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 Welcome back folks. It's about your paycheck. What is good? Well, how are you doing this morning, sir? Back with

another episode for you. The website is up. It's about your paycheck. com. Go check it out. It's a lot of great helpful information out there.

You can go to the site, you can find us on Tik TOK. It's about your paycheck on Tik TOK. And Get some help with empowering yourself with some knowledge and some understanding about how your pay works. I'm excited for this episode today, man. How about you, Brian?

I am psyched, man. I have so many things that I want to share.

Just, I think about this show all the time now. I'm so excited about this show. The first stop on your financial wellness journey. You know what I mean? Come stop with us, right? Where else would you start anyway? It's your paycheck. This is the first stop. It's I get to understand your pay.

We're going to go through the compliance things, the tips and so many things I'm like, ah

And it's, always like, where do we start? Oh my gosh. Yeah, so we're going to this is understanding your paycheck. And today we're going to talk about direct deposit or live check. We got three shows already streaming. Okay. There's an intro out there to the show. Just goes, we talk about this again, right?

There's a how to calculate gross and there's a how to calculate net out there. And a bunch of little nuggets in those shows about different things we are. Payroll professionals for over 20 years. Now we both have over 40 years of payroll knowledge that we're bringing to you. And the we're just like busting at the seams, trying to get this info out.

We can't get it out fast enough. We're on Tik TOK, check out the Tik TOK at it's about your paycheck. And the website, it's about your paycheck. com. I love the tick tock part. Cause both me and Walt like drop, drop some nuggets here and there randomly. And I'm looking forward to engaging with you, all there before we dive into this direct deposit and live checks, I got a great little tip for you guys as we, this financial wellness journey, right? Budgeting is important. That's the first thing, right? We gotta get a like, where do I spend my money? Just like we're gonna tell you how to look at you, how you make your money, right? Understanding how you make your money. That's with us. But it's also like the next step is okay, where do I, right?

Do you budget? Oh,

absolutely. I have a monthly per paycheck budget that I pull up every check, even though my direct deposit might be the same amount because I'm salaried, like my normal paycheck, I still have it in there just so I add unexpected expenses. If I travel somewhere, I add that to the budget.

So I have a little Excel spreadsheet. It has all the formulas and stuff in it already. I just plug and play and put my numbers in and that's how I budget. So I created that for myself a couple of years and I've been using it ever since. So that's how I do my budget for myself.

Yeah. And that's, and then one of the key things is keep in mind about, but Oh, why do I got to, but I used to, argue some folks they, like, well if any, and it's a mentality and we want to definitely help you break this mentality. It's Oh, I'm broke. I had money comes in and it just goes out. I don't need to know anything. Now you do need to budget. Sorry. Hold that. We'll hold that thought. Well, leave the you do need to budget and see where break it down and it's eye opening and it could be tough and it's not, but you, if you do that, then you can make moves.

If something happens, you can be like, Oh man, you know what? I'm going to have to not do this. And, make move this money over here so that I can get through this.

There's multiple ways you can budget, right? You can do it like myself, create a spreadsheet. You could, if you still write checks and do all that stuff.

Oh,

the envelope thing. You can do

that with your, check, checkbook and you can actually do that with your big statements too. If you want to go through and tick and tie all your expenses and see, Hey, like what's, coming out, I'm actually coming out of my account and you can actually go through your big sentiments and actually check and tick and tie that stuff.

So there's multiple ways that you can budget. Yes. You don't, want I'm not saying there's one right, one right solution for everyone. No, there's no one right

way.

No, sir. You gotta do what's, you gotta do what's best for you and what works best for you. Some people will sit down in front of my spreadsheet and be like, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't do it like this. Yeah. And that's the beauty of it, right? Cause we're not trying to get into, oh, you should do it this way. Nope. What it is, what we are saying is that it is absolutely important and necessary if you want to increase your financial wellness. Period that go look, go just go on podcasts and freaking search budgeting.

There's a ton of good stuff out there.

And if you, want to take out the guesswork, there's apps

out there that people can download and they'll do the budgeting for you. Hey

Hey, I even have one of those apps. So it tells you like, Hey your account may be low after your expenses just

coming up, just coming up.

We're a whole episode, by the way, I meant to say yes, because of this, we could just keep going on. It's such an important thing. The apps are dope. That's it makes it. A second. Easy button for it. Again, a million ways to do it. First step is start budgeting. You should do it. That's the, key point, right?

