Ronnie writes in:

I’m curious what your thoughts are on fractional reserve banking. It seems to me that this method of banking is a high risk form of financial management on the part of the banks. The difference (sort of) between Maddoff and FRB seems only different by institution: as long as there is more money coming in it doesn’t matter that a small percentage is going out. This system seems based entirely on debt, which is not ideal for a country, I wouldn’t think.

What Ronnie is really asking about is fractional reserve banking, which is the standard practice of pretty much every bank in the modern world.

What’s fractional reserve banking? It’s easiest to illustrate fractional reserve banking by giving an example.

Let’s say a new bank opens up in town and you’re the first person to open an account there. You deposit $100. Then, another person stops in seeking a loan of $80. The bank gives the person that loan, leaving only $20 in their reserves. Of course, the interest rate they’re paying you on your account is low - say, 2% - and the interest rate they’re charging on the loan is likely higher - say, 6%. At the end of the year, they’ll earn $4.80 in interest on their loan to the customer, and then pay you $2 in interest on your deposit, keeping $2.80 for themselves.

Now, if you were to decide that you wanted your full balance back, the bank would obviously be in trouble. They wouldn’t have the money to give back to you, and thus they’d go bankrupt (and you’d have to rely on FDIC insurance).

What actually happens is that a bank has a lot of depositors. Let’s say 1,000 people all deposit $100 in the account, then the bank lends out $80 to a different group of 1,000 people. This would leave $20,000 in their coffers. Thus, even if 150 of the original depositors came in and asked for their money back, the bank would be completely fine.

Fractional reserve banking simply means that a bank is only required to keep a fraction of their deposits on hand - they’re allowed to lend out the rest to people who want to borrow money.

The benefits Without this system, it would be almost impossible to borrow money for any purpose. Loans would basically only exist between individuals - you wouldn’t be able to just go to a bank to borrow money for a car, a home, or to start a business.

At the same time, the idea of a checking or savings account as we know them would go away. We would have to pay a sharp fee for such services - or else keep all of our money at home.

The risks The biggest risk in such a system is the potential for bank runs. If the bank is making poor decisions with the money they’re lending out (or investing), then people who hold accounts at that bank might get nervous and start demanding their money in droves. If enough people tried to withdraw their money at once, the bank would eventually not have enough to pay the depositors and would go out of business. This happened with the Northern Rock bank in 2007 and with IndyMac and Washington Mutual in 2008 - in both cases, the bank showed signs of holding a lot of bad investments, causing depositors to start clearing out their accounts very quickly, driving the banks out of business.

My take On one level, I do understand Ronnie’s comparison of fractional reserve banking to the Ponzi scheme perpetuated by Bernie Madoff - both of them relied on a continual flow of deposits and both collapse if the deposits stop flowing.

The difference between the two is simple, though: Madoff’s scheme could not earn money without new depositors constantly entering the system. He needed new investors so that he could keep paying old ones - and that meant that it was inevitably going to fail.

This system, though, can work forever provided that a large number of depositors don’t demand all of their money at once. Since the rate of interest the banks pay to checking and savings accounts is lower than the rate of interest the banks charge borrowers, the system also earns money in perpetuity, something that Madoff’s scheme doesn’t do.

In short, I think fractional reserve banking is something of a necessary evil, given the benefits (individuals are able to borrow money, banking services are free and often earn depositors some interest).

If this still concerns you… Some people are still left feeling pretty uncomfortable when they learn about fractional reserve banking. If you’re left feeling this way, keep two things in mind:

Your checking and savings accounts are insured by the FDIC. Currently, that insurance is for up to $250,000 - it’s scheduled to drop back to $100,000 at the end of 2009, but that may change. Make sure your account is insured (if it’s in an American bank, it probably is) and hold on to your bank statements, as those may be the proof you need to get your money if your bank were to fail.

You shouldn’t have all of your eggs in one basket. I would personally feel concerned if my account balances were pushing the FDIC limit. Instead, I would be investing some of that money in real estate, stocks, government bonds, or other things - the money will work much better for you there.

Not too long ago, my wife and I combined our checking and savings accounts, mostly in an effort to make our personal finance management simpler.

However, instead of simply closing out our old checking accounts, we made the active decision to leave both of these open as free basic checking accounts. We left a couple hundred dollars in each account, put the checkbooks from these accounts into storage, and moved on with things.

Why would we leave these old accounts open? It’s simple - they’re backups.

The Purpose of a Backup Checking Account A backup checking account is exactly what it sounds like - it provides an easy solution in the event of an emergency. Here are some situations where it might come in handy.

