Financial Questions

I would highly recommend Keenan Post of Post, Warren, & Lindstrom (contact info. below) to draft a will for you. He is very reasonable and does an outstanding job.

Post Warren Lindstrom, LLP
12980 Metcalf Avenue, Suite 180
Overland Park, Kansas 66213
###-###-####
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email: ____@____.com

I would not recommend 2 checking accounts. It's more things to keep track of and you'll probably have to pay a fee for checking.

Personally, I think depositing all your money into your savings account is a bad idea. A savings account is for savings. Put your money in the savings and keep it there. Do not take it out unless there's an emergency or it's to pay for the item that you've been saving for, in your case, a larger house. Stick with the policy of pay yourself first.

It sounds like you're referring to your regular checking account as your "cash" account and are using your debit card as cash. This can turn into a big debate, but I hate the idea of debit cards and refuse to use them. I pay cash or I use a credit card so I can get the rewards that are attached to them. No annual fees, and I don't overspend and always pay the balance if full. The best policy is use cash, if you don't have enough cash, you don't buy it.

I agree with the previous poster, only 1 checking account and 1 savings account - have them linked together so that if you accidentally overdraw, they will take it out of your savings. Checking account is where your checks should get deposited and savings for savings only. Savings account should be thought of as an account that is untouchable except for regular savings deposits (even if it is only $10/week) and in emergency situations only (such as car repairs, household emergencies like a/c or heater busted, etc).
The way I work things, is for larger monthly bills such as mortgage, car, school loans, I figure out what I owe on each and divide that amount by 4 (for 4 weeks per month) and add it up and put that amount each week into your savings account (because if it is not in your checking account you can't spend it). This is done as soon as we get our paycheck so there is no risk of spending this money. Then at the end of 4 weeks (when the bill is due), I withdraw that money from savings - this takes extreme discipline and good documentation as to what you are putting into your savings to hold for bills. If you can do it, it works great.
Good luck

O.k, I followed this for years before I was married, and then after we got comfortable, mainly my husband, I went back to it. One thing I will tell you not to do is have 2 checking accts. When my husband and I first got married we each had our own checking acct. Well, several times one would go into the negative, while the other still had money in it, much more than what the other one went into the negative. That's when I put my foot down and took over ALL of our finances. I changed and then we had ONE checking account for bills. Our checks were directly deposited into it, before we got paid I would go over our bills for at least 4 weeks in advance, decide how much needed to stay in the acct plus a little bit extra for a cushion. When we got paid, I would take out all the rest that didn't need to stay in there. We would put gas in the cars, by food, get what we needed, and only what we needed. We each got a little bit of cash for emergencies and the rest got put up. When the cash in our wallets was gone, it was gone.
However, I've noticed, when we both are using our debit cards and not sticking to this we use much more money than we expected. Hope this helps.

You would save more time by opening a money market account that you could easily transfer money into, or keep your current system of the savings to checking as needed. It could get difficult to manage the money in two different accounts.

If you have the time, you could better track you unnecessary spending by logging it in a spreadsheet, much like a business.

So, Utilities, Grocery, Toiletries, Education, Entertainment, Mortgage, Auto, etc. Then you can take a look and see when you are carried away in a category.

I'm probably pretty anal about this but financially I have been very successful at managing money and I'm comfortably retired. I develop a monthly budget based on annual projections (because of insurance, property taxes and other items that are not paid monthly). Then I write down every cent I spend by category, for example, house, food, health care, clothing, etc. Yup, I save receipts and update every week or so and I've been doing that for nearly 40 years. I used to use a journal, now I use Excel. I balance the outgoing to incoming. I can clearly see what can be moved to savings. I can clearly see areas where I should cut back. And I'm always conscious of what I'm spending, what I can afford and when I can afford it. It really doesn't take that long and it's so revealing. Try it for awhile.

We're still muddling on the savings/managing issue, but it did help us to each have our own personal checking--my husband has an agreed-upon amount direct deposited from his paychecks. He does not have to ask me if we can afford something we didn't budget for, if he can buy a CD (I keep the bank book so know the "real" balance, and I pay the bills), and that has helped him feel like he can relax about a bit of spending and me not get frantic because he bought a DVD on sale somewhere.

I have a separate account I usually write checks out of, I just transfer the money to that account. That is not a joint account (it actually was my "personal" account, but I never use it) and that lets him check out joint account and not be misled because something hasn't cleared yet. I have thought of a separate bill and grocery account, too, but am not sure if my brain could handle one more transaction register to balance. This month I am itemizing everything we purchase in a file on the computer with the cost and all the grocery receipt totals to see where we REALLY are killing ourselves with spending. It has been a scary few weeks of that. :)

We each have a checking account and 2 savings accounts and it works well for us. I also use the envelope system monthly as well, to ensure that purchases that don't happen weekly or even monthly. I put money aside weekly or biweekly for things like kids birthdays, christmas, car/house insurance, kids activities (that are generally paid in sept) etc etc. I put the money into a savings account for these and keep track of what money is for what purpose. It is working great for us, money is there for car repairs, I have a great christmas budget to work with etc, along with an emergency fund. I also don't pay a fee for having multiple accounts, because I have more than 1 type of account and a tax free savings account, I get free checking!

