I recently started a new job, and with it comes a predictable paycheck. I would like to split the incoming money across several accounts and banks, such as two joint accounts I hold with my partner and several personal ones. Is there any easy app or service that lets me automate this such that X$ goes towards one account, another Y$ goes to a second account, up to Z$ pays off a credit card, the remaining goes to savings, etc.?
We have all these separate accounts because we found that they really help to partition our spending and budget. The “fun card” is a debit card that cannot overdraft, for example, and we put our monthly outings budget into it. Once it’s exhausted, we no longer eat out or buy drinks until the next paycheck. Similarly, I have a personal fun account with a small amount of money set aside every month for spending on video games and whatnot.
Our accounts are split between a local credit union, several real big banks, and a small virtual bank called Zeta. I’m basically just looking for a service that can automatically transfer set amounts to other accounts by routing number (even if it takes a few days per paycheck).
Any experience with such things, or other ways of accomplishing the same end result?
My payroll provider only supports percentage based splits, not absolute dollar amounts. Zeta has something called Automations, but it seems to be broken. My credit union has a bad website and no automation. Chase has scheduled transfers but it’s hard to trigger it from paychecks (they happen on set days of the month and will fail or overdraft if the paycheck isn’t cleared by then).
I can’t be the only one who wants something like this…?
I don’t bank w/ Chase so I don’t know the specifics of what options they offer but I’m guessing it’s something like he gets paid every other Friday & they only offer transfers on scheduled dates; therefore, the two don’t line up.
OP, look at all of your banks/CUs & see what they offer. It may work if your whole paycheck goes to, say, Zeta online bank & then you set transfers to your other accts from there such that Zeta gets your total net pay but sends most of it elsewhere, only keeping the $25 or $50 you want in that bank acct.
Yeah, it’s basically something like that. I get paid on the 14th and the last day of the month, which is sometimes the 30th and sometimes the 31st, but sometimes later if it’s a weekend or earlier if it’s a holiday or something like that.
Chase only lets me trigger the transfer on certain dates, not on “incoming deposit successfully cleared”. In the past I’ve just scheduled the transfer to happen a few days later, but they will fail if the incoming paycheck hasn’t fully cleared — and that doesn’t seem to be a fixed time. So the outgoing scheduled transfer would succeed like 80% of the time but then fail due to insufficient balance sometimes or succeed but take out money I needed, leaving the account low (because the paycheck hadn’t cleared yet). I mostly live paycheck-to-paycheck and would rather not risk an overdraft or low balance due to a dumb automation… =/
knowing more details now, I would say to set it up for the 2nd (worst case, the 31st is a Sat & the 2nd is the following Monday) & the 16th*. The money may sit in your Chase acct for a couple of extra days but once you get thru a one-time adjustment you’re still getting paid on the same schedule; it’ll just be the 16th & 2nd instead of the 14th & EoM.
.* You may need to pay attention to the calendar in Jan (New Year’s Day) & Feb (President’s Day) & manually adjust your payment date for those two months depending upon what day of the week payday is in a given year but there are no other holidays that should impact you on a 14th/EoM schedule.
Are you paid directly by some small biz, or do they use a major payroll company like ADP? Is your pay direct deposit or a physical check? If it’s a paper check, do they mail it to the bank, or do they mail it to you? Do you get it put into your hands by the officemanager? Or what? If you handle the check, how do you deposit it?
All these details speak to the variability in funds available date which is really the core of your problem.
Oh yeah, that and not (yet) being able to just leave an extra paycheck’s worth of money sitting there to buffer the timing issues.
I have direct deposit and it is $350 to Bank A and the rest to Bank B. It was pretty straight-forward to set up through my payroll department. The caveat is that is with every paycheck not just the regular ones so when HR realized they owed me $200 and cut a check that all went into Bank A.
I did something like that for a few months, but it still was never quite perfect… not just because of holidays & weekends, but also because it takes a few days for the transfer to initiate, during which time another source might draw from the checking account (like a rent withdrawal or credit card auto-pay), so by the time the transfer is scheduled to happen, the money might be gone already. And while the transfer is processing, the money isn’t available for use anywhere (it’s gone from Chase, but still pending at the other bank).
