Keeping Up With The Accounts

We have 12 bank accounts. How does this happen? Quicken used to be a simple program to use, but not anymore.

In the beginning, there was just Momma. I had one checking account and one savings account. When my three young ladies started receiving child support, I opened a savings account for each of them, those accounts each receive 10% of whatever support is received.

Enter Mark, and his checking and savings account. When we combined households, we didn’t combine accounts. Not for any other reason than we have automatic payments coming out of each and going into each account that would be a pain to consolidate. Not to mention that the tax debt liens do not impact my accounts the way they do his.

Last year, I got an annual bonus from my employer. I used that to start my first ING Direct savings account.

At the beginning of this year, Mark and I went into business, necessitating opening two new business checking accounts. *Note: If you intend to receive wire transfers, you should have one account for only wire transfers, and one account for all the rest of the transactions.

Once we started living on the money that I’d been stashing into our ING Direct account, I thought it would be a good idea to move $1000 (standard emergency savings, read more about it at: Being Frugal, Paid Twice, or Get Rich Slowly) into a separate ING Direct account, so that I wouldn’t calculate it when determining available funds.

Then, once Mark and I started receiving payments for the consulting, I opened an ING Direct Business Savings account so that we can earn interest on the taxes we must pay quarterly.

I think that the next project will be to simplify these darned accounts. But how?

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Tagged as: bank accounts, Being Frugal, Business, checking accounts, Get Rich Slowly, ING Direct, Paid Twice, savings accounts