Yes. Yes. Yes. That's thank you, sir. No matter what level you,

no matter what level you're at.

No, if you're a high earner to broke, there's no such thing. Yep. I'm sorry. Well, I get so excited with this though. Great call out, man.

Great call out. All right. So we got a couple of different sections. We're out of He's going to start it off.

He's going to start yes, sir. Direct deposit and live checks. You want to go ahead and get into that?

Yes, sir. And thank you. Direct deposit or any form of electronic payment. So we will speculate about crypto in a second. Basics for direct deposit. It's convenient. It's a paperless method of receiving your pay. Your employer transfers your net payment, not your gross, your net pay directly into your bank account on payday.

And funds are typically available on the same day as payday. Eliminating the need to go to the bank. So if you've got the rig deposit, you get this, but we take this stuff for granted. Okay. And here's a big misconception that I've learned about recently in the direct deposit world where, Oh man.

And you, know what, you're the one that put me onto this first, when you started talking and we're payroll professionals, it's crazy how still info is slow to get good info. You were like, Oh, I get my pay a day early or two days early or whatever. And I was like, what kind of madness is that?

And it's because of the. It because of the bank you use.

Yeah, Brian thought I was doing some shady stuff. He's bro,

what you doing? I was like, yo, what are you doing? You can't do that.

No, you pay yourself early before everybody else. I get my pay early.

.

And I was like, yo, that's amazing. So it was like at the beginning and now it's common. Now they're advertising for it. Wells Fargo is get your pay early with them. And it's like common, right? But here's the thing to understand folks, you, your bank may give you that pay early, but your official check date dictated by your company is when your payday is.

Yes. If you get paid every other Friday, your payday is every other Friday and it's specific. And that is the day that your company has to guarantee delivery by. Okay. That

is a great call out, Brian, because I think a lot of people, we've gotten calls from the employees saying Hey, my money usually hits my account.

On Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday, you guys didn't pay me like Friday, you are being paid. And yeah, that happens with me, right? Sometimes I'll get, I'll still get my money early. And there's other times where the bank's Nope, you're going to have to wait until Friday. And another key point I want to, point out to you is just because it says the funds are, there's a difference.

Just like you says. And your bank account when you look at your statement, there's usually a funds available. Yes, or whatever amount

Pending right? Yeah, so those are two different Available dollars and the balance

right there's two different mounts that are in there

So you may see that pending amount and your bank, in good faith, lets you access and use those funds ahead of time. Yes. You know what I'm saying? But that can be a drawback, too, right? Because, say you got paid, say you got paid incorrectly, and you go use some of those funds. The payroll's gonna pull that thing

back.

Yeah.

That's the one thing I want to point

out. So I'll let you know that. No. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that, sir. Okay, folks, if you're getting it early, cause your bank delivers it early.

It does not mean now your new check date is whenever your bank pays you. Your check date is still the check date and, legally they may have until the end of business. On payday, right on check date to deliver funds, right? Because even before the early check, that guy got me thinking as you were talking about it.

I started thinking about back in the day, how some people, what they would get their pay at 12 midnight. And some people would get it at five in the morning and some people get it at nine in the morning. And then if I've gotten check these on Fridays and people are like, I'm nine in the morning, they're like, yo, I'm not paid yet.

I'm not paid yet. I've had people. Before work starting to hit me up. I haven't got paid yet. I haven't got paid yet. And I'm like, yo, it's not even Hey, let me one. Let me get to work and check it out. I remember

this one situation because I don't, because I feel like we could go down the rabbit hole with all this stuff.

Like I remember this one situation where I got a call from an employee same, type of situation. Hey, It's Friday. Money's not in my account. What's up? And so I had, long story short, had to get on the call with them and the bank to figure out what was going on. And the bank, said, We have until 5 p.

m. today for the funds to post to your account. That's right. They will be

posted by 5 p. m. I've had. Yes. Yes. Agreed. I've been also a witness to those situations. So please, folks please, direct deposit is awesome. But understand the difference between when you're getting a deposit and when your actual check date is.

