises.

But if your math was bad, that statement just might hold a balance different than you were expecting, potentially causing a panic in getting everything balanced.  And if your math was really bad (or you just forgot a few written checks along the course of a month), you could find the mail bringing you more bad news by the way of an overdraft statement in the mail.  That would really cost you some money and anxiety.

But today, it is simple to jump on line every couple days and check your balance. You can browse for any checks, debits, and withdrawals that you may have missed in your own record keeping, and correct the problem now before it becomes an issue a month later. In fact, many online services will even show debits that have not been deducted from your account at the moment.  This gives you plenty of time to take any corrective action you might need, and it relieves the anxiety of holding on to any debit card receipts to make sure it clears properly.

Online banking is good for more than just keeping your balances, though.  If it were not for online bill pay I think I would spend many hours a year simply running out to buy stamps for bills.  Laugh if you will, but it has happened to me too many times to feel comfortable talking about.  Now I rarely need to mail a check, and in fact my check usage has slowed to a near crawl.   I believe that if it were not for school functions I could be living check free. Not only do I save the expense and hassle of mailing the checks, I do not need to pay for new checks to be printed. Online Banking is saving me money.

But even as I grow comfortable with online banking, they are doing more to make my life easier.  Take mobile deposits, for example. I still occasionally get paid by a check from a client, and that usually meant a trip to the bank.  Now I can snap a picture of the front and back of the check, and send it digitally to my bank for deposit.  This saves me gas money and time that I could be using to be productive.

If there were any area of technology that I could easily point to and say that it has made my life better, it would be online banking.  There are many good banks to choose from, but an established institution like Aurora Bank FSB might be a good place to discover how online banking can make your life better.

With the time you save using online banking, it might be good to consider reinvesting it into becoming a good student of money matters. One site I like to visit is MyMoney.gov.  The site gives a lot of information for your own financial planning, and I find it to be a perfect companion to online banking for my personal fiscal health.

Online Banking can save you money, time, and promote financial planning when used with a companion site – what more can you ask from technology? Now if only technology could do the housework…

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