Identity theft Let’s say your identity is stolen and someone drains all of the money from your primary checking account. During the interim period where you’re trying to get that situation resolved, you’re likely going to continue to need to carry on many banking activities - writing checks, using online banking, hitting the ATM, and so on. This is where your backup account can be useful. Just simply re-route many of your automatic deposits to this backup account for a while and use it as your primary account for a month or two until the situation is resolved.

Emergency money needs Another useful purpose for a backup checking account is for emergency money needs - the balance in the account can act as something of an emergency fund. In a true pinch, you can utilize the balance of this otherwise untouched account to help you make ends meet.

Teller access As more and more people move to using online banking services such as ING Direct (which is the bank I use), they’re often losing some of the convenience that comes with having a live teller available. For simple services such as cashing checks, exchanging currency (turning pennies into dollars, for example), and so on, a live teller can be invaluable. Thus, maintaining a checking account at a brick-and-mortar bank in your community can not only provide a great backup account, but it can leave the door open to many services one might otherwise lose out on.

Getting One Yourself (Without Switching Banks) It isn’t necessary to switch banks to get a backup checking account, although a bank switch is a great opportunity to get one (by leaving your old account in place).

My suggestion? Simply open a very basic free checking account at your local credit union. Get a checkbook for the account, then put those checks in a safe place and then forget about the account unless you have a specific need for it (teller usage, emergencies, or so on).

In effect, this is exactly what I’ve done with my old checking account. It’s now a very basic free checking account, with no maintenance fees or anything else. The account holds a small balance, and the checkbook for the account now resides in a hidden spot in our home. If there’s ever a reason for needing the account, I can simply go grab the checkbook and conduct business as usual, almost seamlessly.

A backup checking account is a personal security measure worth considering. It offers several little advantages at virtually no cost to you, and those advantages tend to shine when you need them the most. Think of it as a bit of security in the face of identity theft risk.

As I’ve mentioned before, my family has a pretty good sized cash emergency fund, somewhere around nine months’ worth of living expenses. Having that amount of cash available is a very nice security blanket for all of us, and in our savings account, it was earning roughly a 3% annual return. Safety, personal security, and a bit of income isn’t bad at all.

Quite often, though, I had the itch to find something better to do with the money. I eyed putting some of it in CDs (certificate of deposit, which basically means you give a certain amount of cash to a bank for a specified period of time - it earns a higher interest rate than a savings account, but you’re penalized most of that return if you cash it in early), but I didn’t want to lock up a huge amount of it for a long period of time. I wanted to always be able to have that cash when I needed it. After doing some investigation, I decided that a CD ladder was the right move for me.

What’s a CD Ladder?
Simply put, a CD ladder is a collection of CDs bought at regular intervals so that they’ll mature at regular intervals as well. Let’s say I wanted to create a simple CD ladder out of six month CDs. I buy one on the first of each month for six months. Then, on the first day of the seventh month, that first CD I bought matures and I collect a nice return. I can then either buy a new CD for the original amount and pocket the return, just keep all of the return and the original amount for some purchase, or I can buy a new CD for the total return. After that, each month, a CD matures and I can either buy a new one or use it for something else.

If you’re doing this with your emergency fund, you can set it up so that you always have a month’s worth of living expenses available in cash and each of the CDs represents a month’s worth of living expenses. Thus, each month, you’ll have a CD mature, collect a higher interest rate, and you can use the returns to buy another CD (if you don’t need it for an emergency), leaving you with a month’s worth of emergency fund at all times.

Why do this? Why not just keep all of it in cash? The biggest reason is that CDs often return a percent or two higher than your savings account. At ING Direct, for example, the CD rates range from 3.75% to 4.5%, while the savings rate is at 3%. Another reason is that by locking it into a CD, you’re not tempted to spend it.

How Are You Doing It?
I started my CD ladder in September by purchasing three $1,000 CDs out of my cash emergency fund. The total was a bit less than a month’s worth of living expenses. I bought a 6 month CD that returns 3.75%, a 12 month CD that returns 4%, and an 18 month CD that returns 4.5%.

So, in September, I held these CDs:
A $1,000 CD that matures in March 2009 at 3.75%
A $1,000 CD that matures in September 2009 at 4.00%
A $1,000 CD that matures in March 2010 at 4.50%

Notice that the shorter-term CDs don’t return quite as well. Specific rates vary all the time, but it’s a rather constant rule of thumb that longer term CDs return better than shorter term CDs. Thus, instead of just buying a single six month CD, I decided to spread things out to get a better return on at least some of the money.

