51 Funny Checkbook Jokes

Checkbook Puns

1. I was going to make a joke about my checkbook, but there would be no balance to it.
2. My checkbook is very boaring. All it has are a bunch of check marks.
3. I bought a checkbook cover to keep my finances a secret, but it was no use. I still have so many overdraft fees there’s no accounting for it!
4. My checkbook and I got into an argument. We refuse to see eye to bank account.
5. I entered a competition for the most creative checkbook covers. But none of my designs checked out.
6. I thought about making checkbook art, but soon realized I didn’t have enough funds for such a drawings account.
7. I used to keep a balance in my checkbook, but I slipped up. Now I’m playing checkers trying to avoid overdraft.
8. My checkbook is very materialistic. It often urges me to make big debits.
9. I thought about writing a song about balancing my checkbook. But the only lyrics I could come up with were “Overdraft fees, overdraft fees.”
10. My checkbook keeps a ledger of my spending, although its handwriting is practically hieroglyphics at this point.
11. I entered my checkbook in a penmanship competition, but the judges said its writing was too cryptic.
12. I thought my checkbook loved me, but looking at my latest bank statement, I think our relationship is tapering off.

Checkbook One-Liners

13. My checkbook is so empty that even an echo would overdraw it.
14. My checkbook has more red marks than a failing exam.
15. My checkbook is so disorganized it makes the national debt look reasonable.
16. My bank account is like a vampire movie, withdrawals bleeding me dry daily.
17. My checkbook balanced once…then I woke up.
18. My checkbook lives an unbalanced lifestyle full of ups, downs, and overdrafts.
19. My checkbook shelf life is worse than a carton of eggs.
20. My checkbook requires more maintenance than a submarine.
21. My bank account has more IOUs than Congress.
22. My checkbook math makes quantum physics look simple.

