How do you write a check with cents?
"In the US, Section 3.114 of the Uniform Commercial Code sets the rules for how any confusion in checks or other business transactions is handled: “If an instrument contains contradictory terms, typewritten terms prevail over printed terms, handwritten terms prevail over both, and words prevail over numbers.”  If there was any ambiguity in the way you wrote out the amount, the institution will compare the two fields (the written words and the courtesy box (digits)) to see if the ambiguity can be resolved.  The reality is that the busy tellers and ATM operators typically are going to look at the numeric digits first. So even if they happen to notice the traditional ""and..."" missing, it seems highly unlikely that such an omission would cause enough ambiguity between these the two fields to reject the payment. Common sense dictates here. I wouldn't worry about it."
Avoid talking to a person:  Just use an automated system, such as an ATM or a cellphone app.  Automated systems will ONLY scan for the RTN # and Account number at the bottom of the check (the funny looking blocky numbers). The automated system will not care who the check is made out to, or who is present, so long as you have an account to credit the money into, and the account number on the check can get the money debited properly. "1.Why is there no ""United States Treasury"" endorsement? Why should there be, and what do you think it would look like? Some person at Treasury sitting at a desk all day signing ""Uncle Sam""? At most you would expect to see some stamp, because it's clear that no person is going to sign all of these checks. 2.Can I have the check returned for proper endorsement? No, this is none of your business unless you have some serious reason to believe that someone other than the treasury cashed your check. (If that were really your concern, then you'd have a bigger issue than the endorsement.) 3.If I am required to endorse checks made out to me, why isn't the US Treasury? As others have noted, an endorsement is often not required as long as the name on the check matches a name on the account to which it is deposited.  Individual banks may have stricter rules, but that's between you and your bank." Just take it to a bank that will count it and give you cash or put it in your account.  Don't bother counting it and rolling it.  They will just break the rolls and throw it into a change counting machine.  I did that once and never will again after I saw that years ago.  The local bank I used for this offered it as a free service. You could also use those coinstar machines found in many grocery stores and various outlets, but they take like 8 or 9%.  Unless time/hassle is of concern, why do that when there are possible free options? If you are off by coins, how can you be sure that you only made a typo and didn't miss a transaction?  To start off, I would strongly you find a way to be precise.  It doesn't matter so much in the accounting, but the habit of doing a thorough job will pay off in other dividends down the line. Basically, do the pennies now.  Tryout some free online software to save the headache of data entry. But........ Since my primary goal is to get you to do the budgeting, and if you really hate the coins, just be consistent in how you fudge the debits and the credits. Always round down to the nearest whole in income, and always round up on expenses.  You won't overspend this way, and your back account should have a little bit of padding because you will assume less money in and more money out. Honestly, I do tracking in both Quicken and Mint.com, so the transaction size is no big deal to me.  If I did it all in Excel, I would round to whole notes.  You didn't tag your question with a country, so I don't know if or similar is available to you. "That's accurate.  Here is another risk with the current checking system, which many people are not aware of: Anyone who knows your checking account number can learn what your balance in that account is.  (This is bank-specific, but it is possible at the major banks I've checked.) How does that work?  Many banks have a phone line where you can dial up and interact with an automated voice response system, for various customer service tasks.  One of the options is something like ""merchant check verification"".  That option is intended to help a merchant who receives a check to verify whether the person writing the check has enough money in their account for the check to clear.  If you select that option in the phone tree, it will prompt you to enter in the account number on the check and the amount of the check, and then it will respond by telling you either ""there are currently sufficient funds in the account to cash this check"" or ""there are not sufficient funds; this check would bounce"". Here's how you can abuse this system to learn how much someone has in their bank account, if you know their account number.  You call up and check whether they've enough money to cash a $10,000 check (note that you don't actually have to have a check for $10,000 in your hands; you just need to know the account number).  If the system says ""nope, it'd bounce"", then you call again and try $5,000.  If the system says ""yup, sufficient funds for a $5,000 check"", then you try $7,500.  If it says ""nope, not enough for that"", you try $6,250.  Etcetera.  