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22 Eargesplitten posted:Does that all seem reasonable? That should put me clear of the CC in 4 months like spwrozek said, and I can go back to just using it for rewards points at the grocery store and gas station like I intended. And with mint I can make sure I'm not going over on those either. Remember that few budgets are static but they all need to be realistic to be useful. If you feel you can handle this arrangement psychologically, then go with it for a few months and review. Maybe the expiration of that 0% is a good marker? There are debt repayment calculators online that will help you discover just how much interest you'll be paying on the remaining balance, and you can investigate different monthly payment scenarios at that time. Once the CC balance is nearly gone, you'll be in a good spot to determine how much can start going into your emergency savings fund, how much extra to your student loans, and how much is left for those capital expenses. You'll also have half a year of tracked expenses at that point, so you'll be in a better position to evaluate your actual monthly expenses. Let us know if you have more thoughts or questions.
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May 9, 2014 07:34
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Mint has been unable to connect to my bank account for the last 3 weeks with no fix in site. Am I completely hosed now? I've been using Mint and nothing else for years.
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Jun 10, 2014 16:54
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Try logging into your bank website directly. Sometimes a "hey do you want to sign up for automatic bill payment/paperless statements?" or some bullshit that prevents Mint from logging in.
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Jun 10, 2014 16:58
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I have, there's nothing. Nothing changed with online banking that I can tell.
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Jun 10, 2014 16:59
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xie posted:I have, there's nothing. Nothing changed with online banking that I can tell. Happened to me awhile ago when PC changed their authentication process. I made a support request to mint and sent an email to PC to tell them that I cared a lot that they worked well with Mint and it was fixed in two weeks. 
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Jun 10, 2014 17:20
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tuyop posted:Happened to me awhile ago when PC changed their authentication process. I made a support request to mint and sent an email to PC to tell them that I cared a lot that they worked well with Mint and it was fixed in two weeks. I've emailed both. Unfortunately nothing seems to have changed on my bank's side. The auth URL is the same at least. Hopefully this gets resolved, otherwise I need to move everything, I guess to YNAB. edit: My bank is a credit union, so while they're super responsive, they're not alienating millions of people if Mint breaks. xie fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 17:29
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Crossposting from BFC general thread and YNAB thread: You guys knew it was coming:  YNAB for $15 on Steam.And yeah, you can just download the standalone version from the YNAB website and plug in your product key. There is no need to run the program through Steam.
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Jun 26, 2014 18:08
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I'm seeing $15 off, for a price of $45.
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Jun 27, 2014 18:08
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Happiness Commando posted:I'm seeing $15 off, for a price of $45. It was a flash sale. It'll probably come up again for $15, just stay tuned.
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Jun 27, 2014 18:12
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While you're waiting around for the best deal of your life, don't let us stop you from trying any of the free methods or techniques of budgeting, about which people here are giving out free advice. 
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Jun 28, 2014 16:23
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I'm doing this as complexly as possible for my gf and I. Personal budget -> YNAB and Excel. Gf's budget-> Quicken and Excel. Transaction recon -> Quicken with Excel exports and analysis/tracking. Joint budget and expense tracking -> Excel (pivot tables). Seems to work well and it's pretty easy, at least for me. She watched me do it this morning and was rather baffled, but that's why I do the recon/Excel work...
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Jun 28, 2014 21:25
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I'm still stuck in Mint hell, now they've lost all of my transaction history and cannot re-connect to my bank. They have escalated it and say I may get a resolution in 2-3 weeks.  I know it's a free product but this is really unacceptable. It's really hosed me, I just moved into a new (more expensive) apartment this month and really need to track my new budget.
