...some people should never be allowed to have more money than they need to pay thier bills with. Even then, they should not have control over the checkbook.

It's a wise person that realizes that about themselves. It's a wiser person who keeps the checkbook under lock and key.

I have a good friend who doesn't let her DH near the checkbook, and has wondered in the past how he had enough money to survive. He does not manage money well. Actually, truth be told, he doesn't manage money at all. Here's one - this DH in question promised my friend the remainder of the tax return when all was said and done. So, bills got paid and such, and there was the remainder of the tax return.

Then she made the mistake of giving him the checkbook to pay a couple of bills. He wrote a few more checks on top of the two that he did need to pay. I didn't get into the details of what he wrote checks *for* as I don't think I wanted to know. Hopefully he wrote down what they were for - the last time there were issues, he'd not recorded the checks to the register in the first place.

Methinks he assumes that there's always money around.

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Of course, I can't criticize - I don't record my checks either, but I have those checks with the carbon underneath, so it's automatically recorded, and I just go through that and match it up with what the bank says I did online, and all is swell.

Consider also that I'm anal about keeping a minimum amount in my checking account so that I ensure that I'm never overdrawn. We're talking a minimum amount that most logical people would use as a down payment for a new car - *that* kind of minimum. I never worry about being overdrawn. Ever.

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I know of some folks who are so short of money that when they get some they spend it like water instead of getting flush with their bills. One known soul once complained online constantly that she had no money and couldn't buy food, gas, pay her rent. She was eating cat food... she was begging for food online.

Stupid people sent her food. Next thing you know, she's crowing about a HUGE tax return and that she's flush with her bills *and* that she's bought a haul of stash from a well known online stitching shop. So I went online to that same shop and started itemizing her list of things that she posted.

I stopped adding things up after it crossed $1000. I don't know about you, but I have my reservations about believing someone who was dirt poor and months behind in her rent and working at a Kinko's Copy shop getting a tax return that would make her bills all caught up *and* have enough left over to buy $1K+ worth of stash.

Methinks she was either lying or knows exactly what to do with money when she gets it - spend it on herself lavishly until it's gone.

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Then you have me. I'm anal about having money and afraid of NOT having money. I suspect that I keep the money that I do have close at hand and well accounted for (in my own mind) because we didn't have much growing up. We weren't Goodwill poor, but we certainly shopped cheap. Ate cheap. Lived cheap. Cheap, mind you - not frugal. I think all those years of eating tuna sandwiches almost daily for lunch did something to the part of my brain that manages money. I keep it close, but I don't mind plunking down up to $7 or $8 for lunch daily.

My mom kept a tight rein on the checkbook. She owned it. Dad was the one that wrote the majority of the checks if I'm remembering correctly, but she owned the checkbook. Of course, if you believe Mom, she'd have you convinced that she doesn't know how to add $200 + $200 together and therefore no money should be spent because she won't record it properly. A new car? Too expensive. Jeans? No, these polyester things from Sears are good enough. School uniforms will break the bank. But Mom, you're the one who sent me to Catholic school. True, and uniforms are cheaper than buying you regular clothes for public school where you'll get beaten up all the time, think you can get by with just one blouse, or do I have to buy two? My blouses got really threadbare within 3 months for all the washing they endured. They may be all that I had, but darn it they were gonna be clean.

Looking back at it all, I don't think that my mother knew how to manage money at all. She knew how to keep her hands on it - put it in a bank and NEVER EVER use it. Unless someone is dying. Once my father's mother passed on, my parent had money and property. I think Mom went the other direction and started spending what she could - enjoying all the years that she didn't have anything, but it's not like she went and redecorated the house or anything. She went to Costco and filled up the house with the supplies.

Methinks Mom thinks that the money should be spent else it's going to vanish *poof* and then there will be nothing to show for it.

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By the way, did you know that you can get three tuna sandwiches out of one can of tuna and that's without mixing salad dressing in to make a REAL tuna sandwich - mine were always dry tuna on bread with a very thin line of salad dressing....

...now you know why I didn't eat tuna for 9 years.