Number & Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?

bmo88 · August 2015

I have been reading a few finance blogs and quite a few recommend having different savings accounts to keep track of different goals. We have always had just one joint savings account that has been our "emergency savings," but we also used it to save our housing down payment and for vacations. After thinking about it more, we felt it made more sense to separate our funds going forward. We bank with Sallie Mae online because it offers no fees, no minimums and between .8% and .9% interest. So now we have the following:

Joint Emergency Savings High Interest Account (4 months expenses)
Joint Money Market Account - Primary purpose--Baby Savings! (plan to use for cover out of pocket expenses and start up funds)
Joint Vacation Funds Account

It's a little weird having multiple accounts, but we have set up auto drafting with specific amounts and plan to only spend the saved amount on those specific areas. We will see how it goes.

What do you all of you do to reach your savings goals?

als1982 · August 2015

We just have a single savings account. Vacations we tend to pre-pay in cash and the same thing for other atypical expenses. When we were saving for our bathroom remodel, we put it in the same place as our e-fund. At this point, we feel completely comfortable with an e-fund of only $1,000, so it isn't that difficult to differentiate.

Mustard76 · August 2015

Technically, we have 4.
- We each have our own savings to use for whatever we want. Right now, I'm just saving my allowance overflow in there, not saving for anything in particular. I don't know if H is saving for anything in his, either.
- We have a joint emergency fund/general savings
- We have a joint "big ticket" savings. This is where our current down payment resides. Once we close on our house, that account will migrate to our vacation fund.

I like keeping our specific goals separate from our e-fund simply because I don't like taking money out of it. It's a mental thing for me.

hoffse · August 2015

I go back and forth between separating out the accounts and then collapsing them into one another. When they are separated, I can easily see where we are for various goals... but then I tend to raid funds/move money around for cash flow purposes.

When it's collapsed I obviously don't do that because it's just one big account... but then I have a harder time remembering all the stuff I need to pay for that's coming up.

I haven't come up with a great way to do it. Right now they are separated. I just open brokerage accounts at Fidelity when I need another one because it takes no time to do and then everything appears on one screen. I can also rename the accounts as our goals change. Right now I have:

1) emergency fund

2) vacation/slush fund

3) annual dues sinking fund

4) LLM tuition reimbursements (because I am moving that money through a 529 after I receive it and need to separate it out)

5) Taxes just in case my employer surprises me and taxes my LLM reimbursements at the end of the year - they shouldn't, but they haven't told me firmly one way or the other

6) Roth "holding" account because I make contributions once a year for both of us

7) the account where our credit card rewards are deposited.

I don't know if I like it, but I think it's helped with the tuition reimbursements and making sure we won't run into trouble with taxes. Those reimbursements come in several thousand dollars at a time, and I still have one more year to go before I'm done with that. The reimbursements are about 4 months behind payment because they are reimbursing me after grades come in, so sometimes I run into cash flow issues with it and I need to pay for my next class from another account, while waiting for the reimbursement to show up.

I wish I had a sinking fund for clothes because we don't shop often, but when we do we tend to spend a lot at once. It always blows up my budget during those months. I think I'm going to start a fund like that next year.

CuriousKiddosMama · August 2015

We have 2, 3 if you count ds savings. One is for our emergency fund, one is for everything else. In our budget app we track what that everything else fund is for.

dragonstarjk · August 2015

For savings, we have:

My HSA (does this count? I'm counting it)

Vacation savings

Home improvement savings

General 'shopping' savings-I use this for gifts, clothes, random fun stuff, and unexpected small purchases

E-fund (technically in a CD)

Sparty10 · August 2015

Long time lurker here... I use the virtual wallet with PNC. I think other banks are getting on board or may have similar budgeting tools. Using one savings account, I can allocate my funds to different savings categories in online banking. You can name the categories yourself. This way you can have as many categories as you need without having to worry about keeping any balances. I tried to include a picture to show example of what it looks like.

jessica490 · August 2015

We have a joint regular savings account linked to our Bank of America checking account- we do the "keep the change" program so that's how money gets in there...we also use it for short term savings

We have a joint Capital One 360 savings account with 2 sub-savings accounts titled Savings account (which is our e-fund/house repair/project $) and a vacation account.

cbee817 · August 2015

We have:

1) emergency fund - has 3+ months of expenses that we can get to immediately if needed.

2) 1-5 year CD ladder - has 6 months of expenses that we can get to if something terrible happens

3) vacation savings fund - has 1+ month of expenses

4) DD#1's savings account - birthday/holiday money goes in there

5) DD#2's savings account - birthday/holiday money goes in there

6) personal checking accounts (1 for me, 1 for DH.. have not combined for 9+ years but are starting to think it just might be easier)

brij2006 · August 2015

Our bank offers "special accounts" that tack onto your checking. So they're pretty much spots that you can just categorize a certain dollar amount in your checking.

We have:

Checking

Special account (used for fluff money)

Savings (E-fund, and put monthly amount for annual taxes and insurance in it)

Then we have a checking at a different bank that I use for my business, and a savings account there that is earmarked for DD.

So in total we have 2 checking accounts and 3 savings.

Number & Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?

Re: Number & Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards

Number & Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?

Re: Number &amp; Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards

Re: Number & Type of Savings Accounts: What do you have?