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Jul 3, 2014 19:13
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xie posted:I'm still stuck in Mint hell, now they've lost all of my transaction history and cannot re-connect to my bank. They have escalated it and say I may get a resolution in 2-3 weeks. Mint has never gotten along well with my bank (US Bank), which is why I've never really used it. They have some problem with how some banks handle security questions. This is why I just use Excel. Utilizing a few SUMIFS formulas and what not to categorize stuff quickly based on category and date range it works pretty well. I can download all of my transactions as a .CSV if I'm looking at monthly totals or manually fill in transactions if I want a real time outlook of what's in my checking account. I also use it to forecast which I don't really think you can do in Mint. I'm not sure as I never got to spend much time with it due to my bank. You could always grab YNAB if you're looking for a complete package, they even have a free trial. However I don't like the way it treats budgeting as I like to look into the future more than YNAB lets you. YNAB wants you to allocate dollars as you earn them so "every dollar serves a purpose". It works depending on your spending personality, but doesn't mesh well with mine. Again though I don't have a lot of experience with YNAB. EDIT: Plus you never know if/when they're going to decide they don't want to be a free service anymore and you'll be out of luck. Bugamol fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 19:27
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If I had to guess, they added a 2 factor auth to the site at some point and that's breaking Mint. However, mint was working fine for a long time after they implemented it, but either they de-authorized Mint as a "trusted computer" or changed something there. Excel is an option, but honestly I just get lazy with it because even with this new budget/expenses I make more than I spend. Besides eating out (which I've almost entirely curbed) I don't really have a spending problem, I just like to track. So it gets very easy to fall a few days behind and just say "eh" on the month. I'll probably just do my own poo poo in Excel from now on. I've opened up a rewards card as well, so that has most of my spending from June onward, I'm going to open another to cover where AmEx isn't accepted, and that should mostly fix the problem, my bank account will only be used for checks, bills, etc.
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Jul 3, 2014 20:47
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Bugamol posted:Mint has never gotten along well with my bank (US Bank), which is why I've never really used it. They have some problem with how some banks handle security questions. This is why I just use Excel. Utilizing a few SUMIFS formulas and what not to categorize stuff quickly based on category and date range it works pretty well. Fwiw pivots are way faster than sumif, IME, and expand literally effortlessly. Add in some conditional formatting based on a lookup range and you have an easy to read summary. You could do the conditionals based on days into month even.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:03
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My bank has awesome budgeting/tracking software called "Compass" that is free with my account. I've been trying to see if they offer it anywhere else, but haven't had any luck. I'll post some screenshots later when I'm not at work.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:15
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SiGmA_X posted:Fwiw pivots are way faster than sumif, IME, and expand literally effortlessly. Ya Pivots are definitely my weakest point in Excel. The last company I worked for hated them and hardly used them (plus didn't like me using them because they didn't understand them), so I haven't had much practice. I've moved companies and they use pivots for a lot of functionality, so I'm definitely going to start working with them even on my own. Any tips for someone who is excel experience but pivot naive?
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Jul 3, 2014 21:59
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Bugamol posted:Ya Pivots are definitely my weakest point in Excel. The last company I worked for hated them and hardly used them (plus didn't like me using them because they didn't understand them), so I haven't had much practice. I've moved companies and they use pivots for a lot of functionality, so I'm definitely going to start working with them even on my own. Any tips for someone who is excel experience but pivot naive?
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Jul 3, 2014 22:23
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I work for tips varying from $50 to $150 a day. Does anyone have good advice on budgeting when incomes vary?
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Jul 10, 2014 07:59
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Only budget what you have. Live on last months income.
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Jul 10, 2014 08:28
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Background: I'm 28 and support my wife and child on a single income. No debts except for Mortgage. My gross compensation is $83,300 plus large chunks of company stock (approx. $15-30k after taxes) which vest every 6 months. I have a 3% contribution going to my 401k and my total retirement savings are about $40k. My plan is to use the next stock vesting in November to complete my buffer and have about three months' income saved by the end of the year. I'd also like to up my 401k contribution. Current issues: *Getting the wife onboard with the budgeting process has been a little rocky. We are on the same page about not having revolving debts, but she does push our budget pretty hard. She resents me a little for being the sole breadwinner, but I'm unsure if her salary prospects would exceed childcare costs. Stay-at-home mom is a tough job. *Almost no savings coming out our monthly pay. Relying on stock to build our savings is a little risky but seems the best way right now, considering 42% is going to housing costs. *Probably need to save more for home maintenance. Our home is only 17 years old and in good condition, but we've had some issues pop up like a $700 oven repair bill earlier this year. *Our grocery budget seems crazy high, is $1000/mo normal for 3 people + 2 small dogs in the Seattle area? I've tried coupons but they never seem to be for items we actually need.  
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Jul 10, 2014 17:32
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Depends on where you're shopping. If you do all your shopping at Whole Foods or Pike Place, I can see it (especially if you keep buying the off season stuff). But, the key thing with grocery shopping is to buy on season and on sale, and fit your meal plan with what you buy not the other way around.
