The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: TheInsuranceMan on April 28, 2016, 01:00:57 PM
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Check your account balances, retirement account balances, or loan balances?
I've probably logged into my bank account 10 times today, most of that is because I'm waiting for a large check to be cashed that I had written two weeks ago (finally went through today). I hate having extra money in my checking account, which is why I've been impatiently waiting for this to go through. Now, I can move some money around, and be happy for a bit.
Now, with my wife ready to pop out a kid any day, I was going through balances, bills, and seeing if we'll be able to survive on my income only (she gets paid her PTO, then a few weeks of short-term disability, and the rest unpaid), and we can. But, for some reason, I just can't stop checking my accounts, and that is usually a daily thing. Curious how often people here check them?
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4-5 times a week, especially my 401K and Roth IRA. I don't know why I bother so often but there are worse habits.
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i check my accounts multiple times a day using personal capital mainly. its just for fun, i also watch the market/bonds/exchange rates/oil. i just enjoy looking at it ... it doest change my plans and i cant alter it. i also "invest" in Draftkings - if you really want to watch something spend a weekend with 3k bet on nascar. thats a rollercoaster of fun.
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Once a day. Not even sure why that often.
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Anywhere from 0-10 times probably. I have the Mint widget on my phone, but it only updates a couple times a day. If it's a busy day I may not check it at all. If you don't count the multiple times I see the widget and it hasn't changed, I'd say most days I average 2-4. Sometimes if I'm bored it's more.
If you count every time I see the widget, I'm sure there's days it clears 30 times.
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Every 2-3 days, maybe? Say 2-3 times per week.
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Maybe once a week. I try not to worry about it unless I have spare cash to invest.
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About once every two weeks for my running accounts (checking and savings) -- just to change money from my personal to my joint accounts and to pay off my cards. Investment accounts will be every 3 months when I deposit new money in and rebalance the entire thing (TD charges transaction fees here if I sell within 90 days, that's why I wait 3 months).
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Wow...I'm surprised at the frequency of some of these responses. I was recently thinking of instituting a new "habit" to check our investment accounts on the first of every month, and my husband thought that was too often!
Those of you who check multiple times a day, are you taking action on what you see, or is it just a curiosity thing?
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That would drive me buggy if I looked everyday. I might see the dow/s&p etc.. on the tv at gym when I am working out but I dont check it thats for sure more than once a week if that. Unless your day trading whats the point?
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I check investment accounts once a quarter. I check the savings/cd/checking once a month, not including going in to pay bills, see if a check has cleared, et cetera. I generally set bills to pay as soon as they come in, so a couple of times a week?
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I check Mint way too much (multiple times daily). Many reasons: Entering a cash transaction. Checking to see if I entered a cash transaction I just remembered from the day before. Checking to see if any automatic charges went through (utilities, cable, etc.) or if a check was cashed. Checking because I'm bored and can't remember when the last time I checked was. Checking to see if my paycheck was deposited. Checking to see how well I'm doing in terms of saving/spending so far this month. Checking to see if a credit card charge has cleared because I know I'll need to recategorize it. Etc. Etc.
It's not out of anxiety, it's just a way to pass the time when I'm idly surfing the net or have some time to kill. I like finance and it pleases me to tweak my budgets and check to make sure everything is in order. If I'm busy I don't even think about it.
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Once every week or two.
I do look at what the market is doing everyday, but don't need to log in to my accounts to do that. That's just for fun though.
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I look at the account balances when I have transactions to enter into Quicken. (I don't auto-download because it makes it too easy for me to spend mindlessly.) That can be once a day or once every few days if I've been good about giving my credit card a break.
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I check Mint 3 times daily: when I wake up, lunch, before bed. Not to take action, but to make sure there are no fraudulent transactions and that our transactions are categorizing properly.
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Thread title is risky. Could be suggestive of something...different :P
I check mine whenever I know there is a transaction, loan repayment, bill payment. Check Super once a week. Get an email market update every day through work.
Reconcile the credit card each week in excel.
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I check it probably every other day or every two/three days if my mind wanders.
We pay all the bills based on my paychecks, and I'm able to get them all paid without screwing up billing cycles on the first of the month. So I guess that means I check with a little more frequency between the 1-3rd of each month to make sure payments have cleared, and that the companies I do business with have the money.
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Daily, which is probably too much. But, I also like to keep an eye out for fraudulent transactions.
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I'm so surprised at how many others check multiple times a day. I'm guilty of it too and I don't completely know why. I use Mint also so I'm on there checking transactions and stuff, but I'm also guilty of looking over the investments too. Curiosity is definitely part of it. I also think it's partially due to the fact that I've been hovering close to a milestone for several months and I just keep hoping I'll hit it.
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Bank account I check weekly (when I transfer money over for grocery shopping) or if I'm thinking about making a 'large' discretionary purchase and wondering if I have the money to cover it out of this month's excess. Favourite time to check is the end of the month when I transfer any leftover money to savings.
