I found an eighteen dollar charge on my card for a “premium fitness membership” I had never signed up for. The charge had been running for seven months. That is 126 dollars gone to a company whose app I had apparently opened once during a free trial, forgotten about, and never canceled.

That is how I learned to check my bank account every single week. Not every month when the statement arrives. Every week.

What weekly checking catches

A week is short enough that you actually remember what you bought. A month is long enough that charges blur together and you stop questioning them. Checking weekly means you can look at each transaction and say yes, I bought that, or no, I absolutely did not.

It catches three things:

• Subscription drift. Free trials that converted, price increases on services you forgot, and old subscriptions you meant to cancel.
• Duplicate charges. The same restaurant charging you twice, or a subscription billing twice in one month.
• Fraud. A small test charge from a stranger is the classic first step of card theft. The sooner you spot it, the sooner you report it and the less damage it does.

Make it a ten minute habit

I do it every Sunday morning with coffee. I open the bank app, scroll through the week, and mentally tag each charge. Anything I do not recognize gets looked up immediately, while the receipt is still findable. Anything that is wrong gets disputed right then, not filed away for later.

The key is to make it boring and automatic. Same day, same routine. If you wait until you are in the mood, you will never do it.

Set up the alerts so you do not have to hunt

Every bank app lets you set transaction alerts. I get a push notification for every charge over one dollar. It sounds noisy for two days, then you get used to it, and it means the bank is doing your weekly check for you in real time.

If a charge you did not make ever pops up, call your bank immediately and dispute it. Most banks have a zero liability policy, but they need to hear from you fast. Waiting weeks to report fraud makes everything harder.

What it costs

Ten minutes a week, about the length of one TV commercial break. That weekly check found my mystery fitness charge, a doubled streaming bill, and one charge from a store I had returned something to and never got refunded for. The refunds paid for the habit many times over.