Yes. Yeah. So yeah, man, thank you for that too. That's awesome. So crypto now we got. If we're talking about we were just talking about Oh, direct deposit, AKA really electronic payments because crypto is, if people are already getting paid with crypto, , I talked to someone with some legal knowledge I can't unfortunately I cannot divulge legally where information from, but it's good information, right? And again, it's anonymous, but and I, don't even think this is all I'm going to say is like they the way they were breaking it down to me was like, look, if you agree to get paid in apples, that's between you and whoever's paying you and apples is the currency.

So we can't say that you, we can't paying crypto is okay it, because it's an agreement between two people, two parties, if you agree to it, it can be paid to you in crypto. So it is already happening. I am aware of companies that already process payroll using crypto to employees. It happens.

It's out there. So it's another method. You know what I mean? So if you're wondering, do people get paid in crypto? Yes, they do. And will your company do it? Probably not. It's usually the kind of companies that are opening now that are progressive, that they're very forward thinking of a technology.

It makes sense for them. I don't think well. It's not yet. Companies are not going to be jumping to it. It was like crypto would have to be something here to stay before it becomes an option and mainstream. I think we got a while for mainstream for it yeah, this is still yeah, exactly.

Exactly. What do you mean by employee versus contractor? Well,

cause you know, like they can, contractors can get paid. Like 10 99 person can get paid via live check or direct deposit as well. And great. And, but sometimes they may not have a specified check date for contractors, like their employees. I know sometimes they do.

Yeah, no, you're right. It's more fluid. It's more every two weeks. It's more I invoice you, you got to pay me in X amount of days or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

True. Yeah. So as a 1099 again, yeah, you can get paid electronically as well. And, but the, but exactly, there is no set pay day for that. You're 1099, you're your own business. It's free market. It's whatever you negotiate. And if you,

and if you don't submit your

invoice, that's right, you got to, you guys have to, and that's part of it, right?

And we can go down rabbit holes, but yes, that's an agreement you make. The other part of the basics we talked about direct deposit is live checks. So paper checks, right? That are, you get a physical paycheck issued to you by your employer. You receive a physical check that you now have to make a decision.

You got to cash it or deposit it. Now, the beauty of it is. You can electronically deposit it with your phone, so now you making it a direct deposit, which means you should just get that shit direct deposited. Stop playing. But you can depending on your bank policies, it could take some time to clear via phone or not, right?

Regardless, you take a picture of your phone.

I've they, may let you access a portion of it, . Yeah. And then wait for the rest.

Depending, all that depends. Yeah. All depends on how much money you have in the account, how good of a customer you are, how legit that check, like it's all speculation and discretion at that point, right?

And I've seen in some really bad cases that checks will get held for 15. My daughter just got a check from a job and They wrote it, was like 15, 10, 15 days. They, held it for, because of the questionability of the check straight up. It was a questionable check. So they held it, the bank held it well

And, there's a lot of one, one portion of this.

That there's a lot of fraud. Yes. When it comes

to live check. Heck yeah. Heck

yeah. There's, a ton of fraud out there where hackers and scammers they're able to, I think one of our, one of our one of our associates Christina Hagen, she was in the news because somebody was getting someone to write checks or cash bad checks, printout checks that looked like they were from valor, payroll, right?

And These are things that you have to be aware for and we know Brian will get into the benefits and we'll get into the, to the to the downside

of drawbacks

for sure. So with that being said, Brian's going to kick off the benefits of.

And there's, before we move forward, there's one call out on the live paycheck, right?

And this is it's again, it's the 10 business days deal, but to add to it, it's the first time accounters. If you go open up an account for the first time. With your paycheck, it doesn't matter who wrote that check, they're going to hold that check for 10, 15 days, because not only do they not care who wrote the check, you're the new relationship.

They're at their, they're opening an account for you. Now it's your credibility that they're questioning. They don't care that check could be Google, Apple, Amazon. It don't matter who wrote the check. The government could have wrote the check. You are opening in a brand new account and I've had this happen.

Folks, they get a brand new job, young folks, right? First timers, they get a brand new job and they got to go to get their first paycheck and then they go open a bank account and they call us, Hey, I didn't get paid. Oh, okay. What happened? You go look through it. They're holding their check for 10 days. So not only is it just something random with shady checks, it could be, but it could also be the first timers.

Sorry, sir. All right. We move on to the, for the benefits of direct deposit. And some of them we covered, right? You get it. It's the convenience that money goes there. The same day, right? It's not, I got to go get my check and now I got to have to go do something with it. Your money is in the account on payday.

