Two joint checking accounts???

[sunnysandiegan]

We received an offer from ING Direct to open a checking account and receive a $50 bonus. I'm all for free money! The fine print says we need to make three signature transactions in the first 45 days and then the $50 will be deposited on day 50. (I did this in 2009 with my personal ING checking account and it was easy.)

We already have well-established joint accounts at a credit union and have no interest in leaving. We do have a short-term joint savings account at ING already, which is used for vacation one year and home improvement the next. 2010 was a vacation year (April) and we haven't quite decided on when and what we'll do in 2011 for home improvement (several choices), but we automatically put money in every month.

Does anyone have two joint checking accounts? What do you use them each for?

Is there a limit for you personally on how many accounts you want to keep track of? DH & I trade off on taking care of the daily finances and it has been me for the last 4 years. I'm feeling tapped out on all the financial institutions we do business with.... This is sort of a different discussion and sort of related to this one. I am not one to pass up free money. $50 is $50! And we already do business with ING. I found myself asking DH to switch his personal checking account (from Chase to ING) and offering to let him have the $50 for himself. How sad is it that my main motivation was to have one less "bank" to deal with? (His checking account is the only account with Chase and I am not a fan of Chase at all, but that was not my main reason.) He isn't interested in switching, but I begged him to consider it. We use Quicken, so it isn't like I am doing pencil and paper accounting for each account. Yet, I am checking all these accounts (more than what I've listed here) every week and produce reports monthly. It is getting to be too much......

[texmati]

Originally Posted by sunnysandiegan

We received an offer from ING Direct to open a checking account and receive a $50 bonus. I'm all for free money! The fine print says we need to make three signature transactions in the first 45 days and then the $50 will be deposited on day 50. (I did this in 2009 with my personal ING checking account and it was easy.)

We already have well-established joint accounts at a credit union and have no interest in leaving. We do have a short-term joint savings account at ING already, which is used for vacation one year and home improvement the next. 2010 was a vacation year (April) and we haven't quite decided on when and what we'll do in 2011 for home improvement (several choices), but we automatically put money in every month.

Does anyone have two joint checking accounts? What do you use them each for?

Is there a limit for you personally on how many accounts you want to keep track of? DH & I trade off on taking care of the daily finances and it has been me for the last 4 years. I'm feeling tapped out on all the financial institutions we do business with.... This is sort of a different discussion and sort of related to this one. I am not one to pass up free money. $50 is $50! And we already do business with ING. I found myself asking DH to switch his personal checking account (from Chase to ING) and offering to let him have the $50 for himself. How sad is it that my main motivation was to have one less "bank" to deal with? (His checking account is the only account with Chase and I am not a fan of Chase at all, but that was not my main reason.) He isn't interested in switching, but I begged him to consider it. We use Quicken, so it isn't like I am doing pencil and paper accounting for each account. Yet, I am checking all these accounts (more than what I've listed here) every week and produce reports monthly. It is getting to be too much......

We do! We actually have quite a few, but I agree that they are a pain to think about. I wouldn't open a new acct for 50 bucks, but over the last few years we've been able to find a few accts with really great interstest rates (4%+), but the all have limits to how much money they'll pay that much interest on.

Is this an ongoing 50 bucks, or just once? Every time you open an acct you are spreading your self a little thinner, opening up yourself to the possibility of user/bank error, id theft, fees, and just plumb making a mistake. 50 bucks isn't worth it for me.

However, all our accounts are joint and we have:

• one at a nat'l bank, because DH likes to have a national bank-- this is what we pay our bills out of
• one at our local cu because they have a convenient safe deposit box location for me-- unused except to pay for the box
• one at an online bank for easy investment transactions (and they had a good interest rate at one point)-- these are used to fund/collect profit from non-sheltered investments)
• one at another local cu, for their great interest rate, and we wanted to put my income into another acct to see how we do without it. And we are in line for one of their safe deposit boxes. (just for savings. this is my SAH someday fund).

This does not count our IRA's, 401k's and credit cards (all with diff companies). We also both have different accounts for work related stock options etc.
I think it just comes with the territory of having a lot of balls in the air. But maybe we need to simplify!

