Is there a limit on the dollar amount of a personal check?
Because of the way checks are processed, you can't write a check for $100 million or more: http://www.bankingquestions.com/checksyoureceived/q_limitfunds.html The field used for 'amount' has 10 digits, so anything at/above 10^10 cents (which would require 11 digits) can't be processed, at least not by normal means. "Like the old American Express commercial: ""no preset spending limit"". It is really up to the bank(s) in question how big a cheque they are willing to honour. A larger amount would likely be held longer by a receiving institution to ensure that it cleared properly, but nothing written in law (in Canada, that I am 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. Not really. A bank will honor a million dollar check if there are funds there to let it clear. Many businesses will request that you get a bank-issued check for large amounts of money. The exception is often in cases where you're not going anywhere: you can write a 50,000 check for a deposit on a new house, and you'll never have a problem, but a car dealer will probably request a counter check for the same sum.
I suspect @SpehroPefhany is correct and that your bank will cash a check from the US Department of the Treasury.  Especially since they're the same ones who guarantee the U.S. Dollar.  They may hold the funds until the check clears, but I think you'll have good luck going through your bank.  Of course, fees and exchange rate are a factor.   Consider browsing the IRS and US Treasury Department websites for suggestions/FAQs.   I suggest you line up a way to cash it, and make sure there's enough left after fees and exchange rate and postage to get the check that the whole process is worth it, all before you ask it to be shipped to you.   If there's no way to do it through your bank, through a money exchange business (those at the airport come to mind) or through your government (postal bank?), and the check is enough that you're willing to go through some trouble, then you should look into assigning power of attorney for this purpose.  I don't know if it is possible, but it might be worth looking into. Look for US based banks in your area. There is no bank that I know of offering such a feature and I'm not sure what the point of it would be (other than to annoy their customers). If you've been subjected to a fraudulent check your best bet is to either choose to write checks only to trusted parties and/or use your banks BillPay service (they usually issue checks on another account while transferring the money from your account). The drawbacks of your current plan, bounced legitimate checks and high maintenance nature, outweigh the potential benefits of catching a fraudulent check since you're not legally obligated to pay checks you haven't written. There is no limit on the output maximum in one year. The strength of the HSA is that if you don't spend all the money in the account, it rolls over to the next year. The benefit is that if a few years down the road you get a huge medical bill you are protected because you can pull it out of the HSA.  The goal for me was to build up the account to a level that even if I had to may the maximum out of pocket for my insurance policy the money game from previous years deposits and current year deposits. Even you ever have the situation where the employer doesn't offer a high deductible plan the money for co-payments and medicines can still be pulled from the pre-existing HSA.  If the government did limit you to withdraws not exceeding current year deposits the roll over feature would be worthless. You can limit the value of your checking account tied to paypal by not putting money in that account. In fact, you should always limit the balance in your checking account to what you plan to spend, plus a reasonable buffer. Anything you have above and being that should be in separate accounts (both to minimize exposure as well as maximize your interest earned). "Technically it doesn't matter what size the check is. In fact, it doesn't even have to be written on paper. While writing it on a cow may not always fly, almost any object actually will. That said, more to the question asked - you can definitely use the smaller ""personal""-sized checks for a business account. The larger checks formatted to the ""letter"" page size: if you cut it into three equal pieces with a tiny bit left for the binder holes - you'll get exactly three check-sized pieces. This is convenient for those printing checks, keeping carbon-copy records etc. Regarding the MICR line: I just checked my business check book, which is of a smaller ""personal"" size (that I got for free from the bank) - the check number is at the end." Personally, I have a little checkbook program that I use to keep track of my spending and balance. Like you -- and I presume like most people -- I have certain recurring bills: the mortgage, insurance payments, car payment, etc. I simply enter these into the checkbook program about a month before the bill is due. Then I can run a transaction list that shows the date, amount, and remaining balance after each transaction. So if I want to know how much money I really have available to spend, I just look for the last transaction before my next payday, and see what the balance will be on that day. Personally, I always keep a certain amount of pad in my account so if I made a mistake and entered an incorrect amount for a check, or forgot to enter one completely, I don't overdraw the account. (I like to keep $1000 in such padding but that's way more than really necessary, it's very rare that I make a mistake of more than $100.) In my case, I don't enter electric bills or heating bills because I don't know the amount until I get the bill, and the amounts fall well within my padding, and for just two bills I can factor them in in my head. BTW I wrote this program myself but I'm sure there are similar products on the market. I used to use a spreadsheet and that worked pretty well. (Mainly I wrote the program because I have a tiny side business that I have to keep tax records for even though it makes almost no money.) You could in principle do it on paper, but the catch to that is that when you write payments on your paper ledger in advance of actually writing the check, you will often be writing down payments out of order, and so it becomes difficult to see what your balance is or was or will be on any given date. But a computer system can easily accept transactions out of order and then sort them and re-do the balance calculations in a fraction of a second. "On thing the questioner should do is review the Summary Plan Description (SPD) for the 401(k) plan.  