And guess what? You don't have to be in your state, in your home. You can be away on vacation. You could be anywhere in the world, literally across anywhere, in the world where you have now access to your cash electronically. Boom. You paid. You're good to go. You have, access.

And now. With the advent of technology, we're up to same day pay. Okay. There's some technologies that allow us to go work today. And by five o'clock, six o'clock tonight, I'm pulling some of my money out. That's an amazing thing, right? We're in a gig economy. And I think I believe the gig economy is what really pushed that, that, that whole transition is a it's a, concept transition, right?

Whoa, same day pay. It's an amazing thing, but we're on a financial wellness journey. So be careful with how you manage your money. Stay on a budget. More importantly, why budgets would be important. So now we're talking about convenience, right? Next thing on convenience is security. You reduce the risk of lost and stolen checks.

How many times, right? How many people I know have checks sitting in their Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. Back in the day. Not anymore too much. They have checks sitting in their drawers and Or not that I know of anyway. And, they didn't cash checks because it's in the drawer. They forgot to go cat like, what are you crazy or you lose it?

I've heard plenty of horror stories like my mom's been a victim of that having checks and I lost my check but there's a solution. I threw it away that's actually, if you catch it in time, it's actually not, you don't lose money. You just lose time. You got to wait for that money checks to get stopped.

And then but still why bother with all that nonsense, right? You have direct deposit, transactions are electronically recorded, providing a clear payment of history. Okay. You see it in your bank account, what goes in and it usually says your job's name right? If not, you might want to ask them, maybe a legal name.

So you just want to verify those type of things like, Hey, I work for McDonald's, but this other places. This, name is coming up. Oh, that could be the franchise owner. Oh there's not unlimited. There you go. So things like that, just be sure you're getting it right. And then efficiency, of course, right?

It's automatic payment. You're your money's there. You can start paying your bills on time, right? This might be actually a downfall maybe or drawback. Maybe, we talk about it is like how people plan it to come out on the same day. And then if your payment doesn't hit now, all of a sudden, I'm out.

Yeah, that might not be the best practice. You might want to plan things to come out the next day, the next business day, the next business day. Right there. Thank you. Good call. But anyway, there's efficiencies there. You're not, again you're not, dealing with the physical hassle of having to get the check, right?

And then having to go do something with the check. You avoid the disasters you avoid the issues with the timing Of direct deposit about time and with direct deposit, what do we mean for that efficiency of voices? That's just definitely on

time. Because I know you were saying like something about as far as the timing, I think you spoke to it already.

I think this is just an extra line you were talking about the timing of when you get your payment

versus the actual. Oh,

okay. Checkday versus like when you have access to your phone. Payday.

Checkday versus payday. Okay. Timing of it. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Cause that's the yeah So again, efficiencies, automatic payments.

You can save contract. Yeah. Oh, that's a good one too. With definitely a benefit of direct deposit now is you can do a lot of splits. They allow, most now it's easy. Before it wasn't so easy for some reason. Like the evolution of it was like, hey, boom, one account direct deposit. Yeah. Oh, but I have three.

Nope. I can only do one brother. So then you had to split it on your side. But now, gosh, I think most of these, I think currently we can do eight splits if we want and not it, not us. Now, the beauty of it is it's employer self service. Employee, sorry, employee self service, right? We can go and put in as many as we want.

Your, if you have a digital system, you can probably split off. So if you want to save money, right? Every. Every paid every check date, right? You can say automatically save money or split it off. And I know like parents, they split it off to some kids accounts and stuff like that. Oh, I put 20 bucks here for my kid every time I give it something like that so that the technology of it allows for efficiency, ease and convenience, man. Yeah, man. That's it. Whoa. Oh, wait. So we got some good things about live checks. I forgot. Yeah. Yeah. You got to do that part too. My bad. My bad. So the good I'm going to go delicately through these because at the end of the day, my opinion is that you need to have direct deposit.

There's no reason not to Chime in anywhere you want and tell us why you like live checks over direct deposit if that's the case We would love to understand some of the reasons. I don't think it, there is a good reason to have live checks. Wait, but I feel like you said something to me yesterday that made sense.

But anywho some, see, this is preference. Some individuals prefer having a physical live check as a tangible record of their earnings. You still get a pay stub. So you have a tangible record of your earnings.

There was a stat or something that you looked up yesterday, we were prepping for this.

And it said, It says something about how.

