While a lot of bills are handled online and via credit cards, there are many of us that still rely on cheques on a semi-regular basis. We’re certainly getting away from cheques as a standard form of payment, and as such, we pay less attention to our chequing accounts. For me, I write 12 cheques/year for rent on my apartment, other than that, my finances are all taken care of online, automatically. The manual factor of cheques can leave you open to a few dangers: -       forgetting to do it (seriously… this can happen and your landlord won’t like it) -       bouncing a cheque (we’ll talk about the excessive fees soon) -       losing the physical cheque Any of those three are bad enough, but bouncing the cheque can be disastrous to your credit, your bank account and to the relationship with the cheque recipient. By issuing a cheque from an account with insufficient funds to support it, you are opening yourself up to $200 in fees! That will cover the banking fees, service fees and others associated with the bounced cheque. Another penalty that some people forget about: the negative impact on your credit score.  Not