During September, I kept building our emergency fund as I usually do, putting around 10% of our income into it (which is around 15-20% of our monthly living expenses). I’ll keep doing this for the time being.

At the start of October, I bought three $1,000 CDs again out of the cash emergency fund. This left me with six CDs:
A $1,000 CD that matures in March 2009 at 3.75%
A $1,000 CD that matures in April 2009 at 3.75%
A $1,000 CD that matures in September 2009 at 4.00%
A $1,000 CD that matures in October 2009 at 4.25%
A $1,000 CD that matures in March 2010 at 4.50%
A $1,000 CD that matures in April 2010 at 4.25%

You can probably see where this is going. According to my calculations, we’ll have about four months’ worth of cash living expenses in our emergency fund in February 2009 after buying the CDs each month (remember, I’m still adding cash to my emergency fund). Each month after that, a $1,000 CD matures. I’ll then buy a single 18 month CD for $3,000, which would be enough to sustain my family for a month. And I’ll repeat that for eighteen months.

In August 2010, I’ll own eighteen 18 month CDs which will mature in one month intervals, just like clockwork. If I have my calculations correct, we should still have roughly a month’s worth of cash emergency fund at that point. So, I’ll basically have 19 months worth of emergency fund, almost all of it returning 4.25-4.5% or so.

Here’s what things will look like at that point. I’ll have a savings account with one month worth of living funds in it. Each month, an 18 month CD will mature and the proceeds will go into that account - both the principal and the interest on that CD. At the start of the next month, I’ll buy another 18 month CD worth roughly a month’s worth of living expenses. And as long as we’re able to get by just fine on our normal income, I’ll keep this cycle going, as it’ll serve as a huge emergency fund that also returns at a pretty solid rate.

Why not invest it? This is the typical question I hear about cash emergency funds. Usually, such questions are implying that I should put that cash into the stock market and maybe earn a bigger return. I view this as an investment. Since I’m not saving this money for the long term - it’s a cash emergency fund, after all - I want it to be safe, secure, and stable. It needs to be there for me if I need it.

Another reason for doing things this way Following this plan enables something else interesting as well. When this is actually set up and working, it would enable either me or my wife, without skipping a beat, to go back to school. In truth, my wife is considering the move - she’s looking at perhaps going back to school for a master’s degree in 2010 or 2011. Putting this in place makes such a move quite possible.

If you have a big emergency fund that you won’t need all at once, consider starting a CD ladder with the money. Even a six month CD ladder can create a nice bump in your interest on your emergency fund without adding any risk.

Kathleen writes in with a good question:

A lot of personal finance books I read suggest putting your savings - especially stuff like emergency funds - in money market accounts. I’ve looked into them but I can’t figure out what the difference is between a money market account and a savings account. Why is a money market account preferable? What’s the difference?

First of all, let’s get some terminology straight. Most of the time, when a personal finance book refers to a “money market account,” they’re talking about a money market deposit account. A money market deposit account is a specific variation on a savings account that many banks offer. Sometimes, the term “money market” is used to describe money market funds, which are an investment vehicle not insured or backed by the FDIC and thus not a place you want to put your liquid cash savings.

Normally, when you deposit money in a savings account, the bank is extremely limited on what they can do with that money. For the most part, the only thing they’re allowed to do with normal savings account deposits is loan that money out to people who need to borrow money, charge the person borrowing a solid rate, and then pay you a part of that rate when it’s paid back. For example, the bank gets deposits that they charge 1% interest on, lend that money out at a 6% interest rate, then keep the 5% difference as their own income (gotta pay the bills, after all).

A money market deposit account is a bit different. The restrictions on what a bank can do with that money are somewhat looser - they can often invest that money in things such as treasury notes, certificates of deposit, municipal bonds, and so on in addition to the tight restrictions of a normal savings accounts. In other words, the bank can take your money and invest it in other investments that are very safe.

For you, the consumer, the differences aren’t that big. Both a normal savings account and a money market account are FDIC insured, meaning the federal government guarantees your deposits up to $100,000. Both types of accounts have some basic restrictions on how often you can withdraw from them, set by a mix of government regulations and bank policies, but for the most part, you’re limited to six withdrawals a month from either type of account.

Commonly, savings accounts at your local brick-and-mortar bank have a pretty low interest rate, but online-only banks (such as my bank, ING Direct) offer rates between 3 and 4% on deposits, with introductory rates sometimes higher than that. Money market accounts offer a rather wide range of rates and these rates often go up and down pretty regularly depending on the investments available to the bank.