And it's gonna

be in the drawbacks, right? So this is foreshadowing, but it was saying that when you get direct deposit, you don't, you have the habit of not looking at your stuff. And so I think that goes into the tangibility part for the live check, right?

It's

having to try to say, yeah, so you

can actually view it and read it and say, okay you'll pay more attention. To your check. Yes.

To your check, to your pay stuff. That's what we said. Yes. That's what it was. Yes. Yes. Thank you for that. Because again, you see how my mind goes. It's this is not good.

Don't get live checks, but yes, fine. Then you can argue that point. It's, you can argue that it's bank flexibility. You can choose when and where to deposit or cash your check. Sure. Sure. You have control over the timing of when you access your funds. Again, we're stretching to give you goods.

This, I don't, that's it. Yeah, again, I don't it's just a personal preference on this clip comment on this clip. Chime in. Oh, we got to put a a contact us on the do we have it? Yeah, we got to contact. We have a contact on the website and I don't take that comment. Tell us, why you prefer live checks.

I don't understand it. But To each down and then now, well, it's going to take us through the drawbacks of each as well, pros and cons folks. And it's crazy, right? Like you think about it, this stuff think is easy, but there's a lot to talk about. All right. So I'm

going to get through this quickly.

All right, guys. So direct deposit drawbacks. Lack of physical oversight. So when checks are deposited directly, some individuals do not routinely review their stubs or bank statements. This lack of oversight could lead to not noticing errors and payments, deductions or other discrepancies. Physical checks often prompt employees to review their details more closely.

We've seen this happen in the industry where someone that gets paid, they're not looking at this stuff. I I don't look at my my, my, pay. I've been told this I don't look at my pay. As long as the, as long as the deposit the net, deposit is around the same. That's all that matters to me.

And I've literally been told that all the time from an employee. So that's one thing, right? One of the drawbacks, one of the potential drawbacks is potential banking issues. So I've seen this happen, right? Where a bank purchased another bank and they sent out communication, whether that was a letter or an email to their patrons.

And they said, Hey, on, on this date, your routing number is going to change from this to this. Your account number may remain the same. I've actually seen that happen. And the person did not. Either they forgot about it or they just didn't see the letter or whatever. And so payday comes around and Their funds keep getting rejected and returned and this person's I don't know what's going on So those are the type of banking issues that you can run into if there's an issue with your bank account such as an account closure change in account numbers or the bank information Provided is incorrect.

This is going to cause delays in payment. This can be especially problematic if the individual relies on the deposit for immediate bills and expenses, which most of us do, because as we know, in America, 60, 70 percent of us. Live paycheck to paycheck, right? And so if there's different technical difficulties or outages you may not be able to access your funds, right?

So I've seen it happen where someone lost their bank card and their bank was closed. For a while due to, a hurricane, right? Due to a hurricane living in Florida. And it was like the perfect, literally no pun intended, but it was literally the perfect storm for this person.

They lost their car. And they didn't, they could not go to a bank. So they didn't have any access to their funds during this time where power was out and they needed supplies, ice, water. They had to, depend on their family members and loved ones to help them out. So that's a potential drawback.

You have security concerns, right? We live in a digital age, right? And as we progress. These hackers and these scammers, we're always talking about cybercrime on this show and other show, right? And so security concerns can happen. So while electronic transfers are generally secure, there's always some risk of unauthorized access.

We've seen that happen here recently in some cases. Where someone's direct deposit info was changed without them knowing it, right? Because someone gained access to their account. So let me just go down this little tangent. We'll go down this rabbit hole here. You want to make sure that when you log into your, especially when it's like sensitive information, such as your bank account and your, information like that, when it comes to that involves your pay if you do it on a public device, Make sure you log out.

If you're at an ATM, make sure you get your card and make sure that you hit the button that says, do you want another transaction? Because I've seen it where somebody got their, has gotten their car back, but the ATM, they drive off and the ATM literally says would you like another transaction?

And, I've had to, and doing the right thing, I've had to hit no for some people like no, you know what I'm saying? Because I've seen, yeah, and close it out for them because they drive off and they don't realize that they left themselves exposed for someone to, if someone, the wrong person came up and they would've been like, Oh, it was Christmas.

I'm going to get, I got some Christmas shopping funds right here. So let me just access this. Thank you. It's a blessing. Won't he do it? No. So the next one for the drawback for a live chat for direct deposit is inflexibility. For payment retrieval with physical checks, employees have control over when and where the cash their, checks direct deposits do not provide this flexibility as funds are automatically transferred on a set schedule.

