Submitted by Sunset_Bleu t3_z8r8lk in personalfinance
Hello everyone. I apologize if the next questions seems ridiculous. I am not very well versed on personal finance. I am looking to start saving up for some things coming up in the summer.
I wanted to know the best way to set money aside every month for these goals without having to open a separate bank account for each goal. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Thanks for your advice. I know now how much I need to save. I think it would be a good idea to open a separate bank account and just dump the money there. I guess what I really want is to be able to see in the account goal x has 200, goal y has 300, but it sounds like that probably won't be easy to do. I could get around that by tracking manually on a spreadsheet.
Several banks have features that let you subdivide the account for record-keeping with names like bins, vaults, buckets, or pods. Just open one account that can do that.
Yup — Ally has this feature.
What is the reason for not wanting to open a separate bank account? To answer your question, that is likely going to be the easiest way to put money aside and “not see it” so you aren’t tempted to spend it.
The reason for not wanting to open up separate bank account is that I have several goals that I'd like to set aside money for each month until the summer. Once those goals are fulfilled, I will be left with five or so extra bank accounts that I would not need. Just wondering if there was an easier way to do this.
I have three accounts, checking, emergency savings, and intermittent expense savings. Intermittent is for things like annual property tax, summer vacation, new couch. I have a spreadsheet to track intermittent expenses, which is where I track short-term goals and savings progress.
I frequently see posts about online banks that you you categorize savings into buckets, which sounds like what you want.
I like this idea of having a bank account for intermittent savings. You're absolutely right about bucketing expenses. This is what I'm looking to do. Are you able to bucket money in your intermitten savings account?
This is what my budget is for, I use r/YNAB though a spreadsheet would also work. Then I make spending decisions based on the category amounts, not my bank balance
It lets me protect money from myself for all kinds of future needs without actually hiding it in accounts or buckets
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This is an interesting resource. I have never heard of this before, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. I wonder though if this is more focused on folks who need a little help managing their debt? I could be wrong. It also looks like this is a service that I would eventually have to pay a monthly fee to use.
Yeah, I use the much older, not supported anymore YNAB 4 for free. There are a few similar free options, or a spreadsheet. It’s essentially just an electronic version of zero based envelope budgeting
It is helpful for getting out of debt and that’s where a lot of marketing potential lies, so they do focus their efforts there. But we havent had non-mortgage debt in over 10 years, I find it an invaluable tool for allocating our money. It helps me ensure my vacations never threaten our ability to pay property taxes. And makes the trade offs clear when we decide to move money from one category to another. It told me o could afford a monthly Lego budget 😂
Get a HYSA with Ally and use the "buckets" feature to make separate savings goals (can add dates too). You can allocate all the money in the savings account into separate buckets.
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There is no "best" way to do this. It comes down to whatever works for you. It's fine to leave it in your regular checking account, if you can keep track of it and not spend it. Or you can create a separate savings account and xfer the money into that. You don't need to open a new account at a new bank for this. Most banks will let you open multiple savings accounts under your main account.
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TyrconnellFL t1_iycx92o wrote
Financially you don’t need any extra accounts. Figure out how much you need to save and put it in an account you have and don’t touch it. Use it only for whatever you’re saving for.
If “don’t touch it” is hard, you might want one extra account that adds a layer of difficulty to accessing the money, but I think that’s a little bit of a bigger issue than just banking.