How Many Savings Accounts Should You Have?

*This post may contain affiliate links, please see my disclosure

I love budgets, but the budget is simply a tool to help you save more money!

The whole point of tracking your spending, lowering your expenses or finding extra income is to help you increase the amount of money you can save every month!

But where do you save that extra money? And what is it for?

I want to show you my personal savings account strategy, and why I have multiple savings accounts, for different purposes.

How many savings accounts should you have?

You need AT LEAST 3 savings accounts (but probably more like 13!)

The 3 Types of Savings Accounts You Need

One of the best ways to organize your money is to create separate “sections”.

These sections will help you create concrete goals for spending, saving and investing toward your goals.

For example; In your budget, I tell you to organize it by splitting your budget into Income, Bills, Spending and Savings.

For your Savings, you need to create 3 “Sections” to keep your money and your goals on track.

At a minimum, I recommend opening 3 types of savings accounts:

1. Your “Month Ahead” account. This account also doubles as your beginning emergency fund, and is meant to help you get 1 month ahead of your expenses.
2. Your “Emergency Fund.” This account is where you want to build your 6-12 month savings to create a large buffer between you and LIFE.
3. Your “Savings Buckets.” This is where I recommend saving up for infrequent expenses. And I also recommend having more than 1 of these!

These 3 savings account will help you start saving money is a MORE intentional way, and help give your money PURPOSE!

Savings Account #1 – Month Ahead Account

When starting your financial journey, I always recommend building a savings buffer before tackling debt or pursuing any other financial goals.

Why?

Because LIFE HAPPENS! And living paycheck to paycheck is stressful. And having some savings set aside help you stay on track with your money and AVOID DEBT (aka credit cards!) when something comes up.

The easiest way to do this is AUTOMATICALLY!

I recommend setting up a savings account, name it “Month Ahead”, and start transferring money over there every paycheck.

Oh, and you might as well earn some interest on it as well.

The CIT Savings Builder account is earning over 1% interest, and makes is super simple to set up a transfer, every payday.

Once you open an account, you will connect your checking account, and can setup a “recurring transfer” that moves over $50 or maybe $100 per paycheck. You will quickly build that buffer, and eventually, get a month ahead of your bills.

If you want to build a habit of saving the easy way, check out the CIT Savings Builder Account today!

Savings Account #2 – Emergency Fund

Personally, I like to have my Emergency Fund in a Money Market account. I want it earning some interest, and I also don’t want it anywhere near my Checking Account.

Why?

Because I’m the type of person who will see a big balance, get comfortable, and start finding ways to spend it REAL QUICK! (Hello new Drone!!!)

For me, out of sight, out of mind works really well for our Emergency Fund.

Personally, we have our Emergency Fund put away in a CIT Bank Money Market account. They make it SUPER SIMPLE to open an account, and you can start funneling money their with their app.

And I literally just remembered the account was there while writing this (seriously, ask my wife, I was like “oh right, we have thousands put away over there!!! BONUS!”).

It really works! So if you want an account that stays away from your Amazon shopping cart, and also earns some interest, check out the CIT Money Market account!

Savings Account #3 – Savings Buckets

Yes, I have 10 other savings accounts.

Trust me, it’s for a very good reason!

If you read through my guide on budgeting, you know that Savings Buckets help me save for infrequent expenses throughout the year.

And the best way to do this is transferring money each month into separate savings accounts for each bucket.

I am using CapitalOne 360 savings accounts for this, here’s a quick screenshot of what the app looks like with multiple accounts:

You can label these whatever you want, but the idea is to save a small amount of money in these each month toward an upcoming expense.

I recommend opening as many as you need to save up for those infrequent expenses!

Savings Account #13 – Credit Union

This one is the savings account that came with my checking account. I honestly don’t use it much.

But I want to encourage you to use a local Credit Union for daily banking if possible for your checking account. They usually have very few fees, and they don’t try to nickel-and-dime you to death.

Plus, you can use the Credit Union Co-Op network to find fee-free ATM’s near you!

Do You Save Money?

Bottom line: I like to save money. I like to help people with their budgets so they can save MORE money. And being strategic with WHERE and WHY you save your dollars can help you have an organized financial life.

CIT Bank and CapitalOne are my go-to accounts, and they make is easy to make saving a part of your day-to-day life.

So, are you ready to start saving more?