This from what I take away from this is that if you have the wrong banking information and say your account just Recently changed or you just switched accounts, but you don't update it in the system You don't update it in your payroll system You can have issues With getting that payment and getting those funds back.

Because if you send it to the wrong account, you send it to the wrong person. I've seen it happen, Brian. I don't know if you have, I've seen it happen to where someone has access. Like they were in a relationship, they had a joint account. They both sent their funds there. They went through a bad breakup and now they're like scrambling to try to close this account.

Oh, but payroll got processed already. And now they have to go back to this person and try to get their funds back. And hopefully that person. Has some decency to them and, we'll work with this person to help them like, Hey, okay here's your money. But I've seen it to the point where the person blocked them and they were just out of gas

so I don't know if they had to take legal action , but I've seen that happen. Now we're into the live, the drawbacks of live checks, right? So there's a lot more potential drawbacks with live checks, as Brian noted earlier. Off top, you have the potential for loss or theft. So some might, you may, having a physical check, you may put it down somewhere.

You may grab your mail on the way in your house and you All the money, put all that stuff together. I've seen people say, Hey, I threw my check away so I can't deposit my check now and you have to get a reprinted check or void and we issue those checks.

It, you can have delayed access to your funds, depending on where we're in or where you cash it at. And so I've seen it to the point now, this is just from the employee standpoint, we're only doing from the employee. There are drawbacks for life checks from an employer standpoint too, but that's a different show.

You can have delayed access to your funds, cashing fees. So if you're not bankable and or you choose not to bank with someone and you have to take your check somewhere to get cashed, you're going to pay a fee. They charge you up to 10 percent of your, net pay for, them to give you that service of cashing your check and stuff like that.

And so that can present other issues as well as with those fees. And then there's times where like some of those check cashing places, like they have to validate stuff. And I've seen people cash a check twice. They take it to one cash in place. And they get another check somehow, and they take that copy or that version of that check to another place and they, double dip.

What'd you guys say?

Yeah, no, yes. I've seen a variance of that too, where either with the, when you can deposit on your phone. So you go, you do it on your phone, get that deposit going, and then you go to try to cash it. So now, and you play that game. And then there also been instances where folks like.

They go cash it, and then they go tell their payroll, I lost it. And they see if they give them another check right quick, and then they will cash another one, right? The same check. There's variations of that, those tricks. Yep. And then,

live checks, they have an expiration on them. Which is why we call stale date checks, right?

You, typically there's a time frame that you have in order to cash checks. Some, it depends on the company, but standard, I think it's usually like 90, 90 days.

I've seen as much as six months, but yeah, 90 to nine, three to six months.

Yeah, so like typically they give you that time frame to cash these checks, right?

So if you read if you pass that threshold Then that check is still dated and most banks will not allow you to cash those if you take it to your bank They may I've seen it to where they may but they have to do some validation you need to do some validation and they need to do that with you.

So they'll call your employee to make sure Hey, is this person, is this check, if we cash it, is it still good? Whatever or whatever. So they'll do that validation piece of it. So that's one of the concerns of having a live check. You lose it, you misplace it, you forget about it and it expires.

And now you got to go back through payroll. They have to do a stale date, check reversal or whatever. And you go from there. And here's a little, here's a little nugget for you, right? If you believe that's been the case for you, and you've misplaced a check, no matter the amount, and it was never refunded or reissued to you, go to your state website for lost funds.

You're each states that have a lost funds or unclaimed funds site that you can go to put your name information in the search bar and see if you have some funds out there. That's a free nugget for you out there, right? You may have some funds out there.

Yeah, GMA right now. Good morning, America.

Something they're doing. It's part of their show. They're like helping people find out if they have free money and I forget what they call it. But GMA is doing a special right now on the same thing. And it's SG. You can go right to the website. Like Walt says, do it yourself. Yeah. You don't have to run into GMA on the boardwalk.

Don't worry. Like you could just go on the website and go get money. Well, I'm sorry. See if you have any money. It's not only, it's not only paychecks. It's like returned insurance and pop. Basically, anybody that ever had a check in your name and that you didn't cash, they have to turn it over to the state, whatever that check, it doesn't matter payment, Yeah.

