How Many ING Direct Accounts do you have?
By glblguy
Photo by j / f / photos
A reader named bmhumphries made the an interesting comment and asked a great question recently on my How to make paying your year end property taxes painless:
I have a question for you and your readers. How many separate accounts do you have in you on-line banks? I had to call ING recently and asked the customer service if I had too many. (I have 8). He said the most he has seen is 30!). It makes sense though to have a separate one for each non-monthly expense. I have one lumped into “Future Liabilities” and keep a spreadsheet. That has 9 annual expenses in the one ING sub account. I have often wondered if I should split them out into their own sub account in ING. It would make it easier to track, no spreadsheet work to do.
What do others do?
So here’s my very first poll here on Gather Little by Little, also add your thoughts below about how you manage your ING Direct accounts. Thanks bmhumphries for the great question!
If you don’t have an ING Direct account and would be interested in one, please contact me and I’ll send you a referral. This will get you a free $25 and me $10 (minimum $250 deposit required).
[poll=2]
December 17th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I got made fun of for having 8 accounts!! It is a great budgeting tool, and it is has made my financial life a whole lot easier – ING for president!!
December 17th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I love my 6 orange savings + 1 electric orange checking accounts :)
December 17th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I think I have 5, including my children’s savings accounts.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I have 5, one is the savings, one is checking and I have three CDs. Well since they are a ladder I guess you could count that as one.
I started with the different accounts for different things but I put my bills on recurring payments so now I don’t need all of those accounts.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Thanks all for participating. I love ING as well…I have a orange checking and 5 savings.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I like my 4 accounts for car stuff (servicing rego etc), emergency fund, holidays & savings.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
By the end of the year, I’ll probably have 2…
December 17th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
@debtdieter – That is about what I have. I use mine for the same types of things.
@Mrs. Micah – 2? Are you adding one, or shrinking down?
December 17th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I have three accounts ,four counting my IRA. We have our joint checking and joint savings plus my own emergency fund.
December 17th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
I love ing and have 6 accounts for various matters. The only thing that troubles me is the frequency with which they are lowering their interest rates – just had a rate-lowering last week!
December 17th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I only have one. To be honest, I prefer my regular bank account over ING, so I use that. But I do recommend ING b/c it is easy to use and you can make separate accounts which is very convenient.
December 17th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Okay, I have 10 on-line savings accounts now. That doesn’t include the electric orange checking (which I love).
I moved my growing emergency fund to Emigrant. I do everything at ING so I wanted that account out of sight and out of mind. I have funds taken out twice a month from my electric orange.
The rest of my ING sub-accounts are for expenses that are quarterly or less frequent. It is reassuring to see at a glance I have money set aside. I still have the “Future Liability” account which as I mentioned I track the expenses of about 9 categories. Those separately may not be large enough to require their own account. I am still thinking about that.
I have a college fund account, a new car fund, home improvement account, an “Appliance Depreciation” account. (I have calculated the remaining life expectancy of washing machines, stoves, refrigerators, furnace etc., determined the cost to replace them and then how much per month I need to save up. It will be very imprecise but something to go on.) I even have a “Beef” fund. We buy 1/2 a side of beef every so often. That is the cheapest way by far to buy meat but it requires an up front investment I try to plan for. I have automatic withdrawals from the electric orange to fund these twice a month.
I just opened another for my wife to keep her savings in. She has a part time job she works at. She saves “her” money for various projects she wants done that I can’t afford right now with the kidos in college. So the separate account is a way to keep her money segregated.
Sorry, I am rambling. I sure am thankful for ING and how helpful their services have been in keeping my finances straight.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Thanks for all the great comments folks and offering how you use your accounts and the numbers you have.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
What? No option for none?
December 18th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Justin, opps. Guess I assumed everyone in the world had an ING account :-)
December 18th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I closed my ING accounts years ago, probably close to 10, I got my $50 opening bonuses and ran.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Only one ING account, but I have five other accounts at two other online banks. So six savings account total, plus two checking accounts (one checking account is where I keep money to cover my insurance premiums, some of which are monthly while others are bi-monthly).
December 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Speedy, are you getting better rates at other banks?
December 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I know I am getting much better rates at other banks.
May 29th, 2010 at 2:39 am
Hi. I wanted to drop you a quick note to express my thanks. I’ve been following your blog for a month or so and have picked up a ton of good information as well as enjoyed the way you’ve structured your site. I am attempting to run my own blog but I think its too general and I want to focus more on smaller topics. Being all things to all people is not all that its cracked up to be.