Retirement/savings accounts get checked once a month when money goes in - I like seeing how many units I've bought each month. My work pension gets checked a bit less frequently, probably every 3 months or so. I'll admit I don't really understand how it works so I haven't factored it in to any retirement calculations (I'll worry about that when it's nearer the time).
I have a low rate student loan that I have no idea what the balance is, I've forgotten my login details for the website and moved enough times that I wasn't able to verify my identity on the phone to them. I keep meaning to try again, but never quite get around to it. Repayments are income based so I figure one day they'll stop taking money out of my paycheck or I'll die and end repayments that way (I have no idea how repayments would work on a FIRE lifestyle, so I would look into that nearer the time).
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Bank accounts: Every other day for my transaction account, and maybe the same for the savings account because it's with the same bank (and hence the balance appears in the bank's app).
Retirement accounts: Maybe monthly?
HECS debt (student loan): Maybe a few times a year. Perhaps after the annual indexation and after my tax return is finalised.
Credit card: Probably once a week or thereabouts.
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Bank account: every week or two when I pay bills
Credit cards: monthly when I pay them
Retirement: every couple of months, probably. A little more often than when the quarterly statements come in.
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I pretty much only check the SP500 based on this forum.
Probably look at mint once or twice a month, more when we're close to milestones.
We have a budget date at the end of each month which results in checking account balances, too :)
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Wow...I'm surprised at the frequency of some of these responses. I was recently thinking of instituting a new "habit" to check our investment accounts on the first of every month, and my husband thought that was too often!
Those of you who check multiple times a day, are you taking action on what you see, or is it just a curiosity thing?
If you have the mint widget on your phone it's almost like looking down at your phone clock, except it's all of your bank/investment/credit card accounts. I don't take action on it (unless something looks fishy, like fraudulent transactions). The investment portions only update once a day since that's when mutual funds change price, generally I just glance at the net worth.
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For investment accounts, I'd guess a couple of times a month. I rebalance once a year, but that's mostly auto.
For bank accounts, maybe once a week? And I only check it that much because wife is in the midst of two years of SAHM, so we're living closer to the bone. I mean this in very relative terms -- I make 75K and max out both a 403b and a 457 (so 36K) which makes our income "only" 39K.
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When I worked at a bank I checked it probably 5x a day but it was easy access. I would say I check everything about every other day or so. It makes me feel better, more controlled and can monitor any activity going on. I caught an issue once right away with the bank and got it fixed immediately. Plus it helps me stay on track with budget/bills.
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Twice a day.
I skim Mint quickly in the morning as part of my routine. Not doing anything detailed, just looking for anything that seems out of place so that if I need to call one of my banks I can do so within business hours rather than having to wait until the next day. Takes maybe one minute?
After work I log in and look more closely, make sure purchases are categorized correctly, and do any manual things like splitting transactions. Maybe five minutes.
Any other logging in is just to look something up, like if I want to check the details for a specific purchase made a few months ago.
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I check multiple times per day.
I know it's ridiculous. But I am within 2-3% of FI. So I am obsessed. Over the past 18 months or so I have never, ever quite hit it with the market swings. I know it's purely psychological but I won't allow my OMY to begin until I hit it at least once. Then my OMY begins as my safety/sanity buffer.
I have had horror stories for the past 13 years of terrible things happening in life (assault, life threatening illness, deportation, consequent loss of job, home and partner). FI feels like the one thing that I can control that might leave me less vulnerable to these external events. Maybe it will feel like an anti climax when it happens but it's one of the things that makes me feel hopeful right now
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I used to track more closely. But I already have enough continual impatience and angst about getting to FIRE that I've purposefully stopped checking. I look at checking accounts to make sure a payment will clear when that's needed. I also look at accounts once per month to track spending (tallying up the month) and make sure there aren't any weird charges.
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Checking (3 accounts, 2 of which are really savings accounts) normally daily, partly to make sure debit card purchases and billpays are posted correctly and also because I post all purchases to Excel (I don't use mint or the like...).
Brokerage normally once per month, unless I am making some kind of change to my auto-investing or to make my annual IRA contribution.
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Bank accounts? Well, DW handles most of that, so a few times per month on her part.
Retirement and investment accounts? Maybe 3-4 times per year, when the quarterly statements come in, and at tax time. I'm still a long way off from retirement, so it's not like I'm counting the days until I hit the magic number.
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I have a series of graphs I generate that I probably look at every day. They will be up to date as to prices of stocks/funds/etc, but do not automatically log in and grab transaction data.
Transaction data for things like dividends are updated about once a week. For bills: as they are paid. This can skew some of the expense graphs, since they all appear to occur every couple of weeks or so (when bills are paid). Long term, it all levels out and seems pretty legit.
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About weekly. It used to be daily, even multiple times a day. This was when I was starting to learn more about personal finance and investing.
I do try to enter my transactions into YNAB whenever they occur, so I'd say I check in with my budget more than once a week.
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Glad I'm not the only crazy one :)
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About once a day just to check if certain things have cleared or been added yet. More than that is obsessive and not good mentally.