I've gotten money for deposits that I put down when I was in the military and had to put a deposit

down for my life. Oh, there you go. A life. Yes. Those are common. Yes.

And I forgot about that. And I, years later, my money was just sitting there in this unclaimed. Fund that I was able to retrieve.

Yep. You know what I'm saying? So that's a, that's an interesting drawback. Errors and discrepancies, right? So handwritten or manually processed checks are susceptible to human errors, such as wrong amounts and misspelled names, leading to complications when you try to cash them. So yes. If you misspell your name or you put your your nickname in the system and that's what prints out on your check.

When you take it to your bank, they may be like, okay, well, your first name is John or, Peter. And, but on your check, it says Pete

or Joe, like we,

that's a different person. And some, banks are really stickless for that. They'd be like, Hey. No, you need to get your employer to reissue this with their correct name

on it.

I think that's a great call out altogether, period. Make sure that you are giving your job the same name that you, your bank has. Your your legal name. Okay. Not your nickname. You know what I mean? Yeah, they call me June bug. So I want June bug on my check. No, like I worked in a a place where a lot of there's an art place and no big secret, but I'm not going to tell names where I worked in a, like an art play art school, a lot of artists, a lot of stage people work here as teachers, amazing place.

But this one person was like. They wanted it by their nickname and they thought just because they were like so popular and big star that we were just going to do it. And I was like, no, it's this is your, this is the government. Like I need your legal government name. So the same name that your government has so that when we do W2s and all this stuff, your social security card, basically.

There we go. It has to tie to your social security card. So you can change your name and do whatever you want, but you have to go through that process until you do that. When you get paid, you need to default to your social security name. That's the name that you we give people to get paid properly.

All

Another one is says environmental impact. This is a new one for, us, it says regularly using paper checks has greater environmental footprint due to the paper used compared to electronic transfer methods, right? Because there's no footprint. Like I said there's no, impact.

You don't have to cut down a tree and less impact, right? Yeah. Bank reconciliation. This is considered a drawback, right? Keeping track of outstanding checks is essential for accurate financial record keeping. Until a check is cashed or deposited, it is an outstanding transaction that can make bank records Reconciliation, more complicated, or businesses.

Yep, yep. The achievement process, all that stuff that is added on to your, employer or whoever pays you that's, something that they have to deal with as a drop back. And one of the biggest ones is potential for fraud. Like it says here, paper checks can be altered, forged, are duplicated by malicious entities leading to potential fraud.

Like I told you, I've seen it to where a person. Has done a color copy of their check, printed it on and they bought, they had check stock printed it on other check stock and taking it to two different check cashing places. Like they went through the thing because it didn't cost them much. All I have to do is print this check out the stuff out on this check.

Please. And they went there and they were able to get paid twice. Okay. So at the end of the day, one of the last section that we're going to talk about and it's about making an informed choice. One of the key things, whether you're deciding to lean towards direct deposit, which was Brian Love's. Yes.

Are you leaning towards the live check? Yeah. Because you want to have more control. These are things you want to look at, right? First thing, you want to consider your lifestyle. Think about your daily routine, travel plans, your banking habits. Direct deposit may be more suitable for those seeking convenience, while live checks offer flexibility.

So you have to look at your lifestyle and, decide what's best for you. Because direct deposit, that's fair. Oh yeah, that's fair. They're benefit. They may benefit you, but if you wanna live off the grid, I, you just took

the word of my Yep, exactly right, exactly. And I ain't mad at that.

I, I please, I God bless

so like those different things. And then another thing you want to consider when making a, this, a form choice between direct deposit and life check is the banking options that you have. Check your bank's policies on fund availability for both methods, live check and direct deposit.

Consider opening, a separate account if you opt for direct deposit to help manage your finances. Like it's a budget. To budget. Yep. And then communication is the last one. Discuss your preferences with your employers HR payroll department, ensure that they have the correct banking information if you choose direct deposit.

So that piece is on you. Especially if you have employee self service, we

go ahead. And not only that, even if you either way, like I say, whether you do direct deposit or live checks, make sure that your employer has the correct information about you, the right address, the right social, you can't use somebody else's social.

Okay. No, I'm sorry, . You can't this is, this you, the right address, the right social, the right name, your legal name again, folk. Yeah. Thank you sir.

Oh, and one thing to know is that, so this is going back to what I said about you accessing your payroll information on a public device or someone or device someone else has access to.