This MAY have details on any plan imposed limits on salary deferrals.  If the SPD does not have sufficient detail, the questioner should request a complete copy of current plan document and then review this with someone who knows how to read plan documents. The document for a 401(k) plan CAN specify a maximum percentage of compensation that a participant in the 401(k) plan can defer REGARDLESS of the maximum dollar deferral limit in Internal Revenue Code Section 402(g).  For example, the document for a 401(k) plan can provide that participants can elect to defer any amount of their compensation (salary) BUT not to exceed ten percent (10%).  Thus, someone whose salary is $50,000 per year will effectively be limited to deferring, at most, $5,000.  Someone making $150,000 will effectively be limited to deferring, at most, $15,000.  This is true regardless of the fact that the 2013 dollar limit on salary deferrals is $17,500.  This is also true regardless of whether or not a participant may want to defer more than ten percent (10%) of compensation. This ""plan imposed"" limit on salary deferral contributions is permissible assuming it is applied in a nondiscriminatory manner.  This plan imposed limit is entirely separate from any other rules or restrictions on salary deferral amounts that might be as a result of things like the average deferral percentage test." As others have pointed out in comments and answers, the 6 withdrawal limit was based on Regulation D. Banks/credit unions that offer checking-account based HSAs do exist, with no limit on the number of withdrawals (at least according to information given to me over the phone -- I didn't check the disclosure brochures). Concrete examples (I can't vouch for any of these, just found them in my research): Believe it or not, this is done as a service to you. The reason for this has to do with a fundamental difference between a credit card account and a checking account.  With a credit card account, there is no money in the account; every charge is borrowed money. When you get to your credit limit, your credit transactions will start getting declined, but if the bank does for some reason let one get approved, it's not a big deal for anyone; it just means that you owe a little more than your credit limit. Note that (almost) every credit card transaction today is an electronic transaction.  A checking account, however, has real money in it. When it is gone, it is gone. When a balance inquiry is done, the bank has no way of knowing how many checks you've written that have not been cashed yet. It is a customer's responsibility to know exactly how much money is available to spend.  If you write more checks than you have money for in your account, technically you have committed a crime. Unfortunately, there are too many people now that are not taking the responsibility of calculating their own checking account balance seriously, and bad checks are written all the time. When a bank allows these transactions to be paid even though you don't have enough money in your account, they are preventing a crime from being committed by you. The fee is a finance charge for loaning you the money, but it is also there to encourage you not to spend more than you have.  Even if you use a debit card, it is still tied to a checking account, and the bank doesn't know if you have written enough checks to overdraw your account or not. It is still your responsibility to keep track of your own available balance.  Every time this happens to you, thank the bank as you pay this fee, and then commit to keeping your own running balance and always knowing how much you have left in your account. So I learned that your employer CAN force you to make employee contributions. However, this source seems to think that the mandatory employee contributions do not count against the 402(g) limit of $18,000. As I replied to someone else who said that:  I'm often having to send stuff with the check. Paperwork, a bill etc. While that would work to a person who knows me, it's usually not going to work with a business or government who needs to know why I'm sending this check. I am a very light TurboTax user and have expensed a laptop in the past (since it was used exclusively for work) and used the itemized deduction there and has no issues.  Just not sure if there was a limit or anything of note to realize ahead of time.  Thanks! The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requires that banks assist the U.S. Gov't in identifying and preventing money laundering. This means they're required to keep records of cash transactions of Negotiable Instruments, and report any such transactions with a daily aggregate limit of a value greater than (or equal to?) $10,000. Because of this, the business which is issuing the money order is also required to record this transaction to report it to the bank, who then holds the records in case FinCEN wants to review the transactions. EDITED: Added clarification on the $10,000 rule You probably can't deposit the check directly, but there are mechanisms in place to get your money through other means. In the US, all states and territories have an unclaimed property registry. Before you contact the company that wrote the check, you should check that registry in your state. You will have to provide proof that you are the intended recipient, having the original check in your possession should make that considerably easier. "Nope, anything is that has the required information is fine.  At a minimum you need to have the routing number, account number, amount, ""pay to"" line and a signature. The only laws are that it can't be written on anything illegal, like human skin, and it has to be portable, not carved on the side of a building ( for example) https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20434,00.html http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/12/people-actually-cash-big-novelty-checks-even-possible/ That said, the MICR line and standard sizes will make things eaiser for they bank, but are hardly required.  You could write your check on notebook paper so long as it had the right information, and the bank would have to ""cash it"". Keep in mind that a check is an order to the bank to give your money to a person and nothing more. You could  write it out in sentence form. ""Give Bill $2 from account 12344221 routing number 123121133111 signed _________"" and it would be valid. In practice though, it would be a fight. Mostly the bank would try to urge you to use a standard check, or could hold the funds because it looks odd, till they received the ok from ""the other bank"". But.... If you rant to fight that fight...."