Best Checkbook Jokes

24. I decided to finally balance my checkbook after months of avoiding it. After 2 hours I had it completed, double checked, and ready to reconcile with the bank. Full of pride, I brought the balanced checkbook in the bank to show the teller…who calmly informed me that I had the beginning balance wrong so the whole thing was useless. Back to square one!
25. After a few months of massive overspending, my bank account was running on empty. Over the course of two weeks, anytime someone asked me to join them for lunch, coffee, or dinner my amusing response of “Oh sorry, my checkbook is on life support so I’m trying to wean it off” became much less amusing as people stopped asking. I should have balanced that stupid thing sooner.
26. In the 5th grade my class did a project about creating our own businesses. We had to create a company logo, business cards, name our roles, and design products. I named my pretend company “Crafty Checks” and our sole product was custom checkbook covers. Looking back, check writing was clearly more a part of daily life in 1991 than 2021! My classmates came up with a lot more varied and creative business plans, but I thought my idea was clever at the time. My teacher gave me an A+ for enthusiasm and effort at least.
27. When I was in college I worked as a server, so tips accounted for a good chunk of my income. I would frequently deposit piles of crumpled $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills and just make tick marks in my checkbook register rather than actually add everything up when making a deposit. Usually I was pretty accurate, but one time when I went to pay a bill I discovered my balance was $87 short. After a quick checkbook audit, I realized there had been one extra $100 bill buried in a recent cash deposit that I missed. Oops. Lesson learned about tick marks and estimating deposits – always good to actually add it up!
28. Shortly after getting married my husband and I decided to combine all finances. I was meticulous about tracking every expense and deposit, carefully balancing to the penny each month. He eyeballed everything, estimated deposits and withdrawals, and balanced only when absolutely necessary, usually discovering small discrepancies. I tried getting him on board my balanced checkbook train to no avail. A few months in to this financial experiment his “let’s just wing it” style won over my detail-oriented tracking tendencies. Our once separate balanced accounts are now one big question mark that somehow pays the bills each month. So far, ignorance has been bliss in the case of our joint checkbook!
29. In my early 20s I thought credit card points, airline miles, and cash back incentives sounded like an awesome shortcut to free travel and extra money in my pocket. I enthusiastically signed up for credit cards, collected points, and used those cards for as many purchases as possible without giving much thought to interest rates. During one particular rough financial stretch I was excited to cash out $750 worth of airline miles to use toward my maxed out credit card bill. As I was on hold with the airline waiting to complete the transaction, I balanced my sad checkbook for the first time in months only to discover I had accidentally incurred nearly $1000 in credit card interest and overdraft fees – far more than the airline mile redemption could cover. I cancelled the mileage redemption and cut up those credit cards soon after. My checkbook has remained balanced ever since!
30. I reluctantly became a checkbook balancer decades later than my peers. All through my 20s and half of my 30s I loathed the tedious chore of auditing receipts and financial statements against my scattered checkbook registry and avoided it at all costs. I lived in blissful ignorance of my true account balance the majority of most months. When online banking became commonplace I slowly became accustomed to keeping a general idea of my balance in my head rather than avoiding facing my finances altogether. Online banking made avoiding a balanced checkbook much easier for many years. Then around five years ago, my debit card info was stolen and used to make hundreds of dollars’ worth of purchases while I was on vacation and not checking my account regularly. I finally determined ignoring my money only led to nasty surprises, overdraft fees, and credit problems. While I’m still not as meticulous as I could be, I now balance that irritating checkbook at least twice a month!
31. After landing my first job out of college I excitedly opened my very first solo checking account, eagerly awaiting my first paycheck to put my new checks to use paying rent and bills like a real adult. To jazz up my rite of passage experience, I splurged on fancy rose gold checks and a stylish leather checkbook cover perfect for adulting. For years those fancy rose gold checks were the only fun part about balancing my tedious checkbook and budget each month. But when I recently went to reorder more stylish checks, I discovered they now cost a whopping $40 for one box! Needless to say boring blue checks that cost $15 are my new financial reality. I guess becoming a full on grown up with an actual balanced budget means sacrificing some style after all.
32. For the first three decades or so of adulthood I avoided balancing my checkbook like the plague. When online banking came along in the early 2000s I figured monitoring my spending and balance online was adequate financial maintenance and my worn checkbook with scribbled notes and missing receipts could be tossed in a drawer untouched for months. Unfortunately cyber scammers and fraudulent activity didn’t get that memo about the generational transition from checkbooks to websites. A few years ago while mindlessly scrolling social media on my phone I got an alert my checking account was overdrawn. I logged in to discover two months worth of payroll deposits had somehow vanished. Much sleuth work later the bank discovered I was the victim of a sophisticated hack. I recovered most of the stolen money eventually, but the whole fiasco certainly taught me an important (and expensive) lesson about the danger of completely disregarding old fashioned checkbook balancing for extended periods even in today’s tech saturated world!
33. My first husband was utterly perplexed by my insistence on meticulously balancing the checkbook every single month. Bills were auto-paid, most purchases went on rewards credit cards, and with online banking we could monitor our balances and transactions daily anyway – so in his mind what was the point?! I, however, found budgeting, planning our finances, and allocating every dollar soothing. Fast forward a few years to our divorce and as we separated 8 years of intermingled finances I realized how beneficial my balanced checkbook had been in providing thorough documentation of our household contributions, shared expenses, assets, and debts which made negotiations far simpler. I’m pretty sure if I hear “What’s the point of balancing this dumb thing? We can just look online!” from husband number two there may not be a third husband. My balanced checkbook saved the day!
34. As a kid my parents utilized a very old-fashioned envelope budgeting system, stashing cash for weekly grocery, gas, school lunch and other regular expenses in labeled envelopes. They balanced the checkbook only once a month. I never thought much about money management growing up as a result. My first year in college I got my first debit card and used it for practically everything from textbooks to pizza believing it was harmless since I wasn’t using “real” money. By sophomore year I had allowed my meal plan stipend to expire, my embarrassingly low balance debit card (aka my only access to cash) was declined buying toothpaste, and I had no idea how to balance the borderline nonsensical columns of numbers that were supposed to reflect my bank account history. Let’s just say phone calls home pleading for cash and check writing tutorials became frequent second semester consequences before I wised up about budgets and (occasionally) balancing my account!
35. In an effort to reduce clutter and unneeded belongings after moving, I decided to quit tracking my finances and expenses in my decades old check register and make the leap to exclusively digital money management. I downloaded budget apps, signed up for multiple bank alerts, and proudly tucked my worn out checkbook into the back of a little used drawer, smugly convinced I had mastered modern personal finance. Barely 3 months later though my debit card was compromised while traveling overseas and thousands of dollars were stolen from my account before the bank shut the card off for suspicious charges. As I scrambled to account for what transactions had actually been mine amidst pages of fraudulent card charges while reclaiming my money, I desperately rummaged through that abandoned check register to try and recreate records of my legitimate purchases during those weeks. Moral of the story: don’t throw out the checkbook just yet, despite my initial optimistic transition to “digital only” money tracking!
36. Shortly after I started my first salaried job, I was trying to keep track of expenses in my new “adult” checkbook. About two months in, the balance was a little too low for what I’d calculated my running income and expenses to be. Certain I must have messed something up, I decided it was finally time to do my first register reconciliation. As I was double checking off cleared checks and charges, getting ready to call the bank about the lingering small discrepancy, I realized there were two unfamiliar monthly charges from a media streaming company. Account security investigation later showed that my roommate had entered my checking info when signing up for his fancy new smarttv subscription since he could get “3 months free if he registered with a debit card!” Needless to say, free trial or not, he no longer had access to my ever-carefully-balanced checkbook after that.