At each step, you narrow the range of possible account balances by a factor of two.  Consequently, after about a dozen or so steps, you will likely know their balance to within a few dollars.  (Computer scientists know this procedure by the name ""binary search"".  The rest of us may recognize it as akin to a game of ""20 questions"".) If this bothers you, you may be able to protect your self by calling up your bank and asking them how to prevent it.  When I talked to my bank (Bank of America), they told me they could put a fraud alert flag on your account, which would disable the merchant check verification service for my account.  It does mean that I have to provide a 3-digit PIN any time I phone up my bank, but that's fine with me. I realize many folks may terribly not be concerned about revealing their bank account balance, so in the grand scheme of things, this risk may be relatively minor.  However, I thought I'd document it here for others to be aware of." As long as someone is willing to take it, you can write it!  I personally wrote a check for a new car.   The dealership didn't bat an eye. "Yes. The US Mint has a deal where you can buy dollar coins for face value, free shipping and can charge them to your card. They come in small boxes of 10 x $25 rolls of coins. I'm sure your landlord will be happy to accept cash for the rent.  Upon further reflection you spelled it ""cheque"" which means these coins are not legal tender for you. You might want to add your country to the tags.  Note: This 'deal' is no longer available. It was (mis)used to get points/miles on credit cards, and the coins deposited at the bank. There's now a premium to buy the coins on line." "You are making this far more complex than it needs to be. Direct deposit your savings directly into a savings account. To track spending, invest in a small notebook, and keep a tally of what you spend every day. Also, it seems odd to me that you want to track your budget in minute detail, but coins are ""useless"" to you." Do a monthly budget, unique to each month, before the month begins, spend all of your money on paper. Use envelopes to help you keep track of how much you have left for things you buy throughout the month. Have separate envelopes for things like groceries, restaurants, clothing, entertainment. Put the amount of money for each category in cash in the envelope. Only spend the money out of the correct envelope and don't mix and mingle between envelopes. Pay in cash, with real money. Don't use credit or debit cards, it's proven you spend more when you are not paying with cash. "It's a scam. The cashier's check will be forged. Craigslist has a warning about it here (item #3). What kind of payment do you think is not fakable? Or at least not   likely to be used in scams? When on craigslist - deal only locally and in person. You can ask to see the person's ID if you're being paid by check When being paid by check, how can seeing his/her ID help? In case the   check isn't cashable, I can find that person by keeping record of   his/her ID?  If you're paid by check, the payers details should be printed on the check. By checking the ID you can verify that the details match (name/address), so you can find the payer later. Of course the ID can be faked too, but there's so much you can do to protect yourself. You'll get better protection (including verified escrow service) by selling on eBay. Is being paid by cash the safest way currently,   although cash can be faked too, but it is the least common thing that   is faked currently? Do you recommend to first deposit the cash into a   bank (so that let the bank verify if the cash is faked), before   delivering the good?  For Craigslist, use cash and meet locally. That rules out most scams as a seller. What payment methods do you think are relatively safe currently?   Then getting checks must be the least favorite way of being paid. Do   you think cash is better than money order or cashier order?  You should only accept cash. If it is a large transaction, you can meet them at your bank, have them get cash, and you receive the cash from the bank. Back to the quoted scam, how will they later manipulate me? Are they interested in   my stuffs on moving sale, or in my money? They will probably ""accidentally"" overpay you and ask for a refund of some portion of the overpayment. In that case you will be out the entire amount that you send back to them and possibly some fees from your bank for cashing a bad check." "One easy way to monitor costs in QuickBooks is to establish sub-bank accounts.   For example, you may have an asset account called ""State Bank"" numbered 11100 (asset, cash and cash equivalents, bank). Convert this to a parent account for a middle school by making subaccounts such as At budget formation, transfer $800 from Operations 11110 to Family Fun Committee 11130.  Then write all checks for Family Fun from the Family Fun 11130 subaccount.   For fundraising, transfer $0 at budget formation to the X Grade accounts.  Do deposit all grade-level receipts into the appropriate grade-level subaccounts and write all checks for the grades from the grade-level subaccounts.   