I did Part I a long while ago. Eek. Well, time the catch up again.

Last time, I talked about what accounts I have. Now, I'll talk about how I'm using them, and what changes I might be making.

Bank of America

Regular Checking

Bank of America checking is by far the most convenient checking account available. It has the closest (and most ubiquitous) ATMs, which is necessary for my periodic cash withdrawals and check deposits. All of my co-workers also have BoA, so it also makes money transfers easier.

For these reasons, I think I'm going to stick with BoA checking.

However, I'm going to downgrade this account from Regular to MyAccess. To remain free, Regular Checking requires a minimum balance of $750 in checking, or $1500 in savings. Both amounts are rather too large for my liking. $750 is just too random a figure for me to remember to stick to, and $1500 is way too much to hold in such a low-interest savings account.

MyAccess, on the other hand, is free with direct deposit, and has no minimum balance requirement. Perfect. So I've requested that my direct deposit be switched from ING to BoA checking, and once it goes through, I'll downgrade.

I wonder if I can still get the $50 sign-up bonus, though. Will have to keep that in mind.

Regular Savings

With my checking free, I can finally ditch this savings account. No more $1500 earning 0.5% interest and me losing value each year due to inflation. Everything will be going over to ING.

Power Rewards Visa credit card

I'll keep this card around for the credit history and insanely high credit limit, but I've been lusting after a decent CashBack card for a while. I just don't know if I route enough money through my CC to make any of the available offerings worthwhile.

ING

ING is fine and dandy.

And I've been having fun with their subaccounts. Right now, I've set up five.

First and foremost is my "income" subaccount. Money from my current job's salary goes here. The reason why I'm keeping this separate is to make sure that I can live off of my income alone. No living above my means. If I'm going over, I want to see myself actively borrowing from my other subaccounts.

I also have a "seed" subaccount. All of my college work-study wages go here, as well as four years worth of unspent allowance money. My father is the joint holder of my ING account, so he'll also occasionally toss money in. I'm trying to get him to stop doing that (yes, I did say "stop"; I'm an odd one).

Anyway, I have around $15K in this subaccount. This money is eventually earmarked for investments (to grow into a house down payment?), but for now, I'm keeping it around as a backup emergency fund while I feed my actual emergency fund from my current income.

I also have subaccounts for three savings goals: emergency (aka unemployment) fund, car fund, and house fund. I might also start a medical fund for prescription medications, co-pays, and deductibles. And one for grad school application fees?? What about attorney fees? Should I be getting a will/living trust set up, or sign one of those official "don't keep me alive if I'm a vegetable and for goodness sakes please donate my organs and let first year medical students dissect me in anatomy class" forms?

I'm also quite tempted to open an EmigrantDirect account. The APY difference is no longer small change, and the credit card might also be worth a look. Maybe I'll switch my seed account over?

Vanguard

I guess Vanguard is now the home of my investments. I have over $6500 of Roth IRA principal invested in their Target Retirement 2050 Fund, and my 403(b) starts going in this Friday into the same fund. Which probably means I should switch my Roth into a different fund.

I'll talk about my investment thoughts in a separate post, though. Still not quite ready for this yet.