How much do you keep in your checking account?

[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.

that’s odd. Most debit card have a max withdrawal amount of $500/day. Do you write your pin on your card or something and didn’t notice it was stolen for weeks? I’ve had cards lifted a few times without even losing my card and the companies have notified me IMMEDIATELY of suspicious purchases and frozen my cards until they have spoken to me. Even when my kid went off to college we gave him a card and with his first purchase visa shut it down immediately saying they saw a purchase in boston that was out of the ordinary. The released the freeze once we explained where our kid was as school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I always get so confused when people don’t just open a jumbo savings account with these large amounts of money rotting in a checking account and get interest by doing nothing. If they need the money, use the app, and switch money to accounts. Done.

we keep about 50k in our checking. Not trying to sound like an ass, but relative to our net worth and investments, it’s a drop in the bucket. Today i’m headed out to buy two chairs, each are $2500 so there’s 5k in credit card that will need to be paid off immediately. Kids just had 5 days off from school (weekend to 2 teacher work days and lunar new year) and all 5 of us went skiing in Utah. That was 5 flights, 3 days of lift tickets, 4 nights rental house, 5 days of meals out, and a large SUV car rental. The cried cat bill for that trip is over 20k. I actually don’t care to add it up to be honest.

we do move money over when it piles up, but yes our burn rate for the year is proportional to income/investments. we’d spend all day moving money over if we kept it much under 50k.

I will say though keeping 500k-1M in your checking is idiotic. we try to keep only a little more than we burn. unless you at evening 1M/mo and in that case more power to ya.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

Does your bank penalize for paying out of the savings account? I think some do, which was why most people would have separate checking and savings. These days, you can just park your $ in the hysa, earn interest the full month and have payments come out of there. No need to move it back around. Idk if it would be worthwhile for everyone, but the folks keeping 10k+ it would be tons extra in interest just doing that.

PP you responded to. Aren’t you limited in a how many transactions you can do in a HYSA? We do have one, but we keep funds there that are for longer term goals. If there isn’t a limit to transactions, then I agree HYSA makes sense.

We keep around 20k in checking to cover immediate obligations. It gets drawn down between pay cycles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

Does your bank penalize for paying out of the savings account? I think some do, which was why most people would have separate checking and savings. These days, you can just park your $ in the hysa, earn interest the full month and have payments come out of there. No need to move it back around. Idk if it would be worthwhile for everyone, but the folks keeping 10k+ it would be tons extra in interest just doing that.

PP you responded to. Aren’t you limited in a how many transactions you can do in a HYSA? We do have one, but we keep funds there that are for longer term goals. If there isn’t a limit to transactions, then I agree HYSA makes sense.

We keep around 20k in checking to cover immediate obligations. It gets drawn down between pay cycles.

Np- Not only that, but at current rates, you're only missing out on maybe $400 annually in interest if you were to keep your checking balance at $10k and the other $10k in a hysa. Not nothing, but not worth it to me if it means I have to think about my balance constantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Usually around $10k in checking and another $50k in a high yield savings account.

What HYSA have you been happy with?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Np- Not only that, but at current rates, you're only missing out on maybe $400 annually in interest if you were to keep your checking balance at $10k and the other $10k in a hysa. Not nothing, but not worth it to me if it means I have to think about my balance constantly.

Exactly. $400 taxable dollars at that. So less than a dollar a day after taxes? I just keep about $50,000 in a checking account and don't worry about the forgone taxable income.

[Anonymous]

I have two checking accounts. We don’t have any loans or credit card charges or mortgage . For our regular expenses I put about $90k in the checking account in January. I put all of the bills on auto pay and don’t think about it too often. We usually end up with about $5,000 left at the end of the year which means I’m calculating expenses pretty well.

The second account has much less money in it and I use it for clothing, household items, entertainment, activities, whatever is needed. This is randomly replenished as 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.

that’s odd. Most debit card have a max withdrawal amount of $500/day. Do you write your pin on your card or something and didn’t notice it was stolen for weeks? I’ve had cards lifted a few times without even losing my card and the companies have notified me IMMEDIATELY of suspicious purchases and frozen my cards until they have spoken to me. Even when my kid went off to college we gave him a card and with his first purchase visa shut it down immediately saying they saw a purchase in boston that was out of the ordinary. The released the freeze once we explained where our kid was as school.

I like PayPal because if you’re ordering something on line you don’t have to fill out form after form. Plus I can withdraw up to $1,000 a day because I’m a long time customer.

People can easily use debit cards as credit cards where no PIN is needed. But you do get your money back in fraud cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

that’s odd. Most debit card have a max withdrawal amount of $500/day. Do you write your pin on your card or something and didn’t notice it was stolen for weeks? I’ve had cards lifted a few times without even losing my card and the companies have notified me IMMEDIATELY of suspicious purchases and frozen my cards until they have spoken to me. Even when my kid went off to college we gave him a card and with his first purchase visa shut it down immediately saying they saw a purchase in boston that was out of the ordinary. The released the freeze once we explained where our kid was as school.

I like PayPal because if you’re ordering something on line you don’t have to fill out form after form. Plus I can withdraw up to $1,000 a day because I’m a long time customer.

People can easily use debit cards as credit cards where no PIN is needed. But you do get your money back in fraud cases.

this still doesn’t explain how someone managed to get 20k stolen via their debit card. Unless they are too stupid to realize their card was stolen and account slowly drained for 2 months.

[Anonymous]

About 10k checking and 10k in a linked savings account. We have more substantial emergency funds elsewhere.