Comments on: Always keep $100 in your checking account

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:48:56 +0000

Yeah, I’ve since paired down all my accounts into just a couple – Feels MUCH better now!

By: Nick from BayCrazy

Nick from BayCrazy — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:09:32 +0000

Lmao! @ ‘pretending something is wrong with the machine’.

Definitely a good rule to keep a certain amount in your account, perhaps even a small amount in every account (although I don’t know why some people have so many, I think it’s perhaps better to keep it manageable with just one or two?), which is all kind of in accordance to the ‘life beneath your means’ mentality. Which, is good common sense…

Though not necessarily… in fact, very hard to stick by. Despite it being obviously beneficial.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:49:03 +0000

$500 would def. make you feel more comfortable, I agree. But you do what you can, when you can! $100 is a great start :)

By: Lauren Gill

Lauren Gill — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:11:44 +0000

I like $100 cushion idea. I’ve heard you should have at least a $500 cushion in your checking account from a Dave Ramsey counselor before. That’s way too much for me at this time. $100 is definitely doable. I’ll have to work on that going forward.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:19:18 +0000

Not a bad idea at all. It’s great that you know yourself well ;)

By: loopy

loopy — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:09:14 +0000

I love the buffer, though I guess that’s always come natural to me. I had to force myself not to put everything in savings because then that made it too easy to make excuses to take money out of savings.

Now I have a certain amount that I put into savings each pay period, and I leave the overflow in checking. If it gets over $700 in checking, I’ll put some into savings at that point. I only feel comfortable with the amount to cover my mortgage payment, and no less; mainly because I have an ING account for savings and it takes 2 business days (4 days with the weekend, 5 if there’s a following holiday) to reach my lender, so I prefer to have at least that amount readily available at my brick and mortar bank.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:59:56 +0000

Yup! Great point for sure. I don’t know if that was in effect when I first wrote this post years ago, but I’ve def. noticed it now! :) An even better strategy altogether is to never even *need* for it to hit another account too, haha… but mistakes do happen every now and then.

By: D Moss

D Moss — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 13:33:31 +0000

Be very careful when linking your savings account to your checking account and relying on it to make up your checking account shortfalls. Banking regulations require banks to limit all savings (and Money Market accouts) to six electronic transactions per month. Go over that, and you will have some hefty excessive activity fees. .

By: J. Money

J. Money — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:47:56 +0000

Hah! As sad as that is… I like your system though, glad it works!

By: Chris Parsons

Chris Parsons — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:07:12 +0000

I keep anywhere from $1,000 – $4,000 in my checking account. My credit card bill usually comes in somewhere around $3,000 and so before I pay it I have the money for it in the account ready, and once it is paid it I still have around $1,000 left. I used to try and keep it at $1,000 but this took too much time to constantly be moving money between account (I use online savings accounts at different banks which take 2-3 days to transfer). Plus, interest rates are so low right now on savings accounts it really doesn’t make a difference.