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Jul 10, 2014 17:59
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$152 a month for "hair"?  please tell us you are paying on a hair transplant or something. I can't imagine a dude would rack up that much even with weekly trims, does your stay at home wife get monthly colors or something?I'm no expert but I would wager you guys will do a lot better if she gets a job and puts the kid in daycare. Even in the extremely unlikely event that she only makes enough to cover daycare at least there's 8 hours a day she won't be spending money. She'll also probably be more hesitant to spend when she has to work for the money herself. Do you guys do most of your spending together or does she handle things herself while you are at work? What kind of clothes are you buying? Hard to see spending over $300 on clothes every month unless she's getting the kid designer clothes or something.
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Jul 10, 2014 18:57
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Maybe hair includes hair products? It's pretty high, but not like eye-poppingly so for two adults and a kid. I spend at least $45 a pop + tip on a man-cut every 6 weeks or so, but I like a decent haircut. Killmaster your rainy day and savings categories combined are smaller than any other budget category which is kinda crazy. $10 a month for house maintenance seems very low (especially in light of recently having a $700 expense come up), but I'm not a homeowner so what do I know. It should probably be bigger than your greeting cards budget maybe?
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Jul 10, 2014 19:13
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tesilential posted:$152 a month for "hair"? I totally agree about working out of the house to make one spend less. Unless that converts to spending more in eating out. Your groceries and diapers need to be 2 diff line items. And use cloth diapers. You live in Seattle, be more green.
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Jul 10, 2014 21:14
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When my wife gets home I'm going to give her a big hug and kiss since she only gets a cut every 6-8 months and likes her beautiful natural color the way it is.
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Jul 10, 2014 21:56
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For groceries we go to Fred Meyer/trader joes/Costco once a week. Diapers should only account for 30-40/mo at most. We mostly buy staples plus some frozen stuff from trader joes. We also buy baby food pouches still which annoys me; fuckers are $1.50/ea for 4oz of fruit purée and my daughter eats like 3/day. Diapers should be almost on the way out, my daughter is nearly 2.5 years old. I'll break it out going forward though. The previous poster hit the nail on the head regarding hair, I spend $37 every 6-8 weeks and she spends $115 every 6 weeks for a touch up. Next month shouldn't have any hair expenses. Bonus if I can get her to go back to her natural color. Clothing is high this month, wife did get a whole bunch of stuff though. She shops sales/outlets and doesn't buy designer. Interesting thoughts about wife going back to work, we definitely want her to go back but maybe not for a couple years. It might also cut down on tv watching so we can finally get rid of cable. Ideally I would like to get $200/mo going into the buffer, hopefully starting in August that will be easier. Too many categories are nonnegotiable 
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Jul 11, 2014 00:32
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Killmaster posted:Background: I'm 28 and support my wife and child on a single income.... There are quite a few things you could do to improve your situation, but much depends on "how you operate", your willpower, the ability to separate needs from wants, to plan for the future, and so forth. Thusly, I believe I can only offer random observations: Starting from the top, if you have natural gas, you should have no electric bill. Right? Well, it shouldn't be $120 for a two month period because that's my highest electric bill, and I live in a Seattle apartment with baseboard heat and it's only every $120/mo when it's... right now,  ing 85F outside and I'm running my air conditioner constantly just to prevent myself from exploding. Ask yourself where all that electricity is going, and then ask how you can cut back for the environment a little bit. Or at least so those of us without gas can actually... you know, not suffer from power outages caused by people with gas. Honestly, shouldn't it be like $20/mo?Phone. $170. You already have an Internet line. WTH. Shouldn't you have a corporate plan saver discount or something? That's $2000 per year. Think of something better to do with that money. Fitness, likewise $170. Is that all "fitness food", powders and such, or one-time expenses for equipment, or random purchases at the front counter of a gym? Why is it $150 over? Shouldn't that be viewed as entertainment/fun? All these random 'givings' categories... maybe you should