What kind of bank account for small savings?

[Spanelli8706]

I use a local bank with online bill pay and keep a steady calendar of all bills and budget it usually once a week or so. I have an emergency/savings account there as well. I also have a savings account at the bank where my parents bank in FL. Occassionally, I send my mom a rebate check or consignment check and she deposits it for me there. I like this because I have access to view my funds online, however to withdraw money it's a hassle. I have to either be there in person or my mom has to go take money out for me and mail me a check.

[queenofthehivemomof5]

If you are saving long term for things like travel, clothing, etc and do not need the money from these parts of your budget you sure can have separate accounts for them.

Others have mentioned it but I really like ING Direct online bank for saving accounts. You open one account, and here is the cool part, within that one account, you can have as many sub-accounts as you want.

For example under my one ING account I have:

Emergency Fund
Christmas Fund
Travel Fund
Husband's Toy Fund (he is saving up for a ATV or some other such junk...)
Insurance Fund (we save up all year, and pay our insurance just once a year because we get a discount that is better than the interest we could earn on the money)

And we have been known to set up short term accounts for something like we wanted new iPods...so we set up an account and saved $20 a month for new iPods.

The thing that I love about an ING account is that it takes 3-5 buisness days for money to be transfered to my regular checking account so I cannot take money out just becaurse I want to. I have to plan it and wait. It prevents us (my DH more than me) from just raiding our savings accounts for junk)

We do have a way to pay for true emergencies though we keep $2000 in a savings account tied to a ATM card so that if there was something like a car repair we could pay for it right away and not have to wait.

I am right now working on a new fund for home repairs. We just bought our first home and I need to put future repairs on my budget. Already I know that we will need to paint the entire inside of the house because flat paint if for folks without kids or for people that NEVER touch the walls. LOL