How many checking accounts do you have?

[Nutria]

We've got two at the same bank:

• For standard monthly spending & bills.
• A "front end" for our various long-term savings categories and a pseudo "savings account". Most of this money lives in "high" interest online savings accounts and CDs; excess money is moved from the "front end" at EOM, but if we need more -- like for semi-annual auto insurance -- money is move from online savings to the "front end".

It seems complicated when written down, but is pretty simple in practice.

[kork13]

We have one joint checking account, which serves as a clearing house for direct deposit paychecks, bill paying, moving money to/from savings & investments, and just about everything else. It's just simplest for us to use the one central account for everything.

My wife does still have her credit union checking (& savings) account from before we were married, but she almost never uses it, and it only has a few hundred dollars. She just keeps it because she's sentimentally attached to her CU, and I decided early on that it wasn't worth trying to convince her away from the needless accounts.

[AJ444]

3 between us, a common checking for bills/savings and we each have an entertainment account that we receive a monthly allotment to spend on whatever we want.

[feh]

We have one joint checking account, which serves as a clearing house for direct deposit paychecks, bill paying, moving money to/from savings & investments, and just about everything else. It's just simplest for us to use the one central account for everything.

+1

We have one checking account.

[MonkeyMama]

We have one joint checking account, which serves as a clearing house for direct deposit paychecks, bill paying, moving money to/from savings & investments, and just about everything else. It's just simplest for us to use the one central account for everything.

We do the same. In fact I just run the balance down to $0. It's where all the money goes, but we don't *keep* anything in there.

We just have one joint account. We may have had two early on in marriage (put our name on each other's accounts). But eventually we moved and changed CUs, and just ended up with the one (newer) joint account.

[Nutria]

In fact I just run the balance down to $0.

We start (and thus end the previous) the month with $600. That's just so we don't OD before the next paycheck.

It's where all the money goes but we don't *keep* anything in there.

Ditto. At EOM, anything above $600 is swept into "uncategorized" savings.

[scfr]

Two: one personal checking account and one business checking account.

We also have savings accounts.

[disneysteve]

We have one checking account. All income goes into that account. All spending and investing comes out of that one account. I see no reason to have more than one.

[phantom]

We have two: one that I manage and one that my husband manages. We both have access to both accounts and think of all of our money as joint. But, we find it easier to split the responsibility of paying bills if we use separate accounts with separate ledgers.

[Mouse]

I am glad this topic was mentioned, I have had this thought before. I currently have a checking where I get my direct deposits and do my spending and investing and a savings account where I personally deposit money and try to avoid touching and consider it as my Emergency Fund.

I was going to consider opening another savings once my emergency fund was back to where it needs to be but now seeing other people only have 1 or two accounts I no longer see the need to

[Outdoorsygal]

We have 4 Checking Accounts

1. One to transfer money earned from Ebay & Amazon Sales

2. Typical Joint Checking Acct

3. HSA Checking account- Only used because it isn't allowed to co-mingle in personal funds. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with this acct

4. Husbands Business Checking Acct (he is self employed)

[disneysteve]

We have 4 Checking Accounts

1. One to transfer money earned from Ebay & Amazon Sales

2. Typical Joint Checking Acct

3. HSA Checking account- Only used because it isn't allowed to co-mingle in personal funds. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with this acct

4. Husbands Business Checking Acct (he is self employed)

The business account absolutely should be separate from personal monies.

We also have an HSA account but it isn't a checking account so I didn't count that.

And your Ebay/Amazon account is really another business account, too. So ultimately you have one personal checking account, 2 business accounts, and your HSA. I think that makes perfect sense.

[cooliemae]

We have one primary checking account that serves as a clearing house for our paychecks, bills, etc.

At the moment I have 2 other checking accounts that I opened for bonuses. I will be closing one of them this week and the other in march, but I'm sure I'll be opening up new ones as bonuses become available.

[97guns]

i have 5 or 6 with chase that i dont use, ghost accounts from bonus money

if they're willing to give me $250 to open a new account i'll be happy to oblige 5 or 6 times, i think i got $500 on one of them

[Nutria]

We have one checking account. All income goes into that account. All spending and investing comes out of that one account. I see no reason to have more than one.

You manage the different bits using a spreadsheet?