How much do you keep in your checking account?
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Anonymous
In checking?
Oof. The S&P 500 is up 87% over the past five years. If you'd put $1.2 million in an S&P index fund five years ago, it would be worth $2.2 million today. But with inflation, that $1.2 million buys about 23% less than it did five years ago. In other words, your fear of investing has cost you a lot of money. You should really find someone who can help you put that money somewhere that will earn a reasonable return at a risk level you can tolerate. |
Anonymous
| My account never even gets above 2800. This board is so earth shattering sometimes. |
Anonymous
My husband’s parents are like this. Millions are sitting in a checking account. Wanting it there for ‘easy access in an emergency’ is their reasoning. They have tons of money and don’t ‘need’ returns to make them more but like the PP mentioned, moving even a fraction of it over would be making you easy returns. I shudder thinking about the millions they have let slip away keeping that amount in a regular checking account. |
Anonymous
| I think anything above $20-30k is grossly excessive. The rest should be in HYSA, govt securities, or in a brokerage making more money. Or divert towards a backdoor Roth. |
Anonymous
I think they make good money. I made it to financial freedom making minimum wage since 1996. I still have all the money I ever made and then some. Had I had a good income, ever, I'd probably still be working. I would have upgraded my lifestyle, trusted and depended on a 401k, and would have never learned to invest on my own. |
Anonymous
Savings account |
Anonymous
| Some of you guys are blowing my mind. I keep about $1k in checking and feel bad that I don't watch cash flow more closely so it can be lower. Most of our money is in savings and my credit card and mortgage come out of that account. Checking pays the utilities and student loans as well as a couple charitable donations that asked us not to use a credit card to save on fees. |
Anonymous
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Roughly $10,000 depending on when in the month it is (less right after we pay our mortgage and bills on the 1st and before our paychecks hit on the 15th).
We do keep about $50,000 in a money market with our same bank, which is our emergency fund. |
Anonymous
| We target a $20k balance in checking for monthly expenses; I rebalance the account at the beginning of each month with a high yield savings account that we target at $100K (emergency fund/ large one off expenses); any excess goes to the brokerage account to be invested. |
Anonymous
I did that a few weeks ago. I got gas today and the pump cut off after $15.09 so now I’m at zero. Sigh. |
Anonymous
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Agreed that some people here are crazy.
I keep $1-2k as the base minimum in my checking account. My pay is auto-deposited, and then I use that to pay bills, transfer to savings, invest, etc. I see zero value to keeping a significant amount of money in a non-investment, low-interest-bearing account. |
Anonymous
| Also, having more than $200k in any one account is silliy, since that is the limit of FDIC protection. |
Anonymous
| $10-$15k plus $5k in savings and $20k in CD's with the same bank that I could close early if I needed liquidity. |
Anonymous
I don’t understand what’s so earth shattering. You pay your mortgage from your savings. I pay mine from my checking. So I need to have enough cash in my checking to pay my monthly bills - mortgage, car payment, insurances, utilities, credit card bills, medical bills etc. if I kept the cash in a HYSA then I would need to be constantly moving it to checking. |
Anonymous
Yes. Everybody has Apple pay now |