How Many Bank Accounts Might I Need?

At a minimum, it is helpful to have a checking account for day-to-day and household expenses and a deposit savings account to use as an emergency fund. Those two useful accounts can form the foundation of your personal wealth plan.

To build upon that foundation, additional accounts like a credit line^†, a retirement account, or an investment account^‡ can work together to help you achieve your financial goals. Whether you have a clear financial plan established, or you’re looking to create one, Huntington can help you work toward the financial future that you want.

How Many Checking Accounts Might I Need?

Household budgeting can be difficult enough without the added complexities of tracking and balancing multiple checking accounts. Generally speaking, it’s better to have one checking account where you can see your whole budget and spending habits.

Some people will maintain multiple bank accounts as an effort to keep organized, but we have financial tools that can help you manage your finances, even with just one account. Spend Setter^℠ and Spend Analysis can help eliminate the need for multiple checking accounts.

With these digital tools, you can stay organized without opening multiple bank accounts for every financial goal or purpose, but what about special circumstances like a child who wants to manage their own money or a couple who wants to maintain separate accounts?

Having Multiple Checking Accounts in One Household

Although joint accounts can be useful, some couples as well as roommates prefer to maintain their own individual accounts, to keep their financials private. For parents, they may want to set up a student checking account with their child and keep their parental account separate.

In these situations, having more than one checking account serves a specific purpose, but it can also add complexity to your financial portfolio. Having these accounts at the same bank though can allow your family or roommates to easily transfer money between accounts.

And whether or not your roommate or partner manages their money at the same bank or a different bank, Zelle^® can help by seamlessly transferring money between accounts. This way, you both can contribute to household bills by transferring money to one another without opening an unwanted joint account and/or sharing one another’s financials.

How Many Savings Accounts Might I Need?

It is best practice to have at least one savings account and one checking account as your banking financial foundation, and then you can build upon that by creating a savings portfolio. Your savings portfolio depends on your goals and where you are in life, but it’s two-fold.

In your savings portfolio, you should have accounts that address your short-term savings plans and your long-term savings plans. Short-term savings are often used for things like emergency funds or saving for holiday shopping. You want easy access to this money so you can handle unexpected expenses and transfer money^§ within a few clicks or taps.

A personal savings account, like a deposit savings account or money market account (MMA), is perfect for emergency savings, but it’s also great for shorter-term goal-focused savings.

We offer a savings tool called Savings Goal Getter^℠. It lets you set up to 10 goals and an emergency fund for your savings account, and you can allocate money to each of your goals. This way, you can see your overall balance as well as the amount allocated to an emergency fund, vacation fund, holiday shopping fund, or any other goal you want to set for yourself.

Long-term savings accounts cover future planned purchases, college funds, retirement accounts, and any other goal that you consider long term. If you’re working on a five-year plan to homeownership, you may want to consider taking steps like establishing a credit line to build credit or starting a five-year certificate deposit (CD) to help you build a down payment.

If you’re planning a big vacation in two years, you can take advantage of a two-year CD. Do you want to save for your child’s college education? There are benefits to having a 529 plan in addition to a college savings account. Are you concerned about saving enough for retirement or market volatility hurting your 401K? We offer FDIC insured MMA Individual Retirement Account (IRAs) and CD IRAs. Wherever you are in life, Huntington has accounts and services to help you through life’s milestones.

Keeping All Bank Accounts at the Same Bank

The line between short-term goals and long-term goals is often fuzzy.

The main idea is that all the accounts and services work together for your financial future. Having multiple accounts in a savings portfolio along with a checking account can get confusing but keeping your accounts at the same bank can provide additional benefits.

This allows you to connect your accounts so you can set up automatic transfers to your different savings accounts. You use one mobile app or one login portal to access your money. Since everything is in front of you when you log in, you can help prevent an account from going dormant or failing to see suspicious charges by also being vigilant.

Having all your accounts in one place can also help keep your financial goals top of mind.

If you’re banking with Huntington, there are additional benefits to having everything at the same bank.

1. Avoiding fees: if you have a savings account and qualifying checking account with us, account maintenance fees for the savings account are waived.
2. Relationship benefits: as your relationship balance (the balance of all your qualifying accounts) goes up, you may have access to more competitive interest rates and other financial benefits.

Whether you decide managing one bank account or a few is right for you, Huntington can help you stay organized, maximize your account benefits, and help you reach your financial goals.