Between the fragility of the system and the delays, it was quite annoying… I’d usually have to wait about 1.5 weeks from payday before the money was actually usable in the other account, and a few times a year some timing situation would come up that I’d have to manually resolve.
It’d just be much safer if I can trigger a transfer based on a successfully cleared deposit, rather than try line up the dates just so.
Neither. It’s a middleman “employer of record” called Remote.com, and they process their own paychecks. This is the crappy system that only allows percentage-based splits, not absolute dollar amounts. If they supported that, it would be much easier.
At least they support direct deposit, thankfully.
Yeah, exactly. Hmm.
Maybe as a stopgap, I can just open another Chase account to act as a “buffer” between the other accounts. I would leave some money in there to hedge against timing issues, but otherwise use that account exclusively for incoming deposits and outgoing scheduled transfers.
I’ll give that a shot.
But yeesh. Feels like this really ought to be simpler… funny that my free Gmail account has a better rules engine than all my banks combined. Is there truly no “finance bro” who thought to make a quick buck with such a system…? The Zeta Automation+ feature is supposed to do that, but it doesn’t actually work in the app (sigh).
I’m familiar with those EOR / PEO outfits. Worked for a couple over the years.
But you still weren’t specific. When you say “paycheck” do you mean a paper check or do you just mean your wages net of deductions? How does Remote send your pay to your bank(s)? By ACH = direct deposit, or by paper check(s,) or by courier frog or … I suspect a lot of your problem is right there.
A delay of a week plus is insane.
I bank at Chase and have never encountered them sending money to another bank and it taking longer than tomorrow, net of weekends.
Something is badly broken at whichever bank is receiving funds from Chase. Or something. IMO adding another account in the middle is just asking for more delays.
IMO The solution is to shitcan the bank that’s taking forever to credit money they already have.
And, as I said, when possible build up enough buffer in there that you’re not living deposit to deposit and payment to payment. Easy to say, but perhaps the work of months depending on how badly your layoff screwed up your finances.
It can be. You need to have a single account for payments. You need to figure out another way to partition your spending and budget. Multiple accounts are not helping you, instead they are creating issues due to the need for frequent fund transfers.
Multiple accounts can be useful, I use them myself. But they are useful only when they have adequate funds in them. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, this is not for you.
Sorry, it’s an ACH electronic direct deposit. Nothing gets sent by paper mail. It arrives electronically in Chase the same day as pending, and I think it’s usually immediately available to spend (but should double-check). It’s the delay caused by waiting a few days for the scheduled transfer to start, and then sending to the other banks, that’s slow. Maybe 1.5 weeks is an exaggeration (that was probably caused by a first-time transfer verification at both sides), but usually 4-5 days is the norm. It’s still annoying… banks only work business days but my expenses keep happening on the weekends
Well, I’m totally open to suggestions? I’m trying to find a system that requires minimal effort but still allows constrained spending, by category, and allows two people to both put money in and take it out. The shared debit card has really helped us in that regard.
But, you know… my partner does all of her income & expenses 100% by hand every paycheck, spending half an hour or so every other Friday to manually move funds around. And she has been way way way more successful with that than any automation I’d ever used. Maybe that is the way… (sigh)
Not knowing exactly what it is you are trying to get a handle on, it’s hard to make suggestions. I track my income and expenses on a spreadsheet that calculates the running balance.
It does sound as if you might be dealing with multiple payments that need to be paid on multiple dates. If so, can these be changed so that the due dates fall on or near the same date every month? I had one credit card bill that was two weeks out of synch with my other bills, and with a call to the credit card company they were able to change the due date for me so I can pay all my bills once a month.
Another suggestion is to pay everything you can with a credit card, so that you only have a single bill every month (or fewer bills) with a consistent due date. Normally this would be horrible advice for someone living paycheck to paycheck, but it would probably work for you.
Exactly this. There is something wrong if it’s taking that long to do an electronic transfer from one bank to another. Check to see if Chase is sending it out electronically or if they’re mailing a check to your other bank?
Also, while having a backup bank is not a bad idea, you’re dealing with at least three separate banks. Since you’re nowhere near the limits of FDIC insurance, consolidate & close your acct(s) at one of the banks & open an additional acct at one of the remaining institutions that way any transfer between accts will be internal to that bank & therefore happen faster.