Yes. They know your pa it's, good for you. To change your passwords occasionally to update them and not make them something that somebody is familiar with, right? Because typically when most crimes, it's usually connected to somebody that's close to you or adjacent to somebody close to you, right?

You have to be careful and make sure that you're, closing those, applications out, shutting down those browsers. And stuff like that. And so think about it. If you let somebody use your computer and you're one of those people like me, a lot of people do it. You save your password on Google and all you got to do is go to the site and just click into the thing and it does your password.

And your username and password. Boom. Log in.

The person can get in and get your stuff, access it and change it to them. To their account. Right? Yep. You know what I'm saying? And it will look like you did it because it comes from your IP address. It comes from your machine

for all. Yep.

For all intent and purpose. You did do it right. It's your account that did it and then and not to scare you folks. Okay. And it's only a small percentage, but recently minuscule one in, Thousands and tens of thousands transactions so far. And it only recently where we feel like the fraud was probably somebody did just that to our an employee.

And was able to reroute one of their paychecks. So we caught it quickly. They caught it quickly. But it, it insurances and things cover those type of losses when they're caught quickly and reported. But the fact remains is that, that like we handled it very well, but not every employer is going to handle that.

Those types of things. Well, you may have to wait a long time for your money. Okay. Because there is always a question of. Is this the employee running the fraudulent thing? And depending on how your company handles that. So be careful, be if you, do direct deposit be, mindful of how the system works, set up alerts so that if something changes on the account, you get an alert, right?

You get an email alert when changes happen on your profile. You manage actively manage your information anywhere it is. It's your information. You need to actively own that and manage your information. You know what I mean? Those are little things, pay attention, like if something happens if you get direct deposit, and all of a sudden you got a live check and you didn't make that change, you need to go change your account information.

You need to go go through some series of security protocols to protect yourself, because that could be a failed attempt, right? They change your check, it goes live check, well something happened with your pay, you didn't do it, you need to change your account info. You know what I mean? So again, it's rare, but it is ramping up and you got to pay attention.

And then whether you had a live check or direct deposit doesn't matter. Fraud is fraud and there's ways they can get you, get at you either way. So again, this is our paycheck. We have to start there. This is our paycheck. We have to be mindful, be intentional about securing your pay, however you choose to get it.

Yep. Great call out, man. Yeah. I think that's it, man. I, anything else? Cause I want to share some stuff. I found a quick, okay, cool. And then again, we talking about budgeting, we're talking about financial wellness. And there's this three little key things that I want to share that I learned recently at a retirement 401k type of planning seminar 70 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

We had apparently we had a bad year last year and that number just went up. We have to 70 percent think about that. Let that soak in 70 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That's crazy. Okay. 64 percent of Americans, 64 percent of Americans cannot cover 1, 000 of an emergency money.

Yep. 64 percent of Americans do not have at least a hundred, a thousand dollars saved. 54 percent of Americans that are saving are not getting any financial advice. Wow. So it means, okay, you've taken the step to save. I save a little bit of money here and there, but you're not getting any advice on what to do with that money, how to invest that money.

You might as well put it under your bed and just get zero, right? Because if you have money, there's ways to grow that money. But just, I just wanted to share that thing. These are the type of numbers and the type of things that inspire us to do this show and to help folks and to become part of this conversation of financial wellness.

Start at the beginning your paycheck because it's these facts that like inspire us and just dang, man, how can we're in it? We're in this number, by the way, we're in this number. We are not above any of this stuff here. You know what I mean? I yeah, I saved my definitely not getting good for, well, I guess not.

That's not true. I get financial advice. I do consume a lot of stuff. I'm not saving the way I should be not investing the way I should be. It's, different, man. Definitely paychecks are paid. We're not it's. So we're on this journey with you folks, right? And we're like, Hey, what better way than to, because this is where we're starting with our paycheck.

We got to start with our pay. We got to take that money. We got to budget it. And then we got to start doing smart things with it. So thanks folks. Thank you so much for the for, listening. It's about your paycheck. com. Check it out. Three shows already posted you. This will be the fourth. And we'll be weekly back weekly.

After this, there'll be a new show every week. Check it out on tick tock at it's about your paycheck. . Come on out, check it out. Tell a friend and tell a friend. It's about your

paycheck. com. Yes,

sir. All right, man. Peace y'all. See you next time.

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