that's exactly what we do. i promise one month of keeping it in your checking vs putting it anywhere else wont make a difference.

I don’t worry about it. Your method seems plenty efficient to me. I’m not looking at how my saved money grows on a daily timescale.

We don't sweat the small stuff. I don't move money immediately and I always leave a bit of a cushion in checkings.

How much are you spending? If you’re letting $10k sit in an account earning nothing vs. putting that into an HYSA, you’re losing out on like $275 of interest per year post-tax.

I think you’ll survive if you can afford to spend $10k per month.

The amount of waste from letting money sit in your account not earning interest for a few weeks is minimal. I wouldn’t worry about it. Having a buffer is more important than the dollar interest you might have earned.

We take so much out of our paychecks before they hit checking accounts that there isn’t much left to transfer anywhere after paying bills. Anything over goes to an HYSA and if that goes over a certain amount it goes to brokerage.

Checking is my HYSA at Fidelity using a CMA. Everything is on Autopay and we keep 3 months of expenses in cash. Of course we pay ourselves first to meet our savings goals and then cash flow the bills.

Bills are autopaid by credit card. Only auto pay from my checking is mortgage and student loan. I pay my credit cards manually. 

My investing is automated and i have a set amount direct deposited into brokerage by our payroll. 

Pay yourself first instead of moving leftovers into brokerage after the fact 

Same except I send my checks and pay bills from my HYSA. Marginally helps with accrued interest while the moneys waiting to pay a bill or move to brokerage.

I spend $10k per month. Checking always sits between $10 and $25ish. Pay bills one a month and transfer excess to brokerage…

If you really want to min max it, you can use an investor checking account with your brokerage and have automatic transfers set up to move the paychecks to the brokerage account and buy something like money market shares and then have scheduled sales and transfers back for your billing cycles, with credit cards you can at least change your payment dates so they hit at the same time and if you know your average spend can ballpark enough to cover it along with leaving some extra cash. And if you know how much you generally have left over for long term investing you can at least have that automatically committed every month.

Nothing fundamentally prevents you from doing these between a retail checking account or a savings account and your brokerage but if you use the linked accounts transfers are instantaneous and it’s easy to see and manage in one interface.

Personally, I just settled on having enough cash in checking to cover 2-3 months of my average autopays and then DCA’d the rest into long term investments, I don’t feel like chasing yield on a relatively small portion of my net worth (less than 0.5% cash in checking in my case) is worth all the fiddling around, but props to those who want everything they can get.

I do not autopay anything outside of my mortgage. Anything that doesn't have to withdraw on someone else's schedule from my bank account doesn't get the chance.

I do the same. I don't like to let my money sitting, and I'd rather take the gamble that if something devastating happens then I'll take the fees for early withdrawal, etc. Most likely I'll still be ahead vs just letting the money sit. Probably not the best financial move but works for me.

We do the same but every 2 weeks because approx half our bills hit the beginning of the month and the other half around the 15th. And paid biweekly

I direct deposit into hysa, pay most of everything with credit cards, and hook up my credit cards with the hysa. The only bill I pay out of my checking is real estate taxes.

Use a Fidelity cash management account as your checking account and set your core position to SPAXX.

A lot of bills can be paid directly from a savings account. That’s what I do. I transfer over all of my earnings immediately (minus my rent which is paid in cash) and have the bills drawn directly from my HYSA.

Paychecks are divided so that the exact amount we need for our bills (plus a buffer) goes to our bills account. We get paid twice a month, so each paycheck covers half of our monthly bills. Then everything is on autopay.

I have a daily text alert that I get from my bank with the balance just to make sure nothing goes awry.

Been doing it this way for 15 years :)

The rest of our paycheck goes to savings and a fixed amount for flexible spending.

We pay everything every 2 weeks. I don’t like to keep credit cards on autopay, for whatever reason, I go through and pay those every 2 weeks. Basically just keep a set buffer amount in the account similar to what you said.

If you’re wanting your monthly income to sit in a HYSA you could go with SoFi (or something similar), that has a checking and HYSA. Direct deposit into checking and set up automatic transfer into HYSA. Have bills pay out of HYSA.

You are trying to optimize a few dollars of interest. Just dont worry about it

We keep a month’s worth of expenses in our checking account. Sometimes it’s a little higher if paycheck hit before the big bills, sometimes it’s a little less if the big bills hit before paychecks. My goal is at the first of each month, the month’s worth of expenses are in the checking account. I don’t sweat it from there. In the grand scheme of things, it’s chasing pennies to try and optimize any more.

My wife and I do the same as you and it has been working pretty well. We also have practically everything except credit cards on autopay.

Someone I know changed their credit cards due date to all be on the same date — I’ve been thinking of doing the same for convenience sake.

