Do you have individual accounts to save for things?

[rob62521]

Do you have individual accounts to save for things in your life? We have a Christmas club, a vacation club, and a regular savings account that we are saving for a new roof in addition to a Money Market account.

[disneysteve]

We have a 529 account for college. We have dedicated retirement accounts (Roths, 401k, etc.). Other than that, everything else goes into one pool.

[snafu]

While we've consolidated the non retirement accounts into two sections, an Excel program continues the breakdown of how the sums are to be allocated.

[tripods68]

Do you have individual accounts to save for things in your life? We have a Christmas club, a vacation club, and a regular savings account that we are saving for a new roof in addition to a Money Market account.

We are big believer of the "envelope system" by Dave Ramsey. We have envelope for car maintenance, gift fund, groceries, entertainment, movies, etc. It's the only way to keep track of your spending and savings.

[kork13]

We do have separate savings accounts set up for specific purposes, because it's simpler (for me) to keep straight what we plan to do with each put of money. We've got a general savings pot, plus one for a new car, home mx/repairs, travel, and emergency fund, in addition to retirement & 529 accounts.

It makes planning very simple. "How much can we spend on this new car?" and "Can we afford this vacation?" are resolved by a quick balance check. We're able to manage our priorities and save accordingly. For example, right now we're gearing up to replace my wife's car. Most of those accounts get $100-$200/mo, but the car savings account gets $1000/mo. If something crazy comes up, we can always shuffle/rebalance all of those accounts, but for planning purposes, it helps me keep things straight.

Obviously, it depends on your personality & how you think about money. I personally prefer to organize it all out & have each dollar tagged with a purpose.

[sandrark]

Yes, we do.

General checking and savings accounts - personal and joint (technically, they're all joint, we just have primary users).

Then accounts with CapOne360 - for:

1) Escrow funds for taxes and insurance on the house.
2) Car repair/maintenance
3) Emergency fund
4) Household repair and maintenance

[disneysteve]

We do have separate savings accounts set up for specific purposes, because it's simpler (for me) to keep straight what we plan to do with each put of money.

It makes planning very simple. "How much can we spend on this new car?" and "Can we afford this vacation?" are resolved by a quick balance check... If something crazy comes up, we can always shuffle/rebalance all of those accounts

Obviously, it depends on your personality & how you think about money.

I agree that it really depends on your personality and how you tend to organize things in your head. I'm just the opposite of kork13. I think of savings as fluid, not earmarked for one thing or another. Some years we will spend a lot more on vacation, another year we might spend more dining out, or doing home repairs, or replacing a car. If I knew, for example, that we would be replacing a car this year, we would plan more modest vacations. On the flip side, we are actually spending a relatively large amount on travel this year so we're economizing in other areas. We're happy to skip a few meals out so that we can take that extra weekend trip.

[feh]

Do you have individual accounts to save for things in your life? We have a Christmas club, a vacation club, and a regular savings account that we are saving for a new roof in addition to a Money Market account.

We have a 529 account; that has to be separate if you want to take advantage of the tax breaks. We have a money market account for large expenses (aka an emergency fund).

Everything else is combined; we don't keep separate accounts for vacations, car purchases, etc. Doing so is just mental accounting.

[MonkeyMama]

We more separate by time frame, but even that I keep track of in a spreadsheet and not by actual account. In the end, most our cash is for more mid-term spending. We save for the short-term (expected annual spending) but the balance is generally $0 most months since it gets spent down quickly. So the balance of our savings account is mid-term and then investments are for the long-term stuff.

We save $x per month for specific purposes, for example $200/month for car replacements and $250/month for home maintenance. But I don't belabor the details in the balances. I know we are saving enough for everything, and I know approximately how much I have saved over the years for each if I just do a little math. (Just did this with a car replacement. We had the car 13 years, saving $100/month to replace that car, so we easily had $16,000 to spend. If we had to replace a car after 5 years for some reason we would have to come up with another plan; it would be obvious we had not had the time to save up for a newer car. But maybe if our home repair portion was overflowing we could just take it from that. I find it much easier to keep everything flexible and less rigid).

[corn18]

I used to have many accounts for various savings and that worked great for me. But did not work well for my wife in the event of my death. Having a lot of money spread over 10 accounts was way too complicated for a grieving wife to deal with. So now it is all in one account and I keep track of what it is allocated towards in a spreadsheet. That works equally well for me now and greatly simplifies her life after my death.

Tom

[Eagle]

Do you have individual accounts to save for things in your life? We have a Christmas club, a vacation club, and a regular savings account that we are saving for a new roof in addition to a Money Market account.

@rob62521

Have you heard of "sinking funds"? We have quite a few "sinking funds". Basically, they're funds we set aside for expenses we know we will have in the future. We have about 10 savings accounts that we save money on a monthly basis for:

Emergency fund
New Car Purchase
Other Purchases
Gifts
Son College
Daughter College
Car insurance - paid every 6 months
Vehicle Repairs
House Maintenance
Vacation
Baby fund*

*Currently we're not using this category.

We also have a 401k, Roth IRA, and mutual funds.

[Cristen Wyght]

Yes we do, we have different accounts for monthly expenses, car maintenance, education, retirement and emergency fund and savings. We also have an excel file for all our earnings and expenses.

[rob62521]

Eagle, I like your term, "sinking funds." Good show!

[Nutria]

We are big believer of the "envelope system" by Dave Ramsey. We have envelope for car maintenance, gift fund, groceries, entertainment, movies, etc. It's the only way to keep track of your spending and savings.

Literal envelopes, or metaphorical envelopes? A single full-screen spreadsheet does a nice job of letting one keep track of all those different "funds" even though at the bank they're really lumped into one account.

[Nutria]

Do you have individual accounts to save for things in your life? We have a Christmas club, a vacation club, and a regular savings account that we are saving for a new roof in addition to a Money Market account.

Spreadsheets FTW!!!

Naturally, there must be separate accounts for tax-related monies (529, IRA, etc), but after that, we just have 3 accounts and a spreadsheet:

1. A checking account for "current" spending, where pay is deposited.
2. A savings account.
3. A Capital One 360 savings account for excess savings money.

The spreadsheet keeps track -- by day -- of how much is in each virtual pile: general, medical, tuition, car insurance, pest control, vacation, etc, etc. On any particular day, the sum of those virtual piles *must* equal the sum of our two savings accounts; otherwise, I've done something wrong.

Our spreadsheet has one tab per month, and one row per day. This way, I can track unexpected spending and also forecast known future spending and known future savings.