About this video
Sal fills out a $1,500 rent check step by step, top to bottom and left to right: the date, who it is paid to, the amount in numbers with a clear decimal point, the amount in words with the cents over 100 and a line to fill the space, and a memo. He signs only at the end, explaining how each step helps prevent fraud.
You'll be able to
- fill out a check in the correct order.
- write a check amount in both numbers and words so it can't easily be changed.
- explain why you should never sign a blank check.
- explain what the memo line is for.
Key words
- Blank check
- A signed check with the amount or payee left empty, so anyone holding it could fill in whatever they want.
- Payee
- The person or business the check is written to (the 'pay to the order of' line).
- Memo
- A line on a check for a note about what the payment was for.
- Fraud
- Tricking someone to take their money, such as changing the amount on a check.
Transcript
- [Instructor] What we're gonna do in this video is see what it's like to write a check. So I have a check here from my fake checkbook. Those of you who are looking to commit fraud, don't get too excited, this is not really one of my checks, but we'll see how we'll fill it out.
Let's say I need to fill this out as a rent check. So, what you wanna do is fill it out from the top to bottom, left to right. The last thing you wanna do is just do something like this where I were to just sign it right from the get go. That is going to be trouble because I've essentially created a blank check at that point.
If it got lost, if it got in the wrong hands, people could fill out whatever they want here and take whatever they want from my bank account. So you never just wanna sign a blank check. So let's start at the top. The day that I am creating this check, it is October 29th, 2025.
Now, who am I writing this check to? This is gonna be to my landlord. And so, let's say my landlord's name is Samantha. Samantha P. Landlord. What are the odds that my landlord's last name is actually Landlord? And I actually like to fill this one out too, just so someone can't add or someone else, just in case.
Now, let's say that my rent is $1,500, so I'll put that there. Now, it's very important, if you just leave it like this, someone might be able to just add a zero there or another zero there. So you wanna be very, very careful. So very important, make a very clear decimal point.
So, $1,500 and no cents here. That decimal point is useful. Now the reason why, not only do you write it in numbers, but you also write out the words, is to prevent that type of fraud. So here, I would want to write one thousand. One thousand. One thousand five hundred.
Five hundred. And I just want... I wouldn't leave just $1,500, even though this is in theory, correct, because someone could also do something fishy with all of this extra space. Maybe they might say $1,599. They could add that right there. So what I'm gonna do is, and 00, over 100.
So that's the cents part. And then I'll just draw a line here so that people can't add anything else. Now, memo's important. And this is usually actually important when you later were to get the checks, or you see them on your online banking account, they'll often provide images and you're like, "What did I pay that $1,500 for?"
And you could say, this is for November rent. So this is helpful for you just to know what it was for. And then only when everything else looks good and this number matches this number, and you make sure that it's reasonably hard for someone to commit fraud, then and only then would I sign this.
And once again, for those of you looking to commit fraud, this is not how I sign my name, so don't try to do that either.
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