Also, money market deposit accounts often have a few additional restrictions and benefits. Some may require a minimum balance; others require you to wait a few days (up to seven) for withdrawals. Some money market accounts, however, allow you to write checks from the account - often up to three a month. Consult the specific policies of any money market account you’re considering to see whether these restrictions and features are present.

In the end, for most people, a money market deposit account is essentially equivalent to a savings account. At your local bank, the money market account is probably a substantially better deal, as local brick-and-mortar savings accounts offer atrociously low interest rates. If you’re comparing with online offerings, though, quite often normal savings accounts offer rates very competitive with money market accounts and offer solid rate stability with no minimums.

Either way you go, savings accounts and money market accounts are the place you should keep your savings, especially if the money is for an emergency fund or another short term goal.

As most longtime readers know, I’m a very happy customer of ING Direct for both my primary checking account and my primary savings account.

Before I joined ING Direct, though, my primary bank was one of the largest banks in the United States, one that had a branch in the town where I attended college (I won’t name them because of libel concerns, but I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of them). I stuck with them for a long time simply out of habit - the status quo bias at work - but when I started to get my financial life in order, I began to seriously look at the ways that my bank was costing me money:
+ My checking account didn’t earn any interest at all. Just before I moved, they made a big deal about rolling out a 0.25% APY interest rate for the account.
+ The account also had a rather high minimum balance - $300, according to my notes. If you went below that minimum balance at any point during the month, you were dinged with a fee - $2.95 a month, if I recall correctly.
+ They also charged a monthly maintenance fee for a pretty standard online banking service. This fee was $7.95 a month.
+ The savings account offered only a 0.50% APY.
+ While there were a lot of ATMs in town that were fee-free, if you were in a town that didn’t happen to have a bank branch, you got dinged hard with an ATM fee.

These “features” added up to a pretty major money leak, so I went hunting for a new bank. I identified some features I found important (a decent interest rate, free online banking, no fee nightmares) and eventually wound up with ING Direct as my primary bank. Later, I found other features that would be useful (good customer service, a local teller window, etc.) that ING did well in some respects and not so well in others, but they’re still strong enough (and have treated me well enough) that I’m very happy as a customer.

In short, here are the factors I would look for when choosing a primary bank for my personal business, ranked in their order of personal importance. Please, in the comments, if you disagree with the ordering here, let me know why. Quite often, the importance of certain features varies depending on your life situation and experiences.

No (or very low) fees Before I switched to a bank, I’d want to know every fee that I’m going to incur during normal usage of the account. Maintenance fees are an absolute no-no, as they’ll eat all interest I might earn. I also demand a huge network of ATMs that are fee-free, especially in my local area, but also availability nationwide. This is make or break for me - if I get dinged with a fee or two a month, it eats up any interest I might earn and likely also costs me, too.

Some common fees to look for (and avoid) include minimum balance fees, ATM fees, regular maintenance fees, fees for online banking, and excessive overdraft policies. Make sure you know about these fees before you commit to any bank with your account.

Free online banking and bill pay Online banking and bill pay are essential, and the services should be free, too. The ability to pay my bills just by typing in the amount and hitting “submit” not only saves on the cost of stamps, but makes money management easier, too.

Customer service and ease of use Some people tend to pooh-pooh the value of good customer service at a bank. Those who do are ones who have never had a crisis where funds were misdirected by another agency or a similar mess. In those situations, good customer service is worth its weight in gold. For me, I must be able to talk to someone during normal, reasonable business hours. 24 hour customer support is a definite perk, as is the availability of a local teller window.

For day to day use, a bank that’s easy to access at all times without a bunch of hoops to jump through and a clear and easy to use interface makes all the difference. If you use your bank twice a week and a well-designed online banking interface saves you two minutes per session, that’s a savings of three and a half hours over the course of a year.

Generally, this is fairly hard to research when it comes to a bank, as most people generally just complain when service is bad but don’t say much when it’s good. Do some Google searching about the bank’s customer service (like “ING Direct customer service”) and see what you find out.

FDIC insurance This is almost a gimme for any bank in the United States, but it’s still important, and it can be vital if your bank fails, as with the recent trouble with IndyMac. Just make sure that your account is FDIC insured before putting your money in.

