MONEY

JOYFUL2US · October 2015

happy fall 2 u all. I was a lurker here for the past 2 weeks now and decided Hey, why not sign up. We will soon be approaching 2016 and my husband and i are debating on rather or not we should keep a buffer in our checking account starting next year or budget to zero.Please help any and all advice is appreciated.

JOYFUL2US · October 2015

I would like to budget to ZERO and keep very little in checking, 5.00 because i am very obsessed with keeping track of the account. i am very old school and still use a checking account ledger and write everything down. My husband would like to keep 500.00 at all times.

JOYFUL2US · October 2015

how much if any do you all keep in your checking account?

julieanne912 · October 2015

I budget to zero. However, I usually have a little extra at the end because I don't always spend to the max of my "spending" budget lines... ie groceries, spending money, and gas. I had $35 left at the end of this month.

If you're budgeting properly, there's no need for a buffer. Instead, you can put the buffer into a savings account as part of your budget so if something really emergency does come up, you can pull it from savings.

als1982 · October 2015

We keep a small buffer of $150 in our checking.

short+sassy · October 2015

I keep a buffer of $100 in my checking, but then I'm also more of a cash person and don't use my checking account very much.

But I also keep a $1,000 e-fund.

Like @julieanne912 was saying, for those of you with a checking and savings at the same bank, you can always use the savings like an e-fund and have it attached to the checking for overdraft protection, JIC.

CuriousKiddosMama · October 2015

I don't see these things as mutually exclusive. You can still budget to 0, and yet keep a buffer in your checking account. We use mostly the cash envelop system so we don't keep much of a buffer there, but I would rather keep something than somehow end up having an accidental overdraft fee.

hoffse · October 2015

Budgeting to zero refers to how much of your monthly cash flow you budget, not how much is left in your checking account at the end of the month.

I agree this is not mutually exclusive. We keep a mortgage payment's worth of our emergency fund in our checking account, just in case our end-of-month paychecks don't clear before our mortgage payment is withdrawn on the first. Since it's part of our emergency fund I don't consider it disposable money, and we still budget our monthly cash flow down to zero.

AprilZ81 · October 2015

We keep roughly $2,000 in our checking as a buffer and we assign a purpose to every dollar that comes in. The buffer helps us avoid late fees when pay checks and bills don't line up or if we have a small, but unexpected expense pops up.

vlagrl29 · October 2015

we budget to zero. I personally like to not keep any extra in there or I/we will spend it.

abrewer5 · October 2015

We are currently working towards building our 6 month e-fund in our joint savings, so that will act as our buffer for our checking account, the two are connected. *If anything every happens and we have to tap into the e-fund for over draft protection we'll replace it. We also have around $100 extra in the checking account.

I am also working toward keeping $500 in my personal savings to act as over draft protection. Currently at $285, and will be done by next week when I get paid. A couple months ago I accidently forgot to change the payment when scheduling a payment online so it came out the next day, not when I got paid the following week. I ended up getting hit with a $30 fee for over draft, which is why I now want the buffer.

You can budget to $0 but also keep a buffer. That's what I do! I lump all the auto payments coming from our joint account into one group and round up and add about $20 for variances. I budget each paycheck down to $0.

ETA: I don't have debit cards for our joint account because it's strictly for bills/auto payments so I'm not tempted to use the extra money.

simplyelise · October 2015

We budget to $0 on our monthly budget, but we keep about $700 buffer in our checking. We track every single purchase, so I don't think it's mutually exclusive to keep a register and also have a buffer.

I get paid every other week and DH get's paid 15th/30th. But back in May, we paid a bit less to debt so that we could transition to treating his 30th paycheck as a 1st paycheck for the next month. So that means we really don't have as much pressure to make sure there is a buffer. But if you have early in the month bills and you get paid mid-month, you should probably either have a buffer or take the "You Need a Budget" method and use your last month's income to budget for the next month's expenses.

jessica490 · October 2015

We budget to zero every month but we do keep anywhere from $200-$300 in our checking account.

JOYFUL2US · October 2015

thank you all for your responses, very helpful. we decided to basically do a zero based budget and leave a 100.00 buffer in checking.

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