I'm not sure about an attorney, but I can tell you that if you follow what Dave Ramsey teaches it works!!!!! We have paid off almost everything (around 50,000) in 4 years. I have 3 kids and it really works. I use to think I wasn't wasting money until I kept track of every penny I was spending. Boy was I shocked. I went to using envelopes and a to the penny monthly budget. It was tough at first, but then it became very liberating. I knew what I had and what I could spend. Now it's a no brainer. I get looks for pulling out my envelopes sometimes, but then I just remind myself that those that are looking at me that way probably don't have the CASH to fill those envelopes for themselves. I really believe if you want to be debt free and have money do live the way you want to live it's the way to go.

we were inspired to deposit every cent we have into one account, pull out our "allowances" (which covers gas, fast food, incidentals, and cell phones- anything that we consider a "want" instead of a "need") and the rest stays put for bills and groceries. so far it's saving us some money. our allowances are generous, more generous than i imagined, and yet since we're putting a limit on ourselves, it's helping a lot. just our version. i think you have to do what you're comfortable with, or it won't work. good luck!

I have wrote down all of our monthly bills and divided it by four. That is the amount we need for bills each week. Our checks are deposited into a checking account that is paired with a savings account. I transfer the bill amount to our savings each week and then when I pay the bills, I use my bill pay on my banks website to pay them. I set up each bill I have to pay with the website (you have to enter the company you are paying and your account number) and then set up the payment. We then have a savings account at another bank that we have money deposited into that we don't touch. We don't have checks or an ATM card for it so we don't touch it. We then have another checking account at another bank that we put "entertainment" money into. That way if we want to go out to dinner or buy ourselves something, then we can only buy it if we have the money. We don't have any credit card debt and don't buy anything we don't have the money to buy!

I have a wonderful attorney for wills, but he is in downtown KC. Please don't let that stop you, as he is one of the best! Mark Gilgus @ ###-###-####. I work at a law firm (not Mark's) and have had him do all of my wills and trusts. He will totally protect your wishes and your child(ren)'s interests. I am very confident that, should I pass, my daughter will be taken care of and my money will go to those that I want to receive it. The most important part of a will is the guardianship portion for your child(ren). Just get a will done so your kids will be taken care of by who you want to care for them.

I can help some with the second question. We have several accounts too to help us save for things, but the best way that we've gotten our non-bill spending under of control is to do a cash pull every two weeks. We have a budget for groceries and meals out (usually just one date night per week) and we pull that every pay day. Once we blow through that money, that's it. So, if we have some crazy meal schedule one week and we have to get weird things at the grocery store that cost more, the next week is much simpler because we only use that money.

We've been doing this for about a year now and it's made a huge difference. We have a car fund set aside (since both our cars are paid off, this is where we pay ourselves a monthly car payment in case a repair is needed, etc), we have college funds and regular savings accounts. I would recommend if you would like to buy a bigger house eventually, you set up a house account where you can automatically save each month for an additional down payment (in case you don't get quite enough from your current house).

We found that our bills are pretty much the same every month, so the difference in our budget was made on spending at the grocery store and for entertainment. It's also nice to have cash on hand so you can tell exactly how much you have left to spend and see how much you saved if you were under budget that week!

Hope this helps. Like I said, it's certainly helped us!

Good luck!
Hilary

Cant help w/Q1
Q2. The best way to save money is to make a budget AND stick to it. An extra checking account might end up costing you more as the days of free checking accounts are disappearing. If you are having trouble sticking to a budget, then rather than get an extra account, go to the envelope method. Put all regular bills into checking account (as more and more things are being paid online these days). Daily expenses are budgeted for at the begining of the month and that amount is put into an envelope with an appropreate label (i.e. Dining out, or groceries). When the money is spent - that's it, no more til next month. All money left over is put into savings account.

The attorney we had to write our will has since retired, so I am sorry I can't help with that.

As far as your second question. Our family has several checking accounts, each for different things. We have one "main" account, but I have my own business so I also keep my own business account and every couple of weeks I write myself a paycheck and deposit it into the main account. It works quite well. We also do as a another poster says and have a "budget" that seperates out all of our money that we are expecting for a month into different categories...food, house, dr, utilities, etc. and then we also save a little each month to equal at leat one mortage payment a year just in case. We have done this since before we got married. I guess my husband being a banker helps because he is excellent with money.

Your idea to have two seperate checking accounts has really helped me to stay in my budget, so I highly recommend it. My husband is paid twice a month so half of the set monthly bills from each paycheck is deposited into a checking account that then has automatic debits for out utilities and household bills. It has been wonderful! I also generally shop at one grocery store and fill up the car there also, so on payday I get two gift cards from the store, one with the budget for groceries and one with the budget for gas. I will often have a few dollars extra on each card to roll over into the next pay period vs. having to put $5 in gas on the credit card the day before payday which is what happened on occasion before. It might be worth trying a McDonald's/Target/Walmart card with x amount on it for the month or week, and when it's gone, it's gone...

We actually have 5 accounts, two checking, two savings and an emergency fund. The one savings is just to have a free checking. This first checking all monthly bills come out of, save for mortgage and car. The other checking pays for our mortgage and car, with the second savings being money for yearly property tax, car insurance, etc. I find this systems works because whatever money is left over in the first checking account is truly "surplus" money. We can then go out for a nice dinner or I can buy myself some clothes!

And then we have the emergency account, which I have to admit I frequently have to raid for silly extra expenses.

We just did up a free on-line will. Our plan is to do real estate planning when we have 2 million in assets (life insurance isn't included in this amount, btw). We we see it, there is point wasting money on an attorney if you don't really need one.

I watched a show called 'til debt do us part.......try to watch a couple episodes & go to the website.........she does a weekly jar system (like the envelope system).........don't do 2 checking accounts