How low and how fast

Our ING Orange Savings accounts interest rate has fallen yet again, to 2.20% APY. This is the third drop since 12/30/08.

High yield!

p.s. at least when the rate dropped on our credit union account, they were nice enough to send us an email a month before...I heart credit unions.

New accounts in effect

June starts the beginning of our new budgeting system of sorts. Within a week, our accounts were opened and we received our new ING Electric Orange debit cards in the mail. Sunday night we finished up the new setup by creating our "envelope" savings accounts.

Refer to the chart below to understand how our money flows:


It should be pretty self explanatory, but basically we have our paychecks deposited on our Charter One account, which pays all our household bills and expenses. Then our personal spending money, gas money, and "envelope" money for our budget categories is transfered to our ING Direct personal checking or the designated savings accounts throughout the month.

Hopefully this will streamline things and drop my bank visits to 2 times a month, just to deposit my paycheck since my job doesn't offer direct deposit.

Seperate accounts

We decided to switch it up over here and get separate checking accounts for our own personal spending money and keep our joint account for all the household family business.

After weeks and weeks of reading about ING Electric Orange accounts and working through our budget and the way we actually spend our money, we thought that separate accounts that are connected to our joint account would be the best solution.

This helps in several ways:
I have to go to the bank 3 times a month versus 7 at the minimum
We can spend our personal money the way we want, including surprise gifts for the other person
The money that we would take out for "envelope budgeting" can earn interest from our new accounts

The last big change will be to switch over our savings account sometime next week.

Did I mention I love banking and budgets!