Interest rates Almost every article I read online seems to greatly overvalue interest rates, even claiming that one bank is better than another one because of a 0.5% APY difference. In my view, that’s nonsense. Look at it this way: 0.5% of $2,000 is $10. You can easily lose that much to fees in a month. Not having online bill pay can cost you that much in stamps. Poor customer service can cause all sorts of penalties and delays. In my view, all of those are far more valuable than a slight difference in interest rates. A competitive interest rate is required, but once you have that, the minor rate differences are trivial, especially when you consider how often banks alter their interest rates for promotions and in response to Federal Reserve moves. What’s competitive? As of this writing, you should be receiving at least 1% on your checking and at least 3% on your savings. If you’re not clearing that much, then interest is a problem.

A paper checkbook This is actually less important than you might think. I was very hesitant to switch to a bank that didn’t offer paper checkbooks and, for a long time, I held onto my old checking account just to keep paper checks around. What I eventually found was that I simply didn’t use them very much in the presence of online bill pay. I paid most local bills with cash or with credit cards and used online bill pay for everything else. In fact, after going for several months without writing a check at all, I’m about to close that account.

Putting This to Use
The choice of a bank can seem trivial to some, but it’s a surprisingly important choice. From my own personal experience, switching to a better bank saved me about $40 a month in improved interest and reduced fees - that’s $480 a year. Spending an hour or two now to find a better bank - especially if any of the factors above set off warning bells for you about your current bank - will definitely pay off over the long run.

Use the above checklist of features as a starting point. Decide for yourself which features matter the most to you and focus on them. Use Google to find information about the banks you might be interested in - and stick with reputable banks.

My Personal Experiences
I use ING Direct as my primary bank, but I dabbled with other banks for a period of time in order to try them out. Here are notes on my other experiences.

HSBC Direct I signed up with HSBC Direct simply because their interest rate was higher than ING Direct (it usually runs about 0.3% higher than ING) and I was looking for a savings account to sock away my emergency fund. While it worked well as a place to simply drop cash and leave it, the interface was too clunky to serve as my regular online bank. I had repeated difficulties logging on (their system requires you to use a keyboard-like interface with your mouse that has some compatibility issues) and also had a very difficult time initiating and stopping regular balance transfers. It’s a solid place to set up an emergency fund or a savings account for a specific goal, but it’s frustrating to use as a regular bank.

Washington Mutual had the best competition for ING Direct in my experience, offering a consistently higher interest rate on the savings accounts (as much as 0.75% higher than ING), strong customer service, and free paper checks for life. However, their checking account offered no interest rate at all. If I were to carefully manage the account, I could juggle my way around that, but for me, it wasn’t worth the effort, so I’ve just left the account idle. I have considered using it as an emergency fund, however, but as of yet I’ve stuck with the convenience of multiple savings accounts at ING.

My local bank blows away the others on customer service. I can talk to a teller during normal business hours and get services like cashing in change for free, free and immediate check cashing, and immediate resolution on banking issues (I don’t use this bank personally, but am involved with community organizations that do). Unfortunately, their rates are simply not competitive with some of the online offerings. I have considered opening a checking account there anyway just for the convenience of check cashing and change redemption.

Whatever you choose, choose wisely and carefully and do your own research. A poor banking choice can be a constant small drain on your personal finances, while a good bank can not only patch the leaky holes, but provide good service and drop some additional money in your pocket as well.

As regular readers know, I’m a very happy user of ING Direct. They provide my checking services, my savings services, and all of my online bill pay services. They even allow me to set up sub-accounts so that I can save for specific goals. In my opinion, ING Direct is the best of the full-service online banks, and I’m a happy customer of theirs.

Because they offer all of these useful tools, over time, I’ve begun to use ING Direct as my primary budgeting tool. I can set aside money in specific small pools, automatically transfer money back and forth, set up automatic bill payments, and so on. These tools allow me to effectively manage my money.

Here’s a walkthrough of how I do it.

Step Zero: Get An Account
You don’t necessarily have to have ING Direct as your bank to do the following. You merely have to have a bank that has online checking and savings access and online bill pay. Many banks offer this - Washington Mutual and E*Trade Financial are two well-known national banks that offer similar services, and your local bank may offer it as well.

Switching to a new checking account is easier than it might sound. I’ll quote the steps you need to take from an earlier post:

1. Open the new checking account. The first step is the most obvious one. Open the account and get the information you need: account number and routing number. Order checks if you need them. In other words, be prepared. Your new bank may also need the information for your old checking account so you can transfer money from the old account into the new.

2. Make a list and check it twice. Make a detailed list of all automated withdrawals and deposits from your current primary checking account. The best way to do this is to simply watch the account for a period of two to three months so that you pick up as many of these as possible.

