I keep enough to pay my bills and rent, plus a $1000 to pad out variances in my monthly spending so I don’t overdraft. This seems like a lot though, altogether, to keep in my no-interest account, so I don’t know, maybe I can just watch what I spend more closely and pare down the buffer? How do you use your checking?
I keep $100 in it and transfer the exact amount needed to pay a bill. (Although the interest rate on my savings account is so low that there’s little point in trying to avoid leaving money in the checking account.)
$5,000, but it’s my only cash account. Instead of keeping a savings account, I’ve found it makes more sense to pay down my student loans, so my checking is all I have on hand on a given day (minus a credit card I’ve never used, because it came with the checking account).
I try to keep it in the $2,000 ballpark, and everything else goes in savings. I have no idea why; I just like it that way. Of course, as it gets closer to the end of the month, I try to up it bit by bit, so that once rent comes out of it, it falls back to around $2,000.
$20000-ish. I know I should manage my money better and put most of that into savings, but I like having a buffer.
Just enough to cover anything that is deducted automatically (eg auto insurance) with about a $100 buffer for incidentals.
This is what I do. I write a cheque, then run home and transfer the money online from my “savings” account. There’s almost nothing in there either presently though. They charge me about $2 per month for the chequing since they want me to keep about $800 in there to avoid the charge - I don’t even have that in the savings right now and am considering getting rid of the cheque account.
Between $16-$20K. We pay our credit card bill out of there, which can get somewhat hefty some months.
After I pay my bills I try to keep $200 in checking to cover groceries and gas, etc. until I get paid again (I get paid weekly). I tend to only have $50 to $100 in my savings to, since it doesn’t make sense to keep savings when I have debt I’m trying to pay off.
Well I ended August with less than $2.00, which is about usual for someone on disability.
I keep about $500.00. The rest I park in other accounts and transfer around as needed.
[Waco Kid]Oh, all that I can get [/Waco Kid]
Somewhere between $1,000 and $4,000 or so. I am extremely careful never to let it get below $1,000 so I don’t have to pay any service charges, and if it’s as high as $4K it’s time to move some to ING Direct savings.
Everything. I don’t make enough money to have money anywhere else.
Enough to cover the bills. I use Quicken to download my banking data every few days, at which time I reconcile my account to the online balance. I also use Quicken to record non e-payments, so that I know down to the penny what I have in my bank accounts. The only surprises are the ATM withdrawals my husband makes, so I take that into consideration when moving money around. I do get a little antsy when the balance goes below $500, so there are days when I tell him to withdraw from the savings account if he needs to take out money until x date.
Somewhere between $100 and $200. Right now I’ve got a lot more, but that’s because my wife and I have been saving up in anticipation of paying some major expenses in the near future. Once we know how much everything will cost (e.g. just bought a second car and we have to buy a season’s worth of heating oil…) we’ll set aside an emergency fund and use the rest to pay off debt.
Actually, that’s usually how I keep my spending under control. At the end of the month, once bills are all paid, there’s usually a few hundred extra. Everything left in the checking, minus the $200 cushion, goes straight to paying off debt. I pay for everything with the credit card (and pay it off every month) but for me the knowledge that I only have $200 cash means I won’t splurge. And when I do splurge, it’s because I decided to set money aside in advance.
About $5,000 at the moment but this is pay week so that’ll go up on Thursday. I should probably think about shifting some of it into the higher interest bearing account.
Usually around $5000-10000 because the CC bill comes out automatically on the 24th of every month and usually averages around $4000. Right now, we have much more because both my wife and I have estimated tax bills due on the 15th. But what difference does it make with interest on savings now down around .25% pa? That means $2.50, less than one cappucino, on $1000 held one year.
Usually more than $10,000. Our month-to-month varies widely so I like a nice wide buffer which allows me to not have to keep a check register.
As others have stated, interest is so low in savings account, it is not worth keeping up with transferring money back and forth from savings to checking.
In addition to that, there could always be emergencies. What if the A/C goes out and it is $1,000? The repair man isn’t going to wait 3 days for the money to transfer to my checking from savings.
I assume that your checking and savings accounts are at different banks, and that’s why it takes three days to transfer the funds. I’ve got them both at the same bank, and transfers are basically immediate.