How many "earmark" accounts do you have?

[Scanner]

I have seen posters here who say they have a car fund or a this or that fund where they seem to earmark it for goals.

Does that get a little weighty? Squirreling your money in many different places?

I must admit I like the idea of having money on reserve for certain things but how do you do it? I'd like to hear details, like I have an ING savings account for a new car, a Vanguard balanced fund for a Disney vacation, etc.

BTW, I mean for things other than for retirement or college.

Thanks in advance.

[tinapbeana]

best way to describe it is that i have 'virtual' buckets. everything goes into my online savings account at apple bank as one big lump.

in my software, i have 'accounts' setup up like so:
apple bank - vacation
apple bank - homeowners
apple bank - car maint.
apple bank - general

etc. once a month a pre-set amount is drafted from checking to apple bank as a lump sum, but i enter it into my software as $x to vacation fund, $y to homeowners, etc. all interest the account earns gets entered into the software as apple bank - general. if i ever feel the urge to 'balance' things, i just add up all accounts in my software that start with 'apple bank' and compare it to the balance in my actual online savings account.

as a result, my software shows me several different 'accounts' (aka buckets or funds), but the money is one large lump earning me interest.

[Scanner]

Very creative!

[pearlieq]

I do the exact same thing. I have two savings accounts (one with my reg bank for short term/irregular expenses and one ING) and I simply keep track of the allocation in Excel.

My sheet just has different columns for each expense/category and when I reposit money I distribute it among the rows depending on where it's going.

[JanH]

Me, too! But I also have two separate accounts in the bank with several smaller accounts within them. Each account has a checking, savings, Christmas club, vacation, and special accounts. I allot monies to each for specific purposes. One is the bed fund, one is the fence fund, one is birthdays, one is Christmas, one is other insurance fund (flood, life, etc.), and so forth. After the fence is rebuilt, it will turn into the door fund.
Funds still in the regular account have virtual accounts for house maintenance, car maintenance, dental/eye, etc.

[anonymous_saver]

I think most of us have a high interest online savings account. Once you have one open, you can easily open up subaccounts. You only have one login, and then it brings you to page of all of your subaccounts.

I have subaccounts for:

Emergency Fund
Down payment
Retirement

(I really won't need the retirement subaccount after 2007 since I only have it right now holding my money for my 2008 Roth IRA contribution.)

I also have a Pension, and a Roth IRA. In a few months, I am also opening a 403(b). Unrelated, but just sharing.

[Aleta]

I do the same as most of you. I have the one account and I have different category accounts such as Emergency funds, house insurance, life insurance (Paid Yearly), car insurance, house furnishings savings, patio savings, car savings, etc. Each category has it's own sheet with deposits and debits and where the money came from, why it was spent, etc.

For my challenge account, that is separate. I have it in two different online accounts. I wanted to keep it separate because I want to one day look back and see where the money came from. I had change all over the house, just sitting there, coupon money and also the new ways in which I'm learning to make money including surveys. I also add money I find in the street or pennies that my husband gives me.

[newlyfrugal]

I have 5 funds currently: car maintenance, vacation, home improvement, Christmas and Misc. They are all kept in the same savings account, I just track them separately. Each paycheck I have a set amount transferred from checking into the savings account which I then split up when I enter it into a spreadsheet that keeps running totals. When we need to use the money I make the purchase with my debit card (i.e. Home Depot, Christmas gifts, etc) then transfer the same amount of money OUT of the savings account into the checking. I then make a notation in the spreadsheet (using a comment in Excel) as to which fund the money came from and why. Works great! I have been doing this for years and love it.

Sara

[PrincessPerky]

I am a little lazy I have one big savings fund and it gets X amount each month for 'escrow' stuff....but I don't care how much is each, I just care that January 1st next year I will have enough to cover every single 'yearly' bill.

When I am done paying off the car I plan on doing the same for savings. (right now we just have an EF, no cool stuff..vacation is planned to be out of OT each month, the month before we wont pay extra on the car..mini vacations this year till car paid off)

Anyway still gonna have one savings account. The excel book knows how much is for what...and I do balance it out or rather excel has a nice little formula set up to do it for me.

We do have seperate savings funds for each of the kids, or rather they each have their own.

[fairy74]

We have our mini EF in the local bank savings account, main EF is in ING, 2nd ING account is for the baby fund. Sometimes for smaller goals (like vacation, etc..) I will just keep it in the coffe can at home.

[bjl584]

I have my 401K and Roth Ira for retirement, an ING account for big purchases (car, home improvements, etc.), a HSBC account as an EF, and a little bit of money in an old savings account at my brick and mortor bank that I haven't figured out what to do with just yet.

[jIM_Ohio]

We opened our fifth account today. Apparently there are laws about using a savings account for more than X transactions per month.

Account1 checking- use for cash (groceries, gas, hair, cash)
Account2 savings- use for car and cell phones (fixed costs). When car payments go away, this account becomes "new car" account.