The downside to the above is that reconciling the check book each month is slightly more complicated because you will be reconciling one monthly paper bank statement to multiple virtual subaccounts. Also, you must remember to never write a check from the parent ""State Bank"" 11100, and instead write the checks from the appropriate subaccounts." I use paycheckcity.com and first punch in my paycheck and make sure it calculates within a few pennies the value of my actual paycheck. Then I fiddle with withholding values, etc. to see the effect of change.  It has been very effective for me over the years. Citibank just sent me a $100 check. Here's how I got it: "I know this an old thread, but one that caught my interest as I just moved to the USA from Australia. As per the OP I had never written a check in my whole life, and upon arriving in the US I was surprised as to their proliference. In Australia pretty much all bills you receive can be paid in a number of ways:  For small amounts between friends cash is probably used most, but for larger amounts direct transfer is popular. Your friend/landlord will give you their bank account number and BSB number, which identifies their bank, and then you transfer the money in. We don't have a SSN like some other countries. Cheques are still used by some however, esp by the older generations. Now that I'm in the US initially I had tried to set up direct transfer to pay my rent however the bank has a $1000 daily transfer limit. I contacted the bank to get this increased however I was informed that this limit applies to ALL accounts at the bank. I asked how do people pay their rents with this low limit and was told that most people used cheques. (This explains the strange look I got from my landlord when I asked for their bank account details so I could pay the rent!) I now have some bills to pay here and I use online banking. You enter the biller's name and address and then the bank actually prints off a cheque and posts it to the biller on your behalf! My first couple of pays here were also cheques, which were the first actual ""paychecks"" I had ever received." Could someone please explain to me how interest rates work? I like to think of interest rates as the price of money. It is specified as a percentage paid per unit of time (for example, 3%/year). To figure out how much interest money you get (or have to pay) for a given amount and time, multiply the amount with the interest rate and then divide by the time divided by the interest rate's specified time. That sounds awfully complicated, so let's look at a simple example instead. You deposit $1,000 at a fixed interest rate of 2% per year, for two and a half years, where the interest is paid at the end of the term. This means that you earn $1,000 * 2% = $20 per year in interest. Multiply this by [2.5 years] / [year] = 2.5, and you will have received $20 * 2.5 = $50 in interest over 2.5 years. If the interest is paid yearly, this gets slightly more complicated, but the principle is the same. Now imagine that you deposit $5,000 at a fixed 3% per year, for half a year. Again, the interest is paid at the end of the term. You now earn $5,000 * 3% [per year] * [[0.5 years] / [year]] = $75 in interest over six months. Variable interest rates makes this a little more complicated, but it is exactly the same thing in principle: calculate the interest paid for each period (taking any compounding into account), then add up all periods to get the total amount of interest paid over time. It also works the same way if you take out a loan rather than depositing money. Tax effects (capitals gains taxes or interest expense deductions) may make the actual amount paid or received different, but that does not change the fundamental aspect of how to calculate interest. Do CD's make more money with higher interest rates, or is it the other way around? Usually fixed interest rate instruments such as certificates of deposit, or loans with fixed rates, pay a higher interest rate for longer terms. This is because it is harder to judge credit risk in a longer term, so whoever gives the loan usually wants a premium for the additional risk. So a 6-month CD will normally pay a smaller percentage interest per year than a five-year CD. Note that this is not always the case; the technical term for when this does not hold is inverted yield curve. Interest rates are almost always formally specified in terms of percent per year, which makes it easy to compare rates. If you buy a $100 6-month CD paying 1% (I told you these were only examples :)) and then reinvest the money at the end of the term in another 6-month CD also paying 1%, the total amount paid will be ($100 * 1 + (1% * 6/12)) = $100.50 for the first term, then ($100.50 * 1 + (1% * 6/12)) = $101.0025 at the end of the second term. As you can see, the compounding of the interest makes this return slightly more than a single $100 12-month CD ($100 * 1 + 1% = $101), but unless you are dealing with large amounts of money, the difference is small enough to be negligible. If you were to put $100 in a 2% one-year CD, you'd get back $102 at the end of the year. Put the same amount in a 5% one-year CD, and you get back $105. So yes, higher interest rates means more interest money paid, for loans as well as deposits. Keep in mind that loans and deposits really are essentially the same thing, and interest calculations work the same way for both. The interest rate of a normal certificate of deposit does not change if the variable interest rates change, but rather is locked in when the money is deposited (or the CD is bought, whichever way you prefer to look at it).