Two Checkbooks?

Yes, I have two checkbooks. I’m not as disciplined about my money as I ought to be, so I found a way that I could keep myself from spending too much.

When I had only one checkbook, all of my savings was accessible through that account as well. Which meant that the emergency fund often was dipped into for things that were not emergencies. Since my emergency fund is supposed to hold enough money to allow me to keep high deductibles on my car, medical, and homeowners insurance, it’s a bad thing for me to dip into it. But with the funds so easily accessible, well, it just happened. A lot.

Oddly enough, it was not worry over this problem that led to the second checking account. It was X. He’s more irresponsible with his money than I am (scary thought), and he kept bouncing checks that he wrote to me. While regular child support is automatically deducted from his paycheck and sent to the state, which sends it to me, he also has to pay support on his freelance computer and design work, and on any overtime that he earns from his job. So he frequently writes me checks.

The problem was that we both used the same credit union. So when I would present his check to cash it, they would say, “We cannot cash this; there is not enough money in his account,” and give me back the check. There was no penalty to him for this — the only person who paid was me, in lost time and fuel going to and from the CU. I got pretty fed up with it. So I decided to open a bank account at a bank that has a branch that is directly on my way home from the office. That way, I wouldn’t be spending time and gas getting to the bank. The side-benefit of this was that if I deposited or cashed one of his checks, and it was returned from the credit union as not cashable because there wasn’t enough money in his account, then he would have to pay an NSF fee from the credit union (presently, it’s $20). I hoped that would be an incentive for him to balance his checkbook and stop bouncing checks, but the biggest benefit was that I no longer had to deal with his irresponsibility. It was between him and the bank and credit union.

So, the second checking account. It’s a free, non-interest-bearing account, which is not the best place to have money that you expect to sit in the bank. But my plan was to deposit only supplemental child support checks there, and use that as my emergency fund. And it has worked well. I have more than a thousand dollars in that account, and it pretty much stays there. I have had to dip into it a couple of times, sometimes for emergencies, sometimes for expenses I didn’t save for (like property taxes).

So now I have my credit union, interest-bearing checking account for life, the universe, and everything, and I have my bank, non-interest-bearing checking account for emergencies only. It’s a good system.

Tags: divorce, finances, single parenting