How to automate and streamline saving for multiple large purchases?

Question

My situation is the following:

• I want to automate as much of my finances as possible
• I want to have multiple savings goals (perhaps house, wedding, new car, or recurring 'savings' items like car maintenance, etc)
• Some money will be for specific purposes (ie emergency fund)
• I want to clearly know what money is allocated where
• I want this to be easy to setup

I have been trying to find a way to, well, partition my bank account very clearly (and not using Excel or an external resource). This is proving to be incredibly difficult.

The plan I intend to use is this strategy, or creation of multiple savings accounts for each individual purchase. This will allow me to setup automatic transfers each month and accomplish what I am looking to do (though, it may require creation of 3-5 additional savings accounts).

All these savings accounts would have minimum balances of about $25 and no annual fees and through the bank I currently have nearly all finances through (with a nice web interface).

My specific question is:

• What do I need to be aware of when creating multiple savings accounts which will hold small balances?

Answer 1

If they have minimum balance requirements make sure you don't go below them. For example wanting to save $1,000 to buy furniture. When the bill comes in, if you empty the account, they might close the account. To prevent that from happening keep enough to meet the minimum balance.

Make sure that you can transfer the funds automatically from your main account to the other accounts without having to wait days. Test this by opening one of these accounts, then move money in and out of the account. If it works the way you like then setup the rest.

In the United States if the interest earned is less than $10 they don't have to send you 1099-INT, but you still have to include the income on your taxes.

Signup for electronic statements so that you will save multiple trees each year.