3. Balance your checkbook. Make sure you’ve accounted for everything outstanding so there are no nasty surprises during the transition. Figure out what you have in the old account down to the cent so that you can avoid overdraft dangers.

4. Switch over all deposits and withdrawals at once. I find this is easiest to do by switching over the deposits a bit earlier than the withdrawals, so that there is money already in the new account when deposits begin to be set up. I’m also incredibly careful about such things.

5. Leave the old account open for a while with a balance in it to catch any missing deposits or withdrawals. Even though it might feel like the balance in the old account is just sitting there wasting time, it’s actually there to protect you against your own poor memory. Just be patient and give it several months; you might surprise yourself.

6. Close the old account. Be sure to leave a correct address behind. You might also want to end other services at that bank, such as a safety deposit box.

If you’re switching to ING’s Electric Orange checking, it may be useful to skip step #6 and leave the old account open, especially if there are no fees on it. I’ve kept my old checking account open for two conveniences - cashing checks with a teller and the ability to write paper checks (on the rare occasions when I do this any more, maybe once every three months).

Step One: Set Up Automatic Bill Payments For Monthly Bills
For every regular monthly bill you have, you can set up an automatic bill payment for that bill so you don’t have to worry about paying it on time. It’s quite simple.

First, click on the “Electric Orange” tab on the top, then click on “Free Bill Pay.”

Add a new business (with the name, address, and account number) by clicking on the appropriate link, then add that bill in below. You can specify the amount, the date to pay it, or the regular date to pay it.

Once you’ve done this, the next scheduled payment shows up in your basic checking account screen, so you can easily see what’s coming up and when.

Step Two: Set Up A Sub-Account For Each Irregular Bill and Savings Goal
What about the other bills, the ones that only come around every several months and seem to always crunch the budget, like homeowners’ insurance or car insurance? For those, it’s useful to set up a sub-account to slowly set aside money so that when the big bill comes, you’re ready. Here’s how.

Once you’re logged in, in the upper left, click on the “Open Account” option. You can see it clearly in the picture above.

Choose to open a new savings account on the next screen The “Open Now” link in the image above is where you should go.

From there, the process is really straightforward - you can call each account you create whatever nickname you like to identify it as a distinct fund: an emergency fund, a “house maintenance fund,” a “vehicle replacement” fund, a “house insurance” fund - whatever works for you.

After that, you should set up an automatic transfer into that account. You can do that by clicking on the Transfer Money tab along the top.

Then, fill out the information below. As with the automatic bill payments, these will appear on your default checking account view so you can quickly see the money that’s going to be automatically withdrawn from your checking account.

My recommendations? I leave the amounts for the regular but varying monthly bills in my main checking account - things like the cell phone bill and the electric bill just come straight out of the checking. Other bills, especially large ones with longer periods like car insurance and homeowners’ insurance, are handled by having a tiny weekly deduction from my checking account into a special fund just for that purpose. For example, our car insurance is about $400 every six months, so I transfer $15 a week into an account just for that. This way, I don’t really notice that $15 going away, but when the big bill comes, it’s not a panic time - the money’s just sitting there. So I transfer it back into my checking and pay the bill, all online.

Step Three: Pay Your Bills As They Come In
After this is all set up, your only real responsibility is to pay the bills as they come in. I usually pay all outstanding bills once a week, on Sunday afternoon. Keep on top of these bills, so that you’re not dinged with a late fee. With many of the bills handled now by automatic transfer, you won’t have that much to deal with - I usually just have one or two bills a week to pay attention to.

Step Four: Use Your Debit Card as a Mastercard and Use It For Regular Purchases Like Groceries
If you wish to completely centralize all of your spending until you get things under control, ING’s Electric Orange checking service will issue you a debit card that also functions as a Mastercard. If you’re just getting your budgeting under control, it may be useful to spend a few months just running all expenses through that card, so you can keep a careful eye on what you’re really spending. Once you have a strong grip on your spending, you can move on to using other mechanisms for your expenses, but sticking with a check card for a while is a great way to make sure your spending is under control.

These steps, all together, create a centralized view of your day-to-day finances and also form the basics of a budget. This is exactly how I do things right now in terms of day-to-day money management. I use ING Direct to do all of those things, and it’s done wonders for keeping my money in line.

This plan requires you to do some basic math with a calculator. Since you’re already at the computer, using the simple calculator tool on your computer for addition and subtraction should do the trick quite nicely. I tend to use Excel because I usually already have it open in order to update my net worth calculations.