Account3 checking- use for any auto payment for a BILL which does not go away. Utilities primarily.
Account 4 checking (just opened today) use for a Bill which goes away, or creates net worth. Mortgage and IRA. This is where vacationn savings and other savings add up (and get transferred to 5).
Account 5 savings. This is emergency fund.

3-4-5 are connected to each other at one bank. All my raises get put into account 4 (increase net worth).

1-2 are connected to each other at another bank. My wife's raises go into 1 (increase spending).

[catlinye_maker]

Like several other folks have already posted, I have one "real" savings account then all the various funds (car repair, fifthwheel fund, insurance) are virtual.

In Quickbooks it's set up as two accounts, general savings and buffer, then each individual fund is a "check" written on the main fund to the buffer account. That lets me keep them all separate while not having a lot of little accounts for each item. When I add money to, say, the insurance fund, the real cash gets deposited into general savings and then I update the check for the insurance fund with the additional cash. When I balance my savings account I just treat those checks as uncleared, and when I use that held money I just delete the check or reduce its amount and the money "reappears" in my savings account. Clear as mud?

This is likely way more complicated than it needs to be; it started back years ago when we were not as sharp as we are now and had trouble with bouncing checks. I "wrote" a check to Buffer and left it as an uncleared check so we always had that much more in our account than I thought. (This trick doesn't work if you believe that the balances you see on your ATM statement are anything other than an amusing fiction, but it worked great for us.)

[Ima saver]

I have one local money market fund paying 5.25%. I keep track of sub accounts in a notebook as I do not how to use a computer. My sub accounts are interest, spec houses, emergency, vacation, state taxes, medical, christmas and car fund. If some new idea comes up, I just add a column. I do keep track of the interest separately

[disneysteve]

We have zero "earmarked" accounts. To me, money is money. We have a checking account and 2 money market mutual fund accounts. All bills, expenses and spending comes from some combination of those accounts. No sub-accounts, no vacation fund, no car fund. Just an overall total of how much we've got.

[creditcardfree]

Originally Posted by jIM_Ohio

We opened our fifth account today. Apparently there are laws about using a savings account for more than X transactions per month.

Yes there are. I ran into that one month. If you have too many too often they will close your account. This is a federal regulation. Regulation D I believe. This is why I have to have a very basic savings account (non money market) for some of our savings. I don't get the higher interest rate, but at least I have money available without needing to dip into the EF in our money market. It helps for me to keep our money for auto premiums, ect seperate from the checking account.

Personally, I don't really earmark the money. Most of it's emergency funds or money set aside for a future payment. The rest is mimimal savings and available for the need or want as we see necessary. I don't have enough money (or is it patience) to save for 10 things at the same time!

[Homebody]

My daughter has sub accounts at ING for wedding, new car replacement, home repairs and a rainey day fund.

My husband and I have separate savings accounts, but they are just EF.

This is an area I would like to get more organized.

[Bookie]

I use three physical accounts, two local and one on-line.

The local accounts are used for intermittent payments and a small EF. The on-line account is for 'deep savings'. Transfers are automatic to these accounts.

[MonkeyMama]

I am not big on earmarks. Money is so tight we have budgeting and earmarking a little more. But all the same I like simplicity. & flexibility.

I mostly have short-term savings and the emergency fund (in 1 account, I track which is which in excel). For short term savings I take all the bills over $100 or so that pop up less often than once a month - add them all up for the year - and divide by 12. I set that amount aside each month (this is mostly property taxes and insurances). So the money is always there when I need it. Simple.

Then we have the e-fund. Just for anything big and unforeseen.

That's about it. Vacation, christmas, etc. we generally have in the monthly budget (don't spend much on these) and we have a little wiggle room for smaller emergencies and things so we don't have to dig into our savings.

We don't have anything big planned in the near future so we just don't have any other allocations. Even things like cars, we generally buy what we can pay off in a year (whatever that may be at the time) and we have plenty of cash to buy some really used cars if need be. But don't see the point to save much right now - we have 2 newer cars. When we have more money though will probably just pad the e-fund more with newer cars in mind. Mostly it is a judgement call how much we can spare when the time comes - as to our vacations and all that. Not much so we aren't allocating any money to things like that. We get by fine going very used on things and less luxury when our budget gets this tight.

Dh is saving his allowance for a big purchase so I am tracking in excel how much of our savings is for that. Usually we just spend it though. & for the kids, I am tracking their money until they have enough to open a mutual fund. So I have a couple of earmarks I don't usually have and don't intend to keep for the long-term. It all gets tedious.

[Fizgig]

Not including retirement, I have four accounts:

1. Checking for bills and regular expenses. (Actually, I put most everything on AmEx and pay off the card from my checking account. Points/rebates are nice.) My paycheck is automatically deposited and transfers are set up to my three other accounts with each check.

2. Emergency Fund in a high interest online bank.

3. House account for taxes, insurance, and repairs. I pad it generously in case the roof decides to collapse or something.

4. Splurge fund. This is a new thing I started this year after I got my emergency fund fully stocked. I still kick in to the EF, but I now put some of that in my splurge fund. It's for clothes, vacations, gifts, etc. It's really nice to give myself permission to have a little fun with my money.