combine them and start accruing some savings for those purposes, and then decide when it's reasonable to make use of them. Charitable, gifts, friends, greeting cards, and maybe even Christmas. Based on your current report, it looks "way too easy" to just add another category, throw up your hands and say "Oh well, I guess we'll recover that red item eventually!" I agree that you need to separate out food from non-food, so diapers get moved out, along with the random coffee that you buy in the grocery store, and maybe even all those paper towels (household goods) too. I have no reasonable estimate for diapers, but you're at $1150 for food+diapers right now, and that is... somewhat excessive. I do hope you're eating nothing but buffalo burgers and turkey breast with that kind of money. Whole Paycheck is expensive, but it certainly depends on what you buy. How much food are you throwing out? In all honesty, if one of you is at home full time, there's plenty of time to research food and product prices. The Internet is full of coupons, and you should be stocking up items when they're on sale, instead of buying them one week later when they're full price and you just realized you needed more. I'm not in a shared budget situation, but you really need to sit down and agree on the basic expenses, then probably the "family extras", and then figure out how you want to divvy up the fun money. We've seen a lot of fun money split evenly to each party, couples that are happy to include items that are out of balance because they know it vastly improves the other's health/mood/performance/whatever, but you really need to talk about it in terms of what is possible before you start having a contest. From $5000/mo, after those basic bills (at their budgeted amounts), you have $2464/mo. That's a lot of money. Supposing $750 for used groceries and diapers, and $150 for restaurants, that leaves you $1500 for all the other things. Now then, how much did you want to spend on frivolous entertainment? That's all you get. The rest goes to home, car, vet, medical, and so forth. The entertainment includes: Entertainment, newspapers, spending money, clothing, and so forth. Again, as you are likely in no position to claim just how much it's worth for someone else to get their hair cut every seventy three hours, it can often be beneficial to separate out some of the funding so each person gets their own allowance. I'd like to see your budget start some provisional savings now, so you can say that some percentage of the budget goes directly toward your normal expenses, and only a certain amount of it is used "just for emergency savings". You have to whittle yourself down from seeing "100% of the bonus is my emergency fund". Sorry, I guess I'm asleep. The composition of my post sucks.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:33
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Killmaster posted:trader joes Trader Joe's is literally just ALDI with inflated prices and a nicer atmosphere. If you can live with just the essentials and don't need gluten-free specialty poo poo, try ALDI.
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Jul 11, 2014 01:37
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Killmaster posted:For groceries we go to Fred Meyer/trader joes/Costco once a week. Diapers should only account for 30-40/mo at most. We mostly buy staples plus some frozen stuff from trader joes. We also buy baby food pouches still which annoys me; fuckers are $1.50/ea for 4oz of fruit purée and my daughter eats like 3/day. Have you tried making a menu plan for the week, creating a shopping list then sticking to that? I find unless I create a list and stick to it, I half-think a few menu ideas while at the supermarket and end up buying a bunch of random stuff or I've stocked up on stuff that I won't be needing for a few weeks. Also, could you and your wife try making pureed fruit for your kid instead of buying the pouches? I'd assume it'd be cheaper to just feed some fruit into a food processor?
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Jul 11, 2014 02:59
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Killmaster posted:... Clothing is high this month, wife did get a whole bunch of stuff though. Though it's self serving, I must suggest that you start by reading the OP in this thread. The important part of budgeting that you're missing is your plan for the next six months (or a year). If your stock vests every six months, and you intend to make that an integral part of your financial planning, perhaps you should use a six-month period for your budget. As mentioned earlier, you should start shifting your savings toward your monthly income, so you can reserve a good portion of the stock for capital expenses such as home repairs as clothing replacement runs for the kid. In particular, you need to itemize not just your planned expenses, but your savings for those expenses. Clothing is a good example where you should be saving monthly, but, perhaps, only spending every two or three months. If you decide to save $50/mo, then you don't go buying the $150 suit until you've saved for three months. Likewise with