Good luck!

First of all, a disclaimer: while I’m not directly involved with SmartyPig, I did speak with the development team in detail during the development process and offered a number of suggestions and ideas, and I was kept abreast with their development along the way. This group sought my input during their process of growing from concept to public release, but I am not directly involved with SmartyPig in any fashion. I do, however, think the product turned out quite well and I’ve been looking forward to telling you about it - I had to wait until after its recent public launch to do so.

Several months ago, I went out to lunch with a couple people who wanted to tell me about a project that they were working on that they thought I might be interested in. They knew of me via The Simple Dollar and, because they were based in Des Moines and I happen to live near Des Moines, they thought it was a great opportunity to get my opinions and thoughts.

Since the lunch was free and I had the afternoon off anyway, I thought, “Why not?” The worst that could happen is that I get a free lunch and listen to some boring conversation. I had heard a few pitches like this before from various people and groups and most of the time I saw very little that would get me excited.

That group was the SmartyPig team, and the set of ideas they’ve come up with is genius.

What’s SmartyPig?
Right now, I use ING Direct as my primary bank. They provide my checking services, my savings services, and all of my online bill pay services. They even allow me to set up sub-accounts so that I can save for specific goals. In my opinion, ING Direct is the best of the full-service online banks, and I’m a happy customer of theirs.

Still, when I look at online services like mint.com, I’m jealous: the idea of sharing saving goals with others is very intriguing. Personal finance and saving money has the potential to be as social as any other activity - we can involve our friends and family in the process and make it a point of conversation and a point of pride.

I can’t help but think back to when I was a teenager and saving for a car. My family was intimately involved in this process, and they encouraged me all the time to keep saving. My dad would occasionally put a few dollars into the account, and my mom would sometimes slip me $5 towards the car when I would take out the trash. Other family members, particularly my grandmother, were quite encouraging as well, and even a few of my friends were in on the story. When I finally got the car (and got it fixed up and road-worthy), it felt like not only a goal I had achieved personally, but a goal I had shared with my family, too - they were happy for me as well as they had seen the progress all the way along.

I’ve often thought that this type of thing would be a very cool feature for an online bank. Why not allow people to set up “public” savings accounts for such goals and then allow others to contribute money to that account and watch the progress? When we were buying a crib for my son, for example, both grandparents wanted to contribute and wanted to know how we were doing in saving for that crib (we were getting a gorgeous one that would be perfect not just for our children, but for their children and so on). One of them even suggested that we have a baby shower themed around the crib we had in mind, but there was no intuitive way to put the pieces together for it.

SmartyPig is basically the solution to this. SmartyPig is basically an online front end for West Bank, a bank chain here in Iowa. It basically allows you to set up savings accounts for specific goals and make these accounts “public” so that others can track the progress in the account. You go in, define a savings goal, set up an automatic savings plan that pulls from your checking account, and then watch your progress towards that goal. The account offers a pretty competitive interest rate, too. When you’ve reached a savings goal, SmartyPig issues you a MasterCard debit card that contains the full balance of your account, and you take it to wherever you want to go to spend it.

SmartyPig took the next logical step, too. They hooked in a number of retailers to kick it up a bit more. Let’s say, for example, you’re saving for a KitchenAid Pro stand mixer and you’re going to buy it off of Amazon when you reach your $300 target. If you specify that as your savings goal on SmartyPig, you’ll get the option of getting that $300 as an Amazon gift card - and they’ll kick on a few extra percent towards the purchase. So, for example, you might get an Amazon gift card at the end with a value of $315 or a MasterCard debit card with a value of $300 - your choice.

My Concerns
SmartyPig is a combination of two very good ideas - the social sharing of an online savings account, plus the option to roll it into a gift certificate for extra savings. I’m left with just a few minor concerns.

First, any time you sign up for another bank account, you’re giving your personal information to at least one more source. While the risk is slight, it does exist - there is no perfect security in the world and your best protection is to always minimize the number of places where your information exists. In a nutshell, I usually need a compelling reason to share my personal information - if it’s there, I’m okay with going forward, but I don’t hand out my information unless I can clearly state the reason and it’s a worthwhile one.

Second, the maximum benefit of SmartyPig comes from consumerism-oriented goals. While you can use it for things like a $5,000 emergency fund, SmartyPig doesn’t lend itself well to goals like that. By its very nature, SmartyPig is for saving for item-oriented goals. While this can be good - it’s a great way to save up for a new washer and dryer, for instance - it can also be bad if you use it to save for extra stuff you don’t really need.