[sunnysandiegan]

You just gave me a great idea, Texmati! Thanks!

It is a one-time $50 bonus, but it also earns higher interest than any other checking account I have seen recently.

The idea you gave me is to rearrange the way our funds go in and out of our main checking account. Keeping this nice and neat and easy to reconcile would be such a benefit to me right now. I could use the new checking account to handle all the weird things. I guess my ulterior motive, if you can call it that... , is to have DH come back to managing the finances on some level. I think it is time to rearrange how we manage our family finances....

[texmati]

Originally Posted by sunnysandiegan

You just gave me a great idea, Texmati! Thanks!

It is a one-time $50 bonus, but it also earns higher interest than any other checking account I have seen recently.

The idea you gave me is to rearrange the way our funds go in and out of our main checking account. Keeping this nice and neat and easy to reconcile would be such a benefit to me right now. I could use the new checking account to handle all the weird things. I guess my ulterior motive, if you can call it that... , is to have DH come back to managing the finances on some level. I think it is time to rearrange how we manage our family finances....

yes. Ultimately, the trick is to make the accts work for you, not the other way around. Each of our accts make life easier to manage, in addition to any perks. (now I"m going to go check out the rates on the ing account)

[lyterae]

We have two joint checking accounts, all of the money is first deposited in the "primary" account(that we pay the bills out of) and every week there are automatic transfers to our "secondary" account with our gas/grocery money for the week.

[EdnaMarie]

Yes. One in Germany where we reside, and one in the US.

[mnnice]

We have two joint accounts. One is an out of state institution that give us a great rate on checking currently 3.5% on the first $25,000 deposited (if you meet the programs rules which are several, but pretty straightforward). The other is in the credit union about 2 blocks from our house. It's so we have a local place to cash rebate and other small checks easily and to withdraw cash. We end up about once a month needing to withdraw more money than we could do in an ATM transaction.

For us I don't find it any harder than having just one, but I am also not the official checkbook reconciler person right now.

[Mulvah]

Edited.

Edited by Mulvah - 1/29/11 at 4:00pm

[zebra15]

Well I have two checking accounts for myself. (does that count?)
One for everyday stuff and one for OMG, DANG where did that bill come from stuff. Both are at the same bank, no fees, both have 'points' that can be converted to cash or other stuff. Interest is paid but is just a silly low rate these days.
I also have 2 savings accounts. One EF and one major savings. Same bank as the checking.

*said bank is online and I love them - however they are not ING*

[ChristyMarie]

We do as well. We meant to transfer everything to the new one (local bank) but kept the old one (national bank) because we had so many points on the debit card for airline miles. We ended up paying most bills out of the national one and I use the local one for all the household stuff. It works.

We also have a money market account but that's just for major stuff - house downpayment, when we bought my car, stuff like that.

[becoming]

We use one as our normal every day spending account. In the other, we keep enough money so that we could cover our bills for a month without any form of income. Our mortgage payment, insurance, and a couple of other bills are directly debited from that account, and when that money comes out, I transfer money from our general spending account back into that one in order to keep the same amount of money in the second one at all times.

[KristinaMarie]

We have a total of 5 joint checking accounts. They are as follows:

Grocery Account- We have a set amount that goes into this account every 2 weeks for groceries

Auto Account- All of our vehicle expenses come out of this account. A set amount goes into this account every 2 weeks as well. Once it reaches $2500 we transfer $1000 into a Money Market Account that has a high interest rate.

Credit Union Account- All of our bills are paid out of this account. There isn't a set amount of money, just depends on what the paycheck is.

Credit Union Account- Different CU- Escrow account. Our house is paid for so we put money aside every paycheck to pay the taxes and insurance

Money Market- Our emergency fund is in this account and the suplus from the Auto Account.

We also have 2 savings accounts that have money put in every payday, one is our sons college account and the other is just a savings.

We are online with all of them and find it very easy to balance the accounts. My husband pays all of the bills, and there are only 2 accounts that need balancing on a regular basis, the bill account and the grocery account. I do the grocery account, he does the bill account.