a category such as food, decide the maximum you should spend in the next six months and stick to it. Any carry-over should be reserved to cover inflation and increased food prices, not instantly spent "just because it's there". (In that sense, if you, as a couple, have no collective will-power to save 'food money', then keep the emergency savings for that category separate.) The other difficult decision is where to position the stock in your budget cycle. If you start your budget cycle with a large balance, you may decide that you have that much more money to spend monthly, and you've saved nothing. If you end your cycle with that large income, you may decide to spend it all on the most recent project, instead of deciding that you can hold out for a few more months. Dealing with it in the middle might be more complicated, computationally. There's no clear answer here; it all depends on your style. How to begin? Turn off your computers; get a few pieces of paper and a hand calculator (or abacus). Heck, you can start with $5000 in poker chips in $50 increments if you want. One one piece of paper you put the necessary monthly expenses, namely those bills, not forgetting that mortgages change and prices increase (so perhaps you ought to put in 2-4% extra each month to cover that?). After you've met the minimum monthly expenditures to sustain life and basic comfort, you start talking about what remains. Once you have your plan, you stick to it for your budget period (6mo?) unless you have a life-changing event or an emergency. If you end up $37 over on food one month, that's $37 less that you get to spend the next month. Yeah, go read the OP. You need a budget.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:56
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linuxgoober posted:I work for tips varying from $50 to $150 a day. Does anyone have good advice on budgeting when incomes vary? Technique One: Each time you get paid you take the expense to earnings ratio and drop it into your bill payment accounts/jars/envelopes. With the above numbers that's 83.3%, or $50 out of every $60. If you make $80 one night, put $50 towards the bills, keep $10 for 'everything else', and stash the last $20. When you earn $100 the next night, you now have $120 total to apportion, giving you $100 toward bills and $20 toward 'everything else'. This approach requires you have enough to pay the bills when they come due, so you need at least a minimal starting buffer in each account. You could divide monies weekly and then limit your 'extra' spending to the cash you have on hand that isn't allocated to bills, or decide to stash away a bit extra for bills because you know the coming week will be light. Technique Two: If you have no buffer, you have to work to create one. Allocate all income to the highest bill next due until you have the funds, then move to the next in the sequence, and so on. When you've completed one full cycle you start back at the beginning, even if that bill hasn't come due. Once you've made it back to the beginning, however, and you're saving for "next month's bills", you can use money at the end of each cycle for 'extras'. This approach is difficult to quantify because you'll have some other daily expenses that need funds, so you'll want to go into "emergency savings" mode until you get on your feet. In particular, holding off on the extras, being very cautious with food expenses, reducing entertainment costs, and even little things like turning off computers during the day, can be the difference between six weeks and six months to financial happiness. Technique Three: Your buffer is up and you have good estimates of your average earnings and expenses. Go full percentage budgeting on your income. Whether you earn $50 or $160, it all gets divided by the budgeted percentage into categories. You review your budget every month (at the beginning, or every couplefew months later) to determine if you're building up too much buffer, which permits you to shuffle a few percent between categories on your budget. Accounts always hover ahead by a fixed amount, over the course of several months, or even annually, based on the long-term variations in tips and the little nudges you apply to the budget.
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Jul 11, 2014 08:51
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Killmaster posted:For groceries we go to Fred Meyer/trader joes/Costco once a week. Diapers should only account for 30-40/mo at most. We mostly buy staples plus some frozen stuff from trader joes. We also buy baby food pouches still which annoys me; fuckers are $1.50/ea for 4oz of fruit purée and my daughter eats like 3/day.
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Jul 11, 2014 17:27
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EugeneJ posted:Trader Joe's is literally just ALDI with inflated prices and a nicer atmosphere. If you can live with just the essentials and don't need gluten-free specialty poo poo, try ALDI. If you are going to make a suggestion at least make one he can do. There are no ALDI stores in Seattle according to ALDI's website. EJ strikes again!
