How much do you keep in your checking account?

[Anonymous]

$3-$5k the most to cover rent and pay off credit cards. I will transfer more from investment account on months my bills are bigger.
Just did that yesterday and it took one day to sell the stock and one day to transfer to my account.

[Anonymous]

I keep a buffer of about $1500. We put pretty much all of the monthly expenses on a credit card where we earn points and then it gets paid off every month. The excess savings after every pay check goes into a money market account - but try to keep that $1500 buffer in checking.

[Anonymous]

We keep around $1500 but we’re always moving money back and forth from savings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Few thousand at most. That’s all we need to keep there for 1 month expenses and it mitigates the risk of fraud draining our balance. We actually just had a fraudulent transaction happen on a literally brand new debit card (inside job?) and I’m happy we didn’t have a huge amount sitting there just waiting to be stolen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Few thousand at most. That’s all we need to keep there for 1 month expenses and it mitigates the risk of fraud draining our balance. We actually just had a fraudulent transaction happen on a literally brand new debit card (inside job?) and I’m happy we didn’t have a huge amount sitting there just waiting to be stolen.

Lost my reply— had 20K stolen when my wallet was stolen (debit card), since then I just keep a 1-2k buffer. I did get the money back but it was a stressful few days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Few thousand at most. That’s all we need to keep there for 1 month expenses and it mitigates the risk of fraud draining our balance. We actually just had a fraudulent transaction happen on a literally brand new debit card (inside job?) and I’m happy we didn’t have a huge amount sitting there just waiting to be stolen.

Lost my reply— had 20K stolen when my wallet was stolen (debit card), since then I just keep a 1-2k buffer. I did get the money back but it was a stressful few days.

How did they get the money without a pin? Can you not freeze the cards using your phone? Maybe I should remove physical debit cards I don't even use from wallet.
I got my identity stolen thanks to tickemaster. Now I keep most cards frozen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Few thousand at most. That’s all we need to keep there for 1 month expenses and it mitigates the risk of fraud draining our balance. We actually just had a fraudulent transaction happen on a literally brand new debit card (inside job?) and I’m happy we didn’t have a huge amount sitting there just waiting to be stolen.

Lost my reply— had 20K stolen when my wallet was stolen (debit card), since then I just keep a 1-2k buffer. I did get the money back but it was a stressful few days.

How did they get the money without a pin? Can you not freeze the cards using your phone? Maybe I should remove physical debit cards I don't even use from wallet.
I got my identity stolen thanks to tickemaster. Now I keep most cards frozen.

Just saying I had a card used for a $50 Amazon purchase that had literally never been used before, and we don’t use debit cards for online purchases anyway so was out of character. Doesn’t need to physically be stolen for that to happen, I’ve heard of people’s cards being used before being removed from the envelope. Many bank employees are crooks.

There’s also a way to guess the algorithm card companies use to generate the numbers. They’re not completely random.

[Anonymous]

50k but we make a lot and I own a business so unexpected outflows are not rare

[Anonymous]

Currently have $30 in there. I put my money where I earn the most interest, so immediately move money to high-yield savings or brokerage for investing.

[Anonymous]

At the start of every month, I put anything in my checking account over $10k in a HYSA/money-market. That helps me keep track of my monthly cash flow and leaves me plenty of buffer for the month.

[Anonymous]

We keep a minimum $1000 buffer. Practically, the balances varies from $18k to $3K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow those numbers seem so high to me! I leave anywhere between $500-$2k in checking. Almost everything gets transferred to savings. I rarely use my debit card (Costco only) so I don’t need much there. It’s really only the account my pay gets deposited and that’s it.

Where do you pay your credit cards from?

[Anonymous]

$20k or less. This is one thing I learned from my old money wife before we married.

She saw how much I had in my account, which I was very proud of since I grew up pretty poor, and was horrified.

She taught me how to make my money make me money.

She keeps less than $5k in her account because it's much easier her for to liquidate if needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Few thousand at most. That’s all we need to keep there for 1 month expenses and it mitigates the risk of fraud draining our balance. We actually just had a fraudulent transaction happen on a literally brand new debit card (inside job?) and I’m happy we didn’t have a huge amount sitting there just waiting to be stolen.

Lost my reply— had 20K stolen when my wallet was stolen (debit card), since then I just keep a 1-2k buffer. I did get the money back but it was a stressful few days.

How did they get the money without a pin? Can you not freeze the cards using your phone? Maybe I should remove physical debit cards I don't even use from wallet.
I got my identity stolen thanks to tickemaster. Now I keep most cards frozen.

They bought 20k in gift cards from four different targets before I realized the bag was missing (they moved super fast!) This was about 10 years ago, maybe there’s better safeguards now.

[Anonymous]

Currently have $1.2m in there. Usually around $500k-$1m. Too high and ridiculous. We got around $1m in bonuses that we haven’t moved out yet. We are too busy to constantly be moving money to our financial advisor or to our own accounts, and don’t have the time to research the market to make good investments. And we’ve been expecting a crash for about five years so it always seems like a bad time to put money in the markets which is why I always dither.