The Side Effects of Scattering Your Money
I’ve noticed a sudden unintended consequences of having my money scattered over multiple checking and savings accounts… and it’s a good thing! At the beginning of next month we will be refinancing the house (the appraiser comes today). Since we won’t have a house payment in January, that money was to be used to pay for the sales tax on the new car we purchased.
The sales tax is due by the 7th (30 days from the purchase) and I will get paid again on the 3rd, so no big deal. We’ll be down another couple hundred dollars in the checking account by then, but should still have plenty of money left that, in addition to the paycheck, can pay for the taxes without hurting us at all.
It was when I was looking into that when I realized something. I’ve now got 3 new checking accounts (1 just for the bonus and the 2 new ones I want to use going forward) and those combined have $250 in them at present. Then, since I changed the direct deposit on my part-time job, I also have about $600 in a savings account also. I can’t remember the last time I had that kind of money sitting around somewhere else and still had plenty of money in my spending account. Life is good!
It was such a great feeling to know I had that money sitting around. I can’t spend it immediately if I want, but I can get access to it within a few days should an emergency arise. I’m going to like this having accounts scattered around thing. Right now I’m just waiting on my new checks to arrive so I can fill out my change in direct deposit for my current job and have that start by probably the 2nd paycheck in January. That will be perfect because it will get to me at a time when I have almost no bills to pay yet in the month, so the change of Bill Pay shouldn’t be too painful.