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Jul 11, 2014 22:37
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Going to run my budget past you guys to make sure I'm not missing something stupid. I screwed up my tax estimation and ended up owing more than expected and had to pull out my slowly accumulating emergency fund to cover it and some medical expenses that weren't specifically budgeted for. In addition, we just got stupid and spent too much money on poo poo over the last year or so. We've decided to get this poo poo back on track. And yeah, I know having two car payments is pretty dumb. We shouldn't have bought them, but they're here now and I'm not inclined to get rid of them aside from paying them off at an accelerated rated. The numbers may not perfectly add up, as I was transcribing a future budget out of YNAB. They add up in it. I'm looking for insight on the plan, or any glaring mistakes. Net Income: $6600 USD/Month CC Debt: Capital One Card (20%): $990 Discover(0% until October):6500 Slate(0% until 8/2015): $2500 Bills: Rent: 1150 Utilities:296 Internet/Phone: 105 Cell Phone: 130 Streaming Stuff: 35(Netflix, etc) Expenses: Groceries: 800(There are some dietary restrictions that make this expensive. Definitely an upper bound, though) Fuel: 400 Household Items: 50(Like a new frying pan after ours started flaking teflon) Rx meds: 10 Personal Care(Haircuts, the occasional pedicure): 40 Auto/Renters Insurance: 165 Pets: Food: 30 Vet: 30 Litter: 15 Debt: Car Payment 1:406 Car Payment 2:377 Student Loan: 215 Credit Card Debt: 1300 Savings: Emergency Fund: 250 IRA contribution: 50 Medical: 100 Car Maintenance/repair fund: 70 Discretionary Spending: 550 This is eating out and fun money stuff. We have about a grand in non-retirement savings left. The current plan is attack the debt pretty hard(The capital one card is getting paid off this month), with any unspent in non-savings categories going to additional CC payments. Once that's done, I split the category into savings and paying off the cars faster and fill in/bump up stuff like clothing expenses and car maintenance. Citizen Z fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 03:40
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Finally working on our budget in YNAB after buying it a year ago and moving across country recently. I'm reading, I'm taking one of their online webinars tomorrow, and doing their email 9-part series on winning the game of life things. First question that I have not been able to figure out though is.. how do I deal with non-monthly bills? For example, daycare costs a whopping 886 every 2 weeks, and we have something that runs 140 every 3 weeks.. how do I enter such things? I could see putting daycare as double that per month, but that doesn't always wash out correctly, but the 3-weekly thing is quite odd.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:26
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Personally I would do the math so that it zeros out over a year and carry the negative balance (if any) forward in the account. So for the three week thing, $202/month. To get more in the spirit of ynab, you should probably front load it a bit so you don't "go negative" in the second month.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:44
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(I hid a question to the thread at the bottom.)Citizen Z posted:Going to run my budget past you guys to make sure I'm not missing something stupid. This seems a reasonable plan if you can stay within your allotted discretionary spending. In particular, you can't be rolling things back on to credit cards that are already carrying a balance, or putting additional items on cards just "because they're at 0%!", or adding new cards; I suspect you already know this. Likewise, feel free to check your tax withholding in January, August/July, or whenever you get a raise. There's always the IRS Withholding Calculator (but don't believe everything is says). I will add a generic questioning comment, however, in response to your food item. This is (might be) an example of why I'm particularly fond of "emergency funds" being retained per category, as opposed to collecting all extra monies into one big bucket. Based on these numbers, just as an example, it will take you 26 months until your emergency fund is equal to one month's earnings; at that rate, getting "six months in savings" will take 13 years! --- which is obviously 'wrong' because you'll have paid back debts and can focus on that savings instead, etcetera. On the other hand, you have a food budget that is reasonable given the circumstances, but for which you know there is likely to be extra each month. Were you to spend reasonably in that category but save $830 toward it each month, you would have a full, extra month of food monies available after... 26 months. In the latter case, however, you wouldn't be staring at an account that's around $3000 for a while, then $4000... a big chunk of money just burning a whole in your pocket. Saving food money in its own category changes the game from "Geez am I going to be able to stay under this month  " to "Woohoo, I had $120 left over this month!  ". When you review your budget, you can do a quick check to see how far ahead each savings category is, and adjust as needed based on the types of emergencies you've encountered, how your expenses are changing, and so forth.Moving on to the discussion question, then: How are you (everyone in the thread) storing/allocating your emergency savings? If you have a single line item for emergency savings, under what circumstances has the balance gone down? Have you misused the money? For those saving within each category independently, are you meeting your savings goals?
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Jul 12, 2014 16:55
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:How are you (everyone in the thread) storing/allocating your emergency savings? If you have a single line item for emergency savings, under what circumstances has the balance gone down? Have you misused the money?
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Jul 12, 2014 20:27
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Yeah, that attitude with the card and some lax control got us to our current issue. I gotta keep that attitude up. I like the idea of budgeting a bit extra. I did for a few things, but may fiddle with the numbers to get some excess funding in major categories. As far as the location of my emergency funds: I keep an extra $500 in the account that all the bills auto-pay out of. I used to keep an extra $1000, but I never needed more than $400 to smooth any hiccups between pay periods vs draft dates. I keep the remainder in an online savings account that can hit my checking account within 2 business days. I think I'm getting .75% on it. I keep some longterm goal savings in a Betterment account that, so far, has gotten pretty good returns. I can also get to that within a few days if necessary, and it acts a secondary poo poo-really-hit-the-fan account.
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Jul 13, 2014 02:10
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