[Arduinna]

I personally wouldn't bother opening a second joint account for a measly 50 bucks.

[sunsetdancer]

I probably wouldn't bother for $50 but we did recently get an offer in the mail for $125 to open a new acct at a local bank. I really considered it b/c it only needed $100 and three debt card transaction to get the bonus. The acct had to be kept open for 6 months but I don't think there was much more than that but I also didnt look more into it.

I did find out that a friend who lives about 3 miles away (in a more expensive house) got an offer from the same bank at about the same time for $200 to open a new acct. As tempting as it was, I didn't bother opening the acct b/c I didnt want to deal with yet another acct.

[Arduinna]

Originally Posted by KristinaMarie

We have a total of 5 joint checking accounts. They are as follows:

Grocery Account- We have a set amount that goes into this account every 2 weeks for groceries

Auto Account- All of our vehicle expenses come out of this account. A set amount goes into this account every 2 weeks as well. Once it reaches $2500 we transfer $1000 into a Money Market Account that has a high interest rate.

Credit Union Account- All of our bills are paid out of this account. There isn't a set amount of money, just depends on what the paycheck is.

Credit Union Account- Different CU- Escrow account. Our house is paid for so we put money aside every paycheck to pay the taxes and insurance

Money Market- Our emergency fund is in this account and the suplus from the Auto Account.

We also have 2 savings accounts that have money put in every payday, one is our sons college account and the other is just a savings.

We are online with all of them and find it very easy to balance the accounts. My husband pays all of the bills, and there are only 2 accounts that need balancing on a regular basis, the bill account and the grocery account. I do the grocery account, he does the bill account.

How do manage keeping track of all that. I can't even imagine having a separate checking accounts each for my auto expenses and groceries. How do manage all their debit cards?

[heatherdeg]

We have multiple joint accounts, but with the same bank. One is the main bill-paying account, one is the "earmark"/sinking fund accounts (things that aren't paid out every month--like our car insurance, budgeted gift money, etc.) and then the emergency account (which is currently a savings account since we don't take from it often). All three are funded by splitting dh's pay via direct deposit.

I got an offer for $125 to open an account in another bank. I'm thinking of moving the sinking fund account there.

[enkmom]

We have our major checking account, where my husband's paychecks go. We live on this. We have a second account at another bank, where my part-time job paycheck gets direct deposited. We use this account for fun money or unexpected expenditures. We use it as more of a savings account, really. We also have our Health Savings account at a third bank.

[sunnysandiegan]

This has been an interesting thread. Thanks for participating!

Now, I have new questions...

How are y'all getting offers for $100+ to open new checking accounts???

Are y'all talking about multiple ordinary checking accounts? Or money market accounts with check-writing privileges or savings accounts?

We have a lot of various types of "savings" accounts, but only one joint checking account with actual checks (that we rarely write...LOL). Checking accounts don't pay enough interest for me, so I keep the balance just high enough to cover our monthly expenses with a bit of padding for peace of mind. Most of the income goes into the checking account and then automatic transfers to our various savings type accounts take big chunks out each month on set days for set amounts. I also go online and transfer funds out whenever the balance goes higher than I'd prefer.

What kind of interest rates are y'all getting on your checking accounts???

[sunsetdancer]

Originally Posted by sunnysandiegan

How are y'all getting offers for $100+ to open new checking accounts???

I get offers all the time in the mail and see them in our Sunday paper a lot. Sometimes its money, sometimes its the hottest new product like an ipod or Wii but its a lot better than the toaster they used to give out. LOL I live in an area that is being built up but all the seems to be being built business wise are banks, car washes and tire/car part stores. LOL. The banks are compteting to get peoples business. Like I said in my post before, I got an offer in the mail for $125. A friend that lives about 3 miles away in a more expensive house got an offer for $200 from the same bank. I should have taken her offer in and gotten more money! LOL

[montlake]

We have 2 that we use regularly. One is for everything except rent. Half of the rent gets transferred to the 2nd one each paycheck. That is where we also set aside funds for purchases we plan ahead. Like vacations or larger household purchases.