Will I Use It?
For the exact purpose that it fills, SmartyPig is a wonderful online savings option, and I’m using it to save for at least one specific future purchase - a new dryer. Our old one is on the fritz, and this is a very subtle way to get the cash for a new one. My wife is considering adding a new washer to that goal as well. I have not yet shared any goals, mostly because I can’t think of a good idea for one to share.

I will admit to being tempted to set up a savings goal to save for a few frivolous things - and I think that’s one of the dangers of SmartyPig. It’s fun to play with, and my natural instincts are encouraging me to set up savings goals for things like a digital video camera setup.

Should You Use It?
SmartyPig excels at facilitating goal-oriented saving - if you’re saving up for a specific item, this is perhaps the best way I’ve ever seen to self-motivate to get it done and earn some solid returns in the process, both from the interest earned in the account and in the potential gift card you can get when you cash out. If that’s something you struggle with, SmartyPig is a very useful tool for taking that journey. The real question is whether you see a role in your life for such goal-oriented saving - not everyone does, and if it seems pointless and consumeristic to you (which has been the reaction of at least one person I’ve described SmartyPig to), then there’s no need to sign up for an account.

Personally, I think it’s a big help if you’re slowly socking away money for a specific large purchase, and it can be a compelling tool if you’re wanting to share a savings goal with others.

Whenever the Federal Reserve makes a move, it dominates headlines. I watched CNN for a while yesterday while waiting for a meeting and they kept going back to the big news that the Federal Reserve cut the prime lending rate by 0.75%. Most news stories make it clear that this is theoretically beneficial to stocks, and it did prevent a stock market collapse, turning a potentially terrible day on the stock market into just a mildly bad one.

However, for most people the actions of the Federal Reserve seem to have no connection to their day to day life. The prime lending rate? What does that have to do with my day to day life?

First of all, the prime lending rate is the interest rate that banks charge each other for short term loans. If a bank needs some quick cash, it can always borrow it from a bank down the road for that prime lending rate. Thus, most banks use this rate as the baseline for the interest rates they can give on savings accounts (they should be less than the prime rate, or at least close to it) and also on the interest rates they can give on loans (these should be above the prime rate, but competition keeps them low).

Thus, many, many other rates that do affect your life are affected by the prime lending rate. Let’s look at them.

The interest rates on your savings accounts will drop. Your local bank probably won’t change much - they offer so little on the average savings account that it doesn’t matter too much. However, over the next few weeks, a lot of online savings accounts will adjust downwards - probably something close to 0.75% in their savings rate. Some banks will change faster than others, so the next month is a bad time to do any rate jumping. Just stick with where you’re at, know that rates will go down, and wait it out for a bit.

The interest rates on mortgages will drop, perhaps convincing you to refinance. If you were looking at buying a house with a nice, stable thirty year fixed mortgage, this is amazing news because your mortgage rate will drop around 0.75%. On a $200,000 thirty year loan, Ben Bernanke just saved you $71 a month for the next thirty years - a total of $25,635.

That’s a lot of cash, and people out there with a fixed rate mortgage might be interested in refinancing if they can save $15,000 over the life of their loan. It might cost $3,000 or so to refinance, but if the total savings is $12,000 over the loan’s life, that’s plenty of incentive for most people. Incidentally, this will drive a lot of cash into the coffers of mortgage lenders, which will help with the subprime mess.

The interest rates on car loans will drop. This means that if you buy a car in the next few months, the payments will be substantially lower than they would have been without this drop. Since I’m personally thinking about purchasing a van in the early summer, this is good news for me.

The interest rates on variable rate credit cards will drop. Most credit cards have their rate fixed at the prime rate plus some specific percentage - prime plus 11.9%, for example. Since the prime rate just dropped by 0.75%, many credit card rates just dropped 0.75%, which will help a bit if you have a large credit card balance.

In a nutshell, when the Federal Reserve drops the prime lending rate, they’re encouraging you to spend money. Savings accounts become less of a bargain while, at the same time, loans become cheaper. This encourages people to go out and buy stuff.

In terms of stocks, when it looks like people are going to be buying more in the next few months, the stock market goes up, as that means a lot of companies that sell stuff are going to be getting more business.

In short, now is a good time to start thinking about larger purchases that you may need to execute soon. If your car is having troubles, you may want to start investigating good deals on cars, for example, or if you’re looking to buy a home, consider moving forward with that process. That doesn’t mean that you should go out and spend, but instead realize that it may be a frugal time to make a necessary big purchase.