As the title says I am trying to see where people stand on this. Obviously this is all personal preference. But that is what I am after.

After depleting our savings when buying our apartment 2 years ago, we’re about to cross 6 months liquid savings in just plain old savings account with ability to immediately withdraw money.

(To clarify that is 6 month assuming 0 income, which is very unlikely given the social system of our country - so realistically we have even more in savings.)

As you can imagine, the interest in this account is not great, so I want to set a limit as to when we stop dumping every spare penny into the savings account and begin doing other things (likely try to invest).

  • sugar_in_your_teaEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    You may be interested in switching your checking to a brokerage like Fidelity or Schwab. Some benefits:

    • at least at Fidelity (haven’t checked Schwab), your checking can be invested in a money market fund - mine gets >4% interest
    • access to your Treasury ETF much sooner
    • Fidelity and Schwab refund intentional ATM fees (depending on account type)

    Basically, you’d get better interest in your checking and fewer accounts overall.

    I switched late last year and I love it. My structure is:

    • Fidelity Bloom Spend - main checking, core is SPAXX, only has 2-3 weeks spending money
    • Fidelity Bloom Save - main savings, core is SPAXX, and has ~1 month spending money, plus Treasury bills that make up the rest of my efund
    • Fidelity Cash Management Account - usually near $0, but I’ll load it with some cash when I travel so I can use the free international ATM feature as needed, core is a basic savings at ~2.5%

    SPAXX gets just under 5% right now, and it’s nuts that I’m getting that in my “checking.”