I autopay everything for us, and my partner sends a fixed monthly amount for housing because that’s consistent. She invests in equities and I leave the savings in fixed income

I dot he same. Any gains from a more “efficient” system is lot worth my mental energy

Autopay as much as possible and once a month or two check that the bills are correct. We leave enough cushion in our checking to cover a few mos of regular expenses because we just don’t want to worry about overdrafting / moving cash around on a regular basis etc etc.

We have pay direct deposited into a HYSA. The mortgage is auto paid from that account as well as 529 deposits for our kids.

I get a monthly fixed transfer amount from the HYSA to my checking account where I auto pay my credit card and utilities.

Reduce hassle and outgoing as much as you can by paying off small stuff.

Set up autopay for most things.

Have a check list and spent 20 mins a month just to validate and done.

Autopay for everything but utilities, CCs, and rent (new place, trust issues with property managers).

I do the same as you. Doesn’t bother me.

My wife and I put ~$25k in an HYSA… all monthly expenses (credit card, mortgage, car payments, etc.) which tend to run about $10k/mo total autopay out of that account…. Whenever our paychecks hit we may sure that we top off the HYSA to $25k then put any excess in our brokerage account

Once a month, I pay all the bills for the next month. The things that are the same amount every month and not discretionary are on auto-pay. I use the balance forecasting tool to determine what should be transferred and when.

Two accounts. Each “bottom out” at $10k, one discretionary spending, gas and groceries, one for all the bills, mortgage, rents, subscriptions. I allocate that plus a bit more for that account from DD and auto-pay everything. I don’t look at it or worry about it very often. Every year, maybe I’ll move the excess to a brokerage account, but I like $10k per for liquidity for emergencies and buffer.

What you’ve described is completely normal and doesn’t require any adjustment. The only optimization I can think of would be to replace your checking account with something that yields more, but I can’t imagine that would result in significant gain.

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Set up an automatic transfer to your brokerage either weekly or monthly to take care of that last step for you. That should keep things even throughout the year at the buffer you want and every few months, quarterly bonus, etc., you can transfer the excess manually like you've been doing, but it will be less frequent.

We have autopay for all our bills. We also have automatic transfers to savings and investing. That way we spend whatever is left with zero guilt.

We live pretty frugally anyways but it gives us peace of mind to know that our money is allocated

If a bill is not on auto pay it’s not getting paid, there is just zero chance I’d remember. Every month I make sure I transfer at least a certain amount to a brokerage account that auto invests. Anything left after bills and “investment” just sits in checking as buffer. If it seems like there’s a lot of cash in the account and I’m about to get paid again I’ll throw some extra to the brokerage. That’s the only manual thing I do.

Everything paid out of HYSA. Only keep like 1k in checking a for the rare atm withdraw.

Paycheck to brokerage, all payments go through a CC and paid out of checking. 4%/12 -> checking I target 10K in checking, if I dip below 5k then there’s a problem.

I do this to see if my numbers work or not. If I over spend, I’ll transfer additional money in.

My HYSA doesn’t allow me to pay my bills directly from it. I am looking to switch so I can have my mortgage, daycare, and utilities come from my HYSA directly. Any advice would be appreciated! As of now I end up having to shuffle money back and forth which gets annoying.

Deposit to multiple accounts or auto withdrawal 

I usually keep enough in my checking (fidelity CMA) to cover roughly a month of expenses (~$20k). everything goes on the credit card. utility bills, phone bills, daily spending, everything.

end of the month the credit card automatically gets paid off. I usually only have 2 or 3 transfers out of my checking account each month (mortgage, credit card payment and one or two other "things" like a Venmo transfer or something.

savings are automated so we never see them, they dont ever make it to the checking account. anything over my safe limit thats left at the end of the month gets transferred out to the brokerage.

I do the reverse. deposit into hysa and then transfer to checking when a bill is due.

I recently opened a Fidelity Cash Management account, which functions like a checking account in that you can write checks and pay all your bills, but is also a brokerage account and has automatic cash sweep into a money market fund so that you earn high interest on any money that is parked in the account.

Overall it reduces the mental load of managing how much I have in my checking, which is nice since expenses can vary so much from month to month.

I have everything on auto pay, including deposits to savings and investment accounts. Obviously you’re spending Berry’s month a month so some months are buffer is bigger or smaller than other month.

The convenience is worth the inefficiency

Most my bills auto pay to credit cards. Every other Friday I pay them off along with whatever random bills that don't auto pay. It takes 10 minutes a month. Money leaves my account every 2 weeks. I keep a minimum of 2k in checking, so it's like a couple of pizzas worth of interest. It's not worth micromanaging past that imo

Schwab Investor Checking. You can setup checking to have overdraft protection against your investment account, on which you also setup margin access. So basically you can sweep money into investments faster and not worry about being perfect with a buffer. Margin rates are very low, and if you’re never exceeding 10% of your account value, you don’t really need to think much about it.

I do the same, but my account is a high-yield savings account

Our joint account functions as both a checking, savings, and brokerage account. We just have to remember to put cash into the market

I use the app copilot so i’m very plugged into my standard recurring checking debits (basically insurance and rent). Everything else is charged to credit cards. I have one checking acct all my debits come out of and another attached to my schwab brokerage. so i split my direct deposit. Pay off all my cards, leave enough for rent and recurring debits in one account, and transfer most of the schwab checking into my brokerage account to invest immediately and some into coinbase for my crypto.

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All DD to HYSA w/ Wealthfront that functions as checking. All bill pay from personal checking with a different institution. Monthly, transfer what’s needed (with some margin) from HYSA->checking. My FA suggested this so we could save more / spend less … something about not seeing the DD in the personal checking makes it easier to take leftover funds from HYSA and move to brokerage etc

My wife and I share a joint account and generally share finances across the board. I do majority of our tracking and management.

We have everything on autopay and generally keep 10-15k on average in our checking account. Anything else moves into an HYSA or money market account if we plan to make an investment in the near future.

Since I track our expenses through automated tagging in Tiller, I just average out which months I need to move additional funds to cover expenses. This happens typically in April and Oct/Nov for personal and property taxes. I’ll also keep addition money in the checking for annual trips.

Autopay. Not worried about money missing a week or two of optimization.

Autopay literally everything. Some to CC, some ACH. Auto transfers for savings and investing, clean out the extra at the beginning of the month.

Return on Hassle is real

Like others has said, one month buffer won't make a big difference. However, look into the fidelity cash management account (and the equivalent vanguard). They function like checking accounts, but have high yield. Right now is 3.6% I think. Goes with the fed rate

Everything except the mortgage auto pays on credit cards. Mortgage auto pays from checking. Pay off the CCs every month. Get lots of points

Savings and checking at the same bank. Savings gets close to the same rate as vanguard etc and is set up as overdraft protection for the checking. Can leave zero in checking and it automatically transfers from savings.

Op has a good approach, I basically do the same but I add in credit cards to the mix. We have a primary operating card that pays unlimited 2% rebate and we use that for most everything except Amazon purchases and we have a dedicated Chase Amazon card as that pays a higher rebate 5% on Amazon purchases. We buy a ton from Amazon. These operating cards get paid every month, so no interest and we easily cover the small annual fee and I can usually get it waived. Only other recommendation I’d make to OP is the pay yourself first to have more of a budgeting mindset. Meaning, instead of transferring to savings/investments “whatever cash is left at end of the month”. Decide how much you want to be saving each month and make that payment to yourself the day after the paycheck goes into checking. The psychology of the forced savings contributes to spending less over the long term.

If you really care that much about missing out on a month of returns you can always have your bills hit a hysa so you can get a bit more than a checking account.

Fair warning thought, not all services let you connect to withdraw from a hysa like you would with a checking

Everything is on auto-pay and I log into the bank account a few times per month just to make sure there are no surprises. I keep about $15-20k in there just so I don't have to worry about it. Sometimes based on timing I can have $10k of bills get paid in one day. The fraud alerts on the various accounts is generally pretty good.

I also go through the credit card statement every month or two just looking for large charges and to generally make sure there are no surprises.

If cash builds up or I get a bonus or windfall I'll move it to high yield savings or investments. I generally don't carry a ton of cash.

By the way this drives my wife completely bonkers, her method is to write down and balance each and every transaction. We were married for 10 years and she still kept that little hand-written ledger attached to the checkbook and she'd write down every check. Finally stopped doing that. She still prefers to pay things with physical checks.

Sounds like I might be in a similar situation where I use a physical bank to handle everyday financial operations. The way I’d look at it is you’re forgoing a very small amount in order to operate in the way that works best for your family.

Example (and this has a lot of assumptions): Let’s assume your monthly expenses are $10k that are all due at the beginning (or end) of the month, you and your wife get paid bimonthly, and you set aside half of that $10k each pay period. Since you’re draining this all at the same time, only the middle of the month $5k is sitting in low-yield savings for half the month. If you’re getting 3.6% on your cash reserves right now, you’re forgoing less than $100 per year. Sometimes the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.

So, I'm not trying to shill overmuch for a particular company or product, but we use a Fidelity cash management account for our primary checking account (even though it's not technically a checking account, it works like one for all purposes that my wife or I need), and then a Fidelity brokerage account for our taxable investing. Overdrafts are a nonissue because if you overdraft the CMA but have sufficient cash or margin availability in your brokerage account, Fidelity automatically refills the CMA from the brokerage account. No overdraft and no overdraft fee. If you're the kind (like me) who likes to leave as little as possible in your primary checking, it's a fantastic peace-of-mind service. There are other perks like universal ATM reimbursement, but the self-funded overdraft protection was a big one for us.

this is the most efficient way to do it aside from just having automatic withdrawals to the brokerage account. the money is only sitting there for a couple weeks at most waiting to be drafted/invested. it's not worth chasing a de minimus amount of interest trying to optimize gains or whatever.

At pretty much any spending level, leaving one month of bills in your checking account as a buffer is pretty much never enough opportunity cost to make worthwhile the headache of making sure you don’t actually overdraft. We’re talking a couple hundred bucks a year tops, which if you’re spending $10k plus a month, is pretty meaningless

Your method seems to be good , only thing I will change would be make the savings also automated . Start with a smaller amount, revise every month until you can’t revise anymore.

I have a "static" checking account and a "free for all" checking account.

I calculate all of my fixes necessities. Mortgage, utilities, etc. Savings is a fixed cost. I setup a direct deposit just enough to match the fixed cost. Buffer can be your emergency fund.

All over flow goes to the free for all checking account where credit cards auto draft from.

This is exactly what I do, but I give myself an illogical buffer. $10K each month in checking starting which gets brought down to $7K after my mortgage. Then I track every penny I spend for the month and move money to my brokerage at month close. I use my debit card the last week each month to clear my CC. Try and keep my CC max at $4K

All deposits go to my various high yield savings accounts to get invested/saved. I transfer over funds as needed to pay bills.

I leverage my banks auto transfer functionality and have autopay transfer to checking anything needed. to pay the bills. not a ton of improvement but at least no money sits in 0% checking vs HYSA

I get my commission check on the 26th of the month-pay mortgage, pay CC balances and all other bill automatically fund a retail account and kids college funds. Leave about 5k in checking move the rest to a money market. 8% goes to 401k till I max

At the end of the year I call my finance person and backdoor any surplus in my money market to a Roth IRA.

Seems to work for us.

We functionally operate a month ahead. I get my partner distributions on the 15th and my wife and I get our regular paychecks throughout the month. On the 5th and 20th for me and biweekly for her.

I’ll use relatively real numbers to demonstrate:

Month Zero: Budget for month 1 is set at $15k including variable expenses. This is kept in checking account for month 1.

Month 1: Spending occurs according to 15k budget set last month. $50k comes in from paychecks and distributions. Budget is the same for month 2. We keep $15k of the new money in the checking account while spending down last month’s money. $35k sent to brokerage.

Month 2: rinse and repeat, adjust based on anticipated expenses and variable income.

I do exactly this. The account everything is going through is a Fidelity CMA, which auto sweeps to SPAXX. Roughly 4% this year.

Paychecks go into the HYSA and a small topoff to the checking account if needed. Mortgage is paid directly from my HYSA, everything else goes on my Chase Sapphire and is then paid off in full each month also auto payed from my HYSA.

Auto pay on all bills from checking. Auto transfers to brokerage-based HYSA 2x/month. Auto buys from HYSA to brokerage (ETFs, mutual funds) 2x per month out of cycle with payroll weeks (401k).

Float around $10k in checking to cover variability

Biggest variable is expense report costs to personal credit card and timing of reimbursement.

Pay yourself first is my motto.

I just dump every expense whichever credit card earns the most useful points under the circumstances, and I've arranged for all the credit card statements to close around the end of the month. Mortgage and HOA are on autopay around the same time, and so is paycheck and auto-transfer from checking account to high-yield savings. So around the third or the 4th of the month I spend half an hour going in and manually paying off all the credit cards at once (refuse to do auto-pay for those in case there are fraudulent transactions) and then figure out where to put whatever is leftover (eg more in savings, investment account, etc.). Not hyper-optimized, but a convenient routine that minimizes the time and mental load.

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I leave enough to auto pay for bills plus a little cushion for unexpected things then transfer the rest into my brokerage account

Everything on credit

Only debt is mortgage last day of the month

Similar to you. I automate as much on the front end as possible and then do my monthly review for anything beyond my buffer to transfer out. That might realistically happen a couple of times a year.

You are HENRY but renting? Why?

Say you save your money in VBIL (short term treasuries), that’s currently at ~3.9%. 0.325% a month. Not worth thinking about. Likely other areas of your portfolio and expenses that are worth optimizing (tax, investment allocation, insurance payments etc.).

We do it similarly, but with how we are tracking our bills and income, I can see how much buffer we need in our account on any given date.

So as we receive income, I move any excess over the buffer into our brokerage account

As others have mentioned, the amount of $ you're losing is probably pretty negligible in the big scheme of things. Depending how much cash you feel like you need to keep you could always get a high yields checking account and use that to hold your money while bills hit.