Anticipatory online chequebook balancing

Once upon a time, when you wished to give someone more money than you had in your wallet, you wrote out the amount and payee on a little decorated slip of paper called a 'cheque', which they take to the bank, who then gives them the money on your behalf. To make sure you didn't give them more money than you had in your bank account, you kept a little register of cheque transactions, subtracting each payment from your records of your account as you made it. How quaint! The ways of olden days, before the debit card and online payments!

. . . except that in many cases, this is still the simplest and best way to move money about.

However, in the land of debit cards, it's no longer simple to keep track of transactions in a little register. You have to carry it around, and remember. If like me you're accustomed to checking your balance online, it's a hard habit to acquire. However, online balances are misleading. Cheques that have been wirtten out but have yet to be presented to the bank lurk, Chekhov's cheques, to be drawn out just when you had forgotten that you wrote them. Online balances also don't show money you plan to spend on a large debit card purchase, or credit card payments you need to pay off, or the like. My bank, at least, does offer a tool called Projected Balance, but it can only project recurring automatic payments.

There should be an option to enter, online, money you plan to spend, or money on a cheque you've just mailed, and have it 'subtracted' from your account as you enter it. When a transaction actually came through that matched your anticipated transaction, the anticpated transaction would be deleted.

In this way you don't have to carry around a register and remember to fill it out every time you use your debit card, but you are not misled as to how much money you have to spare.