By Momcent's Mom, Krista
I don’t know if it’s because I worked at a credit union for 10 years or not, but I love budgeting and figuring out creative ways to make sure we have the money available for when we need it. I was just looking at our Canopy accounts and got thinking, I wonder if we are the only ones with nine, yes I said nine savings/checking accounts. I thought it would be fun to walk you through what we have and how we use them.
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Our savings account. We have $7.81 in our savings account. Now don’t stop reading because I can understand at this point you may not want to take any financial advice from me! But if you keep reading, you’ll find out why we only have that much in our savings account. You have to keep at least $5.00 in your savings ie: share account as that is your “stake” in the credit union as a member. - Our checking account. This is where we keep the money that we will spend throughout the month. We have enough in there to get us by until the next paycheck.
- Our Holiday club account. I’ve talked about this a zillion times before but this account is a lifesaver come the holidays. You choose the amount you want taken from every paycheck and it automatically gets transferred into your Holiday account. You earn a higher rate of return than a normal savings account and you don’t miss the money because it is transferred for you and you don’t even have to think about it. Your money is automatically transferred into your savings account on November 1st every year and then you start saving for the next year! Even if you don’t use the money specifically for the holidays, this is a great tool the credit union offers.
- Money Market checking account. This is where we keep the bulk of our money. We use it as our savings account because we earn a higher rate of return but unlike a term account, we have access to our money when we need it.
- Hawaii account. Did you know you can name your accounts whatever you want? We have a small amount of each paycheck put into this account. By the time we are able to travel again, we might have enough to actually go!
- College. This account currently has $0.16. Good luck kids! Haha. We use to keep money in here but have since opened up 529 accounts for the kids’ college funds.
- Car account. My husband gets a car allowance through his employer and also gets reimbursed for gas used for travel. This payment comes in once a month and we transfer it directly into our car account to start saving for our next vehicle. The hope is we are able to save enough to pay for our next car with cash.
- House payment. I remember when we first had a house payment years ago. We didn’t make a lot of money and our mortgage payment was literally one of our whole paychecks. So we’d get paid and a whole paycheck would go to pay our mortgage. Now that we are a one-income family we have learned that it works better for us to transfer half of our mortgage payment into this account out of every paycheck so come the end of the month when it is time to pay the mortgage, the whole payment is sitting there ready to be used.
- HOA. We use this exactly the same as our mortgage account. Each paycheck a small amount goes into this account and when our HOA dues are due every 6 months we have the money sitting there ready to go.
This system may sound crazy but it’s what works for us. If your savings/budgeting system isn’t working for you, change it! Do what